How do democracies and autocracies respond to rising food prices? Authoritarian regimes, we argue, must match the redistribution that the poor would obtain in a democracy to prevent an uprising. Interpreting authoritarian regimes as the rule of a faction of the rich, we develop a model that suggests that (1) food price inflation is both a threat to democracies and autocracies, (2) food price inflation is more of a threat to autocracies than to democracies, and (3) food price inflation is more of a threat to autocracies that are more factionalized. We provide empirical evidence for these hypotheses.