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Page 1 of 2

  • 9 - Conclusion and Policy Implications

  • from Part IV - Dictatorial Survival and Breakdown
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 218-236

  • Summary

    Because personalist dictators wreak havoc in their own countries, threaten neighbors, and set the stage for renewed dictatorship after they fall, the principal policy recommendation implied by our research is that international policy makers should avoid contributing to the personalization of dictatorial rule, even if security concerns suggest support. Dictators with unlimited policy discretion can switch sides easily and unpredictably, using the very weapons provided by their allies to turn against them. Decisions about economic and military intervention aimed at ending dangerous or abhorrent dictatorships should be informed by realistic assessments of whether the intervention is likely to succeed and what will happen if the dictator falls. After foreign intervention to oust a personalist dictator, the likelihood of democratization is not high. The more arbitrary, violent, and paranoid the personalist dictator, the more likely his overthrow will result in another autocracy, civil war, or a failed state. We suggest that personalist dictators who rely on narrow ethnic, clan, or religious groups for support are especially likely to experience bloody transitions and violent, unstable futures.

  • 2 - Autocratic Seizures of Power

  • from Part I - Initiation
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 25-43

  • Summary

    This chapter provides some basic facts about how dictatorships begin and who leads them. It also describes the immediate aftermath of different kinds of seizures of power. Most dictatorships replace earlier autocracies. The regimes they oust are often incompetent, dishonest, or both, as well as repressive. Since World War II, military coups have established more dictatorships than other means of seizing power. “Authoritarianization” by a democratically elected incumbent, insurgency, and foreign imposition are the other common ways of establishing dictatorship. Because of the difficulty and risk of trying to force out an incumbent government, groups that seek to do so focus their efforts on organizing the details of the physical overthrow, often at the expense of planning what to do post-seizure. The lack of detailed planning about what to do post-seizure tends to make the first months after forcible impositions of dictatorship chaotic. Power struggles occur between supporters of different policies and different potential leaders. It may take time for observers and even participants to figure out what kind of regime is being created.

  • 5 - Dictatorial Survival Strategies in Challenging Conditions

  • from Part II - Elite Consolidation
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 95-126

  • Summary

    Dictators who achieve power through force of arms face special difficulties in consolidating their rule because many of their supporters control sufficient weapons to oust them. Because of the ease of ouster, the dictator’s promises to share are credible, but his supporters’ promises of support if he shares may not be. When factions divide the seizure group, those included in the dictator’s inner circle cannot credibly commit their subordinates to support the dictator even if he shares power and spoils. Dissident factions may stage rogue coups. Consequently, power-sharing bargains between the dictator and his armed supporters cannot be maintained. Dictators in this situation often try to counterbalance their armed supporters with unarmed ones. To do this, they organize civilian support networks – parties. We show that factionalism within armed seizure groups increases the likelihood of post-seizure party creation. We also provide evidence that post-seizure party creation helps dictators to survive. Party creation protects dictators from coups, as would be expected if it were a strategy for reducing the dictator’s vulnerability to ousters launched by an unreliable military support base. It is associated with both longer dictator tenure and longer regime survival.

  • 4 - Power Concentration

  • from Part II - Elite Consolidation
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 61-94

  • Summary

    All members of the inner circles of dictatorships have common interests in regime survival but compete with one another over power and resources. Dictators try to concentrate power and resources in their own hands in order to increase their security at the top. Other members of the inner circle

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 1-22

  • Summary

    Groups that initiate dictatorship have different arrangements for organizing themselves, making decisions, and taking action, which we can observe before the dictatorship begins. After seizures of power, these differences shape the way decisions are made in the ensuing dictatorship and who can influence them. In the chapters that follow, we show that characteristics of the group that establishes the regime persist and shape political processes that follow. Our approach builds on several intuitions. First, we expect the inner circle of the dictatorship to be chosen from the seizure group. Second, we expect groups represented in the inner circles of dictatorships to dominate early decision making and to have more influence on decisions than excluded groups. Third, we expect organized included groups to wield more power than unorganized ones. Finally, we expect groups that have developed skills and routinized ways of interacting and making decisions to gravitate toward these same ways of doing things immediately after seizures of power. Our theories build on these intuitions.

  • 6 - Why Parties and Elections in Dictatorships?

  • from Part III - Ruling Society
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 129-153

  • Summary

    Dictatorships often face problems with policy implementation, monitoring local officials to prevent theft and abuse of office, and gathering information from the grassroots. Leaders expect local officials to implement policies and report information about local problems, how policies work on the ground, and signs of opposition to central authorities. Often, however, regime elites lack the capacity to monitor the behavior of local officials, who may relay distorted information because they fear being blamed for bad news. Elections can partially compensate for regime leaders’ limited ability to monitor their local agents. Bad election outcomes serve as “fire alarms” to alert leaders to especially incompetent, abusive, or corrupt local officials. Elections thus help protect dictatorships by providing periodic monitoring of lower-level officials. The expectation of facing future elections also gives officials and deputies reasons to report information about problems and discontent to central leaders, lobby for resources for their regions, and distribute some of the benefits they acquire to local people. In these ways, parties and elections help the dictatorship located in the capitol to extend its policies and governance to all parts of the country.

  • 7 - Double-Edged Swords

  • from Part III - Ruling Society
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 154-174

  • Summary

    Dictatorial security forces monitor elites and ordinary citizens in order to interrupt plots and undermine opposition movements, while armies defend against rebellions and uprisings. Internal security services focus much of their effort on high-ranking and mid-level elites. The dictator can use them to spy on or even murder other members of the dictatorial elite if he gains full control over them. Control of internal security tilts the distribution of two crucial resources, information and capacity for violence, in the dictator’s favor and thus reduces the likelihood that other elites could oust him or constrain his behavior. Dictators can never fully control their armies. Though dictators need armies, they also fear them since military coups are the most frequent means of overthrow. Many dictatorships create paramilitary forces to defend against coups and counterbalance the regular army. As a further safeguard against the army, dictators may also manipulate promotions to favor loyal officers and purge, arrest, or execute those whose loyalty they suspect. Interference with promotions is safer for dictators if they first establish loyal paramilitary forces to deter coups.

  • 3 - What Do We Know about Coups?

  • from Part I - Initiation
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 44-58

  • Summary

    Our analysis finds no support for the idea that coups that end democracies or initiate new dictatorships are motivated by elite fears of popular opposition or redistribution. Instead, our results suggest that officers who seize political power are motivated by their own interests. Ethnic heterogeneity in the army is associated with more coups. Ethnic differences within the military predispose it to factionalism, and the grievances of one ethnic faction can motivate coups against dictatorships led by other ethnic factions. Coups are less likely to end democracies when the government includes representatives of all the country’s ethnic groups, implying that all ethnic groups represented in the officer corps are represented as well. A retest of existing arguments about the effect of income inequality on the likelihood of coups shows that earlier results depend on combining leader-shuffling coups with regime-change coups. When the two kinds of coups are examined separately, we find that middling levels of inequality are associated with leader-shuffling coups in on-going dictatorships, but not with coups that establish new dictatorships. Protest and civil conflict have no effect on the likelihood of regime-change coups.

  • 8 - Why Dictatorships Fall

  • from Part IV - Dictatorial Survival and Breakdown
  • Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles, Joseph Wright, Pennsylvania State University, Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    How Dictatorships Work
    Published online:
    10 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018, pp 177-217

  • Summary

    In this chapter we investigate the causes of dictatorial survival and breakdown, as well as why breakdown sometimes leads to democratization. Military-led regimes last less long than civilian, but personalization increases their durability while it reduces longevity in party-led regimes. Leadership changes can lead to regime collapse. The death of a dictator who has concentrated great power in his hands is especially likely to cause regime crisis. Personalization also affects the likelihood of a peaceful, negotiated transition, once survival appears unlikely. Dictatorships with more collegial decision making tend to negotiate their extrication from power, but personalized dictatorships often fight to the bitter end. Junta-led dictatorships usually negotiate peaceful transitions to democracy. Collegial civilian-led dictatorships less often exit peacefully than junta-led regimes, but more often than personalized regimes, whether civilian or military. Where a transition occurs peacefully via negotiation, the immediate outcome is usually democracy. Where, however, the dictator hangs on until forceful overthrow, democracy is less likely.

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