Although most human beings have lived under some form of authoritarianism throughout most of recorded history, the academic study of politics has focused on democracy. This focus may reflect the intellectual interests of the predominantly North American and West European scholars who built the discipline of political science, or it may be due to the greater transparency and routinization of democratic politics, which makes it easier to observe and to theorize. Whatever the reason, however, this focus has left those of us who study politics outside the industrialized world with few shoulders of giants on which to stand as we try to understand political change in less democratic and less institutionalized settings.

The study of regime transition is one of the areas in which the near absence of theories about authoritarian politics has impeded scholars’ ability to explain outcomes of great importance.[1] Since World War II, more than 125 authoritarian regimes have ended, as have many democratic regimes. Many fine studies of these transitions have been written, but few of the general explanations proposed by scholars have turned out to hold across the full range of cases. One reason for the inability to develop a general explanation for transitions, I argue below, is that different forms of authoritarianism break down in characteristically different ways. As a consequence, explanations of transition developed in response to the experience of one part of the world, in which some particular kind of authoritarianism is most common, offer little leverage for explaining transitions in other regions where different forms of authoritarianism predominate. Without theories of authoritarian politics, we perceive these differences as simply more of the great sprawling complexity of political life, rather than as forming systematic and explicable patterns.

This paper contributes to building theories of authoritarian politics. In it I develop an argument about intra-elite competition within authoritarian regimes, and then draw out the argument’s implications for the study of transitions. I test a series of hypotheses implied by this argument about the mode of transition and transition outcomes using a data set of information about nearly all the post-1945 authoritarian regimes. These hypotheses help explain why some transitions proceed through peaceful negotiation while others are accomplished by popular uprising or bloody civil war. They help explain why some transitions from authoritarianism result in stable democracies, while others lead to new dictatorships, instability, or warlordism.

Past Research on Transitions

The literature on transitions suffers from an odd bifurcation. Only a couple of robust generalizations have emerged from it, and they both involve relationships between aggregate economic conditions and regime type. These findings are usually interpreted as implying a relationship between the interests of ordinary citizens and demand for particular types of political regime. Yet nearly all detailed descriptions of particular transitions and most efforts to theorize transitions focus on the interests, choices, and strategies of elite political actors. It is the propositions suggested in analyses of elite behavior that seem never to be generalizable very far beyond the cases they were developed to explain. Scholars seeking to take another step toward understanding transitions thus face two tasks: to develop general theories of elite behavior, and to articulate a more systematic understanding of the interaction between elite decisions and mass behavior.

Perhaps the best established generalization about the effects of economic conditions on political system is that people who live in more developed countries are more likely to enjoy democratic government. The positive relationship between democracy and economic development has been empirically well established for some time (Jackman 1973, Bollen 1979), and has been confirmed more recently in a series of very sophisticated statistical studies (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Londregan and Poole 1990 and 1996; Przeworski and Limongi 1997). Londregan and Poole show that the strongest predictor of transitions to authoritarianism, whether from prior authoritarian or democratic regimes, is poverty. Przeworski and Limongi show that once democratization has occurred, for whatever reason, it survives in countries above a certain level of economic development. Among countries below that threshold, the likelihood of a reversion to authoritarianism increases with poverty.

What this relationship means remains disputed. In his early and widely influential articulation of the argument linking democracy and development, Seymour Martin Lipset (1959) suggested that education, urbanization, and greater affluence would change citizen attitudes and increase mass demand for political participation. Most subsequent work in the modernization theory tradition has assumed some similar demand-driven process, as have the various arguments that assigned a leading role in the struggle for democracy to the bourgeoisie (especially Moore 1966), though this tradition locates the demand for democracy in a specific subset of the citizenry. Przeworski and Limongi (1997) invert these arguments, suggesting that it is not the greater propensity of citizens in more developed countries to demand democracy, but rather the lesser propensity of the more affluent to face the kinds of crises that make authoritarianism attractive that leads to the relationship observed between democracy and development. Although the current state of research makes it impossible to choose among these arguments, the data analysis below fills in another modest piece of the puzzle.

A second finding is also reasonably well-established, namely, that poor economic performance contributes to the downfall of dictatorships, just as it does to the breakdown of democracies and the defeat of incumbents in stable democracies. This finding, unlike the one above, has a standard interpretation: all governments require some support and even in those regimes that permit no routine citizen input into leadership choice, those members of society whose support is needed to maintain leaders in power use a “retrospective voting” calculus in deciding whether to withdraw their support. Authoritarian governments may be insulated from the distress of ordinary citizens, but they must deliver benefits to their own, often restricted, group of supporters in order to survive in power. The data analysis below shows results consistent with prior research, while adding some nuance to it.

In contrast to the quantitative studies of the relationship between development and democracy, most research on transitions focuses not on the effect of economic conditions on the likelihood of democracy, but rather on the interests and strategies of regime and opposition elites and the constraints facing them. Here I sketch only three of the arguments that have exerted most influence.

Until the early nineties, one of the most widely accepted was that “there is no transition whose beginning is not the consequence—direct or indirect—of important divisions within the authoritarian regime itself” (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986:19). Detailed case studies of several early Latin American transitions showed that the impetus for the first steps toward democratization could indeed be found within military governments. Greek experience followed the same pattern. Studies of the roots of transition in Spain and Portugal highlighted the factions within those regimes, though claims that these factions actually led to regime change were less persuasive. The transitions that followed the Soviet collapse, however, could not in most cases be traced to splits within the old regime. Nor can most transitions in Africa. Instead, “transitions in Africa seem to be occurring more commonly from below….” (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 83).

Another oft repeated claim is that pacts between elites facilitate transitions to democracy and the survival of democratic government after transition (Burton et al. 1992; Karl 1986, 1990). In much of the descriptive literature the term pact has been “conceptually stretched” to include any form of negotiation, either between the outgoing authoritarian government and the opposition or between rival opposition groups over the potential distribution of power after the transition (the original usage by the scholars who introduced the idea). Since negotiation occurs during virtually all transitions, even those later aborted when rulers renege of earlier agreements, it seems useful to distinguish explicit pacts, such as those that figure so prominently in descriptions of the transitions to democracy in Colombia, Venezuela, and Spain, from the more general phenomenon of negotiation. Pacts are agreements between contending elites that establish procedures for sharing or alternating in office, distributing the spoils of office, and constraining policy choice, while excluding other potential competitors from office, spoils, and influence on policy. Claims about the contribution of pacts to democratization and democratic survival have been made by observers of Latin American and European transitions (especially Karl 1986, 1990; Burton, Gunther, and Higley 1992). Bratton and van de Walle, however, find no evidence of pacts in African transitions.

An additional common argument is that “stronger” outgoing authoritarian governments negotiate transition outcomes more favorable to themselves than crisis wracked dictatorships are able to do. Felipe Agòero (1992, 1995), for example, argues that military governments that, like the Chilean and Brazilian, have ruled effectively are able to secure a continuing role for officers in the policy process and safeguard themselves from prosecution for crimes committed in office. In contrast, those that lose wars, like the Argentine and Greek, or leave office in disgrace for other reasons have little bargaining power. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman (1995 and 1997) concur, though they base their judgments of strength primarily on economic performance. They maintain that authoritarian governments exiting during periods of economic crisis can rarely obtain the institutions conducive to future moderation they prefer. These arguments have great initial plausibility since it has to be true that actors with more bargaining power can get more during negotiations. Dictators negotiating their own exit from power, however, are beset by problems of moral hazzard. They cannot reliably enforce the bargains they make after they have given up their monopoly over the use of force. The later enforceability of these bargains depends on the political strength of the parties to the agreement at the time that it needs to be enforced, not on their status at the time it was made (Hunter 1995, 1997). The gross features of post-transition outcomes, as shown below, depend much less on transient factors affecting negotiations than on basic characteristics of the outgoing regime, which determine the future political role and prospects of members of the departing government and hence their future bargaining power.

In short, arguments that reflected short-run events in the countries their authors knew best fill the literature on transitions, but the passage of time and the transition experiences of other countries have challenged nearly all of them.

Types of Authoritarianism

One of the reasons regime transitions have proven so theoretically intractable is that different kinds of authoritarianism differ from each other as much as they differ from democracy. They draw on different groups to staff government offices and different segments of society for support. They have different procedures for making decisions, different characteristic forms of intra-elite factionalism and competition, different ways of choosing leaders and handling succession, and different ways of responding to society and opposition. Because analysts have not studied these differences systematically, what theorizing exists about authoritarian regimes is posed at a highly abstract level, and few authors have considereed how characteristics of dictatorships affect transitions. These differences, however, cause authoritarian regimes to break down in systematically different ways, and they also affect post-transition outcomes. Here I propose theoretical foundations for explaining these differences among types of authoritarianism.

As virtually all close observers of authoritarian governments have noted, politics in such regimes, as in all others, involves factionalism, competition, and struggle. The competition among rival factions, however, takes different forms in different kinds of authoritarian regimes and has different consequences.

To facilitate the analysis of these differences, I classify authoritarian regimes as personalist, military, single-party, or amalgams of the pure types.[2] In military regimes, a group of officers decides who will rule and exercises some influence on policy. In single-party regimes, access to political office and control over policy are dominated by one party, though other parties may legally exist and compete in elections. Personalist regimes differ from both military and single-party in that access to office and the fruits of office depend much more on the discretion of an individual leader. The leader may be an officer and may have created a party to support himself, but neither the military nor the party exercises independent decision-making power insulated from the whims of the ruler (cf. Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 61-96; Linz and Chehabi 1998: 4-45; Snyder 1998).

Military regimes, as shown below, carry within themselves the seeds of their own disintegration: transitions from military rule usually begin with splits within the ruling military elite, as noted by much of the literature on Latin American transitions, most of which were from military rule. In contrast, rival factions within single-party and personalist regimes have stronger incentives to cooperate with each other. Single-party regimes are quite resilient and tend to be brought down by exogenous events rather than internal splits (cf. Haggard and Kaufman 1995; Huntington 1991). Personalist regimes are also relatively immune to internal splits, except when calamitous economic conditions disrupt the material underpinnings of regime loyalty. They tend to collapse when the leader dies, however, whether of natural causes or assassination, and they are more likely to end in bloody upheaval of one kind or another than either of the other types of authoritarianism (Huntington 1991). These differences between military and other types of regimes explain why observers of transitions in Africa and Eastern Europe usually find the beginnings of change outside the ruling clique rather than inside, as did the analysts of the earlier transitions in Latin America. In the rest of this study, I elaborate these arguments and demonstrate that they are consistent with evidence.

To show why the breakdown of military regimes tends to start from within the officer corps but the breakdown of other forms of authoritarianism does not, I focus on rivalries and relationships within the ruling entity of authoritarian governments: the officer corps, single party, clique surrounding the ruler, or some combination of two or more of these. Most of the time, the greatest threat to the survival of the leader in office – as opposed to the survival of the regime itself -- comes from within this ruling group, not from outside opposition. In normal times, in other words, most of what we would call politics, the struggle over office, spoils, and policy decisions, takes place within this ruling group.

Politics within the ruling group tells only part of the story of regime change, but it is a part that has been understudied. Opposition from outside the ruling coalition and exogenous shocks, such as the Soviet collapse, the international economic crisis of the 1980s, and International Monetary Fund-induced economic reforms have affected, sometimes decisively, regime survival. By focusing on the political dynamics within different kinds of authoritarian regime, however, I aim to show precisely how exogenous shocks and popular mobilization affect different kinds of regime and thus the likelihood of transition. Building a theoretical foundation for understanding different kinds of authoritarian regimes makes it possible to move beyond the lists of causes-that-sometimes-matter found in many studies of transitions and toward systematic statements about when particular causes are likely to matter.

Most authoritarian regimes come into existence either as a result of military intervention or through the banning of opposition parties by an elected ruling party. What I label personalist regimes generally result from struggles for power among rival leaders after the seizure of office. In most military and some single-party regimes, factional struggles between those supporting the leader and those supporting one or more rivals become visible to observers within a few weeks or months of the creation of the regime. When one individual wins such a struggle, continuing to draw support from the organization that brought him to power but limiting his supporters’ influence on policy and personnel decisions, I label the regime personalist. Many authoritarian regimes thus go through changes that affect their classification. It is common for officers who seize power in coups, for examples, to attempt to concentrate power in their individual hands, marginalizing the rest of the officer corps; to hold plebiscitary elections to legitimate their rule; and to create parties to shift the basis of their support away from the officer corps and toward a less dangerous segment of the population. In these ways they can change the basic features of the regime. Such changes usually occur within the first few years after a seizure of power. Winning the initial struggle is no guarantee of long-term security in office, but individual leaders sometimes achieve a position from which, with continuous monitoring and rapid, shrewd, and unscrupulous responses to incipient opposition, they can, for a time, prevent serious challenges from arising.

Coup plotters, especially those with past experience in office, can often foresee the possibility of regime personalization, and they attempt in various ways to prevent it. Institutional arrangements designed to insure power sharing and consultation among high-ranking officers can be very elaborate. It took months for the various factions within the Argentine armed forces, which had had an unfortunate experience with a colleague’s effort to consolidate personal power during their last stint in office, to hammer out power-sharing arrangements before the 1976 coup, The resultant complicated and cumbersome governing institutions all but immobilized decision making at various times (Fontana 1987) and was nonetheless only partly successful as a mechanism for handling succession. As another way to reduce the probability of personalization, plotters often choose an officer known for correctness, legalism, and low charisma to lead the junta or military command council. General Augusto Pinochet, for example, was considered a safe choice to lead what was supposed to be a collegial junta in Chile because of his wooden, uncharismatic demeanor and his reputation for professionalism and respect for rules (Arriagada 1988). Events proved his colleagues’ assessment of his character to be mistaken, however, as many others have been before and since. Nevertheless, power does not always corrupt; General Humberto Castello Branco, chosen to lead the first military government in Brazil in 1964 for much the same reasons, abided by the letter of his agreement with other officers. Despite being encouraged by supporters to cling to power, he permitted a process of consultation within the officer corps over the choice of successor and turned power over to a representative of an opposing faction when the time came (Stepan 1971).

Theoretical Foundations

Standard theories of politics begin with two simplifying assumptions: (a) Politicians want to achieve office and remain there; (b) the best strategy for surviving in office is to give constituents what they want. Much of the literature on democratic politics concerns how different political institutions affect the survival strategies of politicians. The analysis of transitions requires an analogous investigation of the effects of differences among authoritarian institutions. To begin this task, the plausibility of the standard assumptions needs to be assessed and those assumptions possibly revised. Most obviously, in the absence of routine ways for citizens to remove leaders from office, questions of who exactly the constituents of authoritarian leaders are, how satisfied they have to be, and what factors besides satisfaction with regime performance affect their level of acquiescence require empirical investigation and cannot be answered in the abstract or assumed, as in the study of democratic politics. Less obviously, it should not be assumed, for reasons shown below, that the officers, parties, and cliques supporting authoritarian leaders always want to achieve power or that, having done so, they always want to hang on to it. One of the central arguments of this essay is that military officers, in contrast to cadres in single-party and personalist regimes, often do not. If there are circumstances in which they can achieve their ends better out of power than in, as I will argue there are, then we cannot build theories of authoritarian politics that begin with the standard assumptions.

The Interests of Military Officers

Research on the attitudes and preferences of military officers in many different societies shows that officers in different countries come from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. They have different ideologies and feel sympathetic toward different societal interests. No generalizations can be made about the interests or policies they are likely to support. According to the scholarly consensus, however, most professional soldiers place a higher value on the survival and efficacy of the military itself than on anything else (Janowitz 1960 and 1977; Finer 1975; Bienen 1978; DeCalo 1976; Kennedy 1974; Van Doorn 1968 and 1969).

This corporate interest implies a concern with the maintenance of hierarchy, discipline, and cohesiveness within the military; autonomy from civilian intervention with postings and promotions; and budgets sufficient to attract high-quality recruits and buy state-of-the-art weapons. Officers also value the territorial integrity of their nations and internal order, but the effective pursuit of these goals requires unity, discipline, and adequate supplies (Stepan 1971; Nordlinger 1977; Barros 1978). In countries in which joining the military has become a standard path to personal enrichment (for example, Bolivia for a time, Nicaragua under the Somozas, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, Congo), acquisitive motives can be assumed to rank high in most officers’ preferences. They will be most important for some and second or third most important for others, if only because the continued existence of lucrative opportunities for officers may depend on the survival of the military as an effective organization. Where acquisitive motives have swamped concern for corporate survival and effectiveness, however, the professionalism of militaries deteriorates, and the officer corps is less likely to serve as a successful counterweight to ambitious leaders.

Where corporate interests prevail, such preferences imply that officers agree to join coup conspiracies only if they believe that the civilian government prevents the achievement of their main goals, and that many, in fact, will only join if they believe that the military institution itself is threatened. These preferences are thus consistent with Stepan’s (1971) and Nordlinger’s (1977) observations about the importance of threats to the military as an institution in the decisions of officers to join coup conspiracies. In Nordlinger’s words:

Only a small proportion originally entered the military in the hope of attaining governmental offices. Many praetorians took up the reins of government with little enthusiasm. Most of them would probably have much preferred to remain in the barracks if their objectives, particularly the defense or enhancement of the military’s corporate interests, could have been realized from that vantage point (1977: 142).

The worst threat to the military as an institution is civil war in which one part of the armed forces fights another. Consequently, the most important concern for many officers deciding whether to join a coup conspiracy is their assessment of how many other officers will join. What Nordlinger, Stepan, and others are describing resembles a classic Battle of the Sexes game. The insight behind Battle of the Sexes comes from the following scenario: One member of a couple would prefer to go to a movie and the other would prefer the symphony, but each would prefer doing something together to doing something alone. Going to either event together is a potential equilibrium, but no dominant strategy exists, since the best outcome for either player always depends on what the other chooses.

The logic of decisions about seizing power or returning to the barracks is the same. Some officers always want to intervene, others have legalist values that preclude intervention except in the most extreme circumstances, and most are located somewhere in between – but almost all care most about the survival and efficacy of the military and thus want the military to move either in or out of power as a cohesive whole. Figure 1 depicts this set of preferences as a game.

In the game shown in Figure 1, the two numbers in each cell represent the respective pay-offs to the two factions, majority shown first and minority second.[3] In the particular game depicted, the majority prefers to remain in the barracks. The pay-offs for remaining in the barracks are shown in the lower right cell. The upper left cell shows the pay-offs for a successful intervention carried out by a united military. The minority is better off than it was in the barracks, but the majority is slightly worse off.

The minority would prefer to intervene, but would be far worse off if they initiated an unsuccessful intervention without support from the majority than if they remained unhappily in the barracks. (Pay-offs for this outcome are shown in the lower left cell.) Participants in an unsuccessful coup attempt face possible demotion, discharge, court martial, and execution for treason, so their pay-off is shown as negative. The majority faction that opposed the coup is also damaged by the attempt, since the armed forces will have been weakened, and the government is likely to respond with greater oversight, reorganization, and interference with promotions and postings to try to insure greater future loyalty, all of which reduce military autonomy.

The final possible outcome is a successful coup carried out despite minority opposition. (Pay-offs are shown in the upper right cell.) In this event, the minority that remains loyal to the ousted civilian government is likely to face the same costs as unsuccessful conspirators: demotion, discharge, exile, prison, death. The winners achieve power, but a weakened military institution reduces their chances of keeping it. Future conspiracies supported by those demoted or discharged after the coup become more likely. Once factions of the military take up arms against each other, it takes years or decades to restore unity and trust.

This is a coordination game: once the military is either in power (upper left cell) or out of power (lower right cell), neither faction can improve its position unilaterally. Each faction must have the other’s cooperation in order to secure its preferred option. When the military is out of power, even if the majority comes to believe it should intervene, it cannot shift equilibria without cooperation from the minority.

Where interventionists have broad support and an open political system makes plotting easy and safe, extensive consultation among officers and between officers and civilian supporters often precedes coups. Plotters may delay the seizure of power until a near total consensus within the officer corps has been achieved and may establish elaborate rules for consultation and leadership rotation. These consultations aim to insure the cooperation of all major factions in the intervention. Such elaborate efforts to achieve coordination have been described in a number of cases.[4]

Where interventionists lack widespread support or a more repressive political system raises the costs of plotting, another, though riskier, strategy is available. Conspirators can keep the plot secret from all but a few key officers and hope that the rest will go along once key central institutions have been seized. Often the presidential palace, garrisons in and around the capital city, radio and TV stations, the central telephone exchange, and the main airport will suffice. This is the strategy Nordlinger (1977) identifies as most common. It is a characteristic of games like Battle of the Sexes that the actor who succeeds in credibly moving first can always get what he or she wants. The partner, for example, who announces, “I’ve bought tickets for the symphony Friday night. Do you want to come, or shall I ask someone else?” has made a credible first move. The couple will go to the symphony. The first-mover strategy fails, when it does, because the first move is not credible; in the context of coup decisions, when most officers do not believe that most other officers will go along with the plotters.

The attempted Spanish coup in 1981 exemplifies a failed first mover strategy. Plotters believed that much of the officer corps would support an intervention, mostly because of the threat to national integrity posed by the democratic government’s willingness to negotiate with Basque and Catal«n nationalists. The small group of active conspirators believed that once they had seized control of the Cortes and key installations in Madrid, King Juan Carlos and the rest of the officer corps would acquiesce in the coup. The evidence available suggests that most of the officer corps would have gone along if the king had not immediately begun telephoning the captains-general and other high ranking officers to inform them that he would resist the coup (Colomer 1995). For some officers, loyalty to the king was stronger than other values and led them to ally with the king. For others, the king’s unequivocal opposition indicated which position most of the officer corps was likely to take, and this information led them to resist intervention in order to end up on the same side. The coup might well have succeeded if the king’s access to telephones and television had been blocked and he had thus been unable to signal his position. Josep Colomer (1995:121) quotes one of the erstwhile conspirators, interviewed in jail, as saying: “The next time, cut the King’s phone line!”

For the officer who ends up paramount leader of the post-coup junta, the game may change after a successful seizure of power, as it did for Pinochet, but most other officers always see their situation as resembling a Battle of the Sexes game, even in the most politicized and factionalized militaries. Repeated coups by different factions, as in Syria prior to 1970 or Benin (then called Dahomey) before 1972, would not be possible if most of the army did not go along with the first mover, either in seizing power or in handing it back to civilians.

The Interests of Cadres in Single-Party Regimes

The preferences of party cadres are much simpler than those of officers. Like democratic politicians, they simply want to hold office. Some value office because they want to control policy, some for the pure enjoyment of influence and power, and some for the illicit material gains that come with office in some countries. The game between party leaders and cadres, sometimes called Staghunt, is shown in Figure 2. The insight behind the Staghunt game is that in a primitive stag hunt, everyone’s cooperation is needed in order to encircle and kill the prey. If anyone wanders off, leaving a hole in the circle around the hunted animal, it can escape leaving all, including the wanderer, worse off. In this game, no one ever has an incentive to do anything but cooperate.

In the game shown in Figure 2, the best outcome for everyone is for both factions to hold office (pay-offs shown in the upper left cell). The worst outcome occurs when both are out of power (shown in lower right cell). The upper right cell shows the pay-offs when the party has lost control of government, but the minority faction still fills some seats in the legislature or holds other offices as an opposition. The minority pay-off in opposition is lower than when the party holds power because the opposition has fewer opportunities to exercise influence or line pockets. In the lower left cell the minority faction is excluded from office, but the party still rules. If the minority faction is excluded from office but the party continues in power, the minority continues to receive some benefits, since its policy preferences are pursued and party connections are likely to bring various opportunities, but members of the excluded minority receive none of the specific perquisites of office..

Factions form in single-party regimes around policy differences and competition for leadership positions, as they do in other kinds of regimes, but everyone is better off if all factions remain united and in office. This is why cooptation rather than exclusion is usually the rule in established single-party regimes. Neither faction would be better off ruling alone, and neither would voluntarily withdraw from office unless exogenous events changed the costs and benefits of cooperating with each other (and hence changed the game itself).

The Interests of Members of Cliques

Membership in personalist cliques tends to be more fluid and harder to identify than membership in parties or the officer corps. During and after a seizure of power, personalist cliques are often formed from the network of friends, relatives, and allies that surrounds every political leader. As in single-party regimes, factions form around potential rivals to the leader. In personalist regimes, one individual dominates the military, state apparatus, and the ruling party if there is one. Because so much power is concentrated in the hands of one individual in personalist regimes, he generally controls the coalition-building agenda. Consequently, the game between factions in a personalist regime must be depicted as a game tree instead of a two-by-two table in order to capture the leader’s control over the first move. As shown in Figure 3, the leader’s faction has the initiative, choosing to share the spoils and perks with the rival faction or not. The choice I have labeled “defect” can be interpreted either as limiting the opportunities and rents available to the rival faction or as excluding some of its members altogether. In the example shown in Figure 3, the defection is small (the pay-off to members of the rival faction for continued cooperation despite defection is 6); perhaps the rival faction is not offered the choicest opportunities, or perhaps a few of its members are jailed, but the rest continue to prosper. If the whole rival faction were excluded from all benefits, their pay-off for continued cooperation would be much lower.

After the leader’s faction has chosen its strategy, the rival faction must decide whether to continue supporting the regime or not. During normal times they have strong reasons to continue.

[I]nsiders in a patrimonial ruling coalition are unlikely to promote reform….Recruited and sustained with material inducements, lacking an independent political base, and thoroughly compromised in the regime’s corruption, they are dependent on the survival of the incumbent. Insiders typically have risen through the ranks of political service and, apart from top leaders who may have invested in private capital holdings, derive livelihood principally from state or party offices. Because they face the prospect of losing all visible means of support in a political transition, they have little option but to cling to the regime, to sink or swim with it (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 86).

In contrast to single-party regimes, the leader’s faction in a personalist regime may actually increase benefits to itself by excluding the rival faction from participation. Where the main benefits of participation in the government come from access to rents and illicit profit opportunities, benefits to individual members of the ruling group may be higher if they need not be shared too widely. It may also be easier to keep damage to the economy below the meltdown threshold, and thus increase the likelihood of regime survival, if the predatory group is relatively small. Defections by the leader’s faction are thus likely. If the defections are small, as shown in the example in Figure 3, the rival faction is usually better off continuing to cooperate, and most of the time that is what they do.

If the rival faction were to withdraw its support and begin to plot the leader’s overthrow, they would risk life, liberty, and property. The rewards of a successful overthrow would be high, but so would the costs of detection, betrayal, or defeat. In Figure 3 the uncertainty over the outcome of plots is shown as a play by Nature. The plot succeeds with probability p, usually a low number, and fails with probability 1-p. The rival faction decides whether to continue its support for the leader’s faction by comparing its pay-off for support with its expected pay-off from a plot. Two considerations thus affect the choice: the benefits being derived from the status quo and the potential plotter’s assessment of the risk of plotting. As long as the personalist ruler seems powerful enough to detect plots and defeat coup attempts, the rival faction will continue to cooperate if it gets some benefits from the regime. The leader’s faction has an incentive to reduce the benefits to the rival faction to a level just above that needed to prevent plotting. This system is very stable as long as the ruler can distribute the minimum level of benefits needed to deter plotting and as long as the ruler himself maintains his control over the security and armed forces. The situations in which these conditions become less likely are discussed below.

The Effect of Cadre Interests on Regime Breakdown

The interests described above determine whether the splits and rivalries that exist within all kinds of governments lead to regime breakdown. Because most military officers view their interests as following a logic similar to that of a Battle of the Sexes game, they acquiesce in continued intervention regardless of whether military rule becomes institutionalized, the leader concentrates power in his own hands, or a rival ousts the original leader. The officer corps will not, however, go along with disintegration of the military into openly competing factions. If elite splits threaten military unity and efficacy, most of the officer corps will opt for a return to the barracks.

Military regimes thus contain the seeds of their own destruction. When elite rivalries or policy differences become intense and factional splits become threatening, a return to the barracks becomes an attractive option for most officers. For officers, there is life after democracy, as all but the highest regime officials can usually return to the barracks with their status and careers untarnished and their salaries and budgets often increased by nervous transitional governments (Nordlinger 1977; Huntington 1991).

Leaders of single-party regimes also face competition from rivals, but most of the time, as in personalist regimes, the benefits of cooperation are sufficiently large to insure continued support from all factions. Leadership struggles and succession crises occur, but except in some extraordinary situations, ordinary cadres always want to remain in office. During leadership struggles, most ordinary cadres just keep their heads down and wait to see who wins. Thus, in contrast to military regimes, leadership struggles within single-party regimes do not usually result in transitions.

This difference explains why the early transitions literature, drawing insights primarily from the transitions from military rule in Latin America, emphasized splits within the regime as causes of the initiation of democratization. In other parts of the world, where rule by the military as an institution is less common, factions and splits could be identified within authoritarian regimes but did not seem to result in transition. Instead, observers emphasize the importance of economic crisis (Haggard and Kaufman 1995), external pressure (Huntington 1991), and popular protest (Bratton and van de Walle 1992, 1997; Casper and Taylor 1996; Collier 1998; Collier and Mahoney 1997) in bringing down long-standing dictatorships.

Tests of the Argument

As is often the case in comparative politics, it is not feasible to test the cadre interests argument described above in a rigorous way. To gather the necessary detailed information about the internal politics of a large number of authoritarian regimes would require learning many languages and traveling to many places. Although lots of books and articles have been written about transitions in the larger, more developed, and for other reasons more “interesting” countries, it is difficult to find even detailed descriptions of events in smaller, less developed countries such as Burkina Faso, Niger, and Laos, especially those in which democratization has not taken place. One can, however, test several of the implications of the argument, and it is to that task that I now turn.

The argument claims that because officers see their interests as similar to a Battle of the Sexes game, military regimes break down more readily in response to internal splits, no matter what the cause of the splits, than do other types of authoritarianism. If that is true, we should expect military regimes, on average, to last less long than other forms of authoritarianism.

We should also expect that economic crisis, which weakens support for all governments, would have a stronger disintegrating effect on military governments because of their underlying fragility. This suggestion might at first seem surprising since most military governments hold no elections and tend to be more insulated from business interests than other types of dictatorship. Thus we might suppose they are less vulnerable to pressures emanating from citizens unhappy with their economic performance. The cadre interests argument described above, however, implies that officers may decide to step down even without the inducement of overt public pressure. Officers themselves are aware of their government’s economic performance, and they are linked to society via their families and friends. When officers perceive their government’s performance as unsuccessful, typically some advocate intensifying the economic strategy being pursued, and others advocate changing it. The advocates of each policy prescription support the presidential aspirations of a different officer, and competition between them intensifies, sometimes leading to coups and countercoups. A split over economic strategy has the same effect as any other kind of split; if it threatens to get out of hand, most officers prefer to return to the barracks.

Observers such as Bratton and van de Walle (1997) note the importance of material inducements to loyalty in personalist regimes. We might suspect that where loyalty depends on the leader’s ability to deliver individual benefits, economic crisis would cause regime breakdown, but that would be an insufficiently cynical view. Run-of-the-mill poor economic performance hurts ordinary citizens but does not preclude rewarding supporters. It takes a true economic disaster to do that. Recent African experience suggests that economic reforms reducing state intervention in the economy, and hence rents and corruption opportunities, may be as destabilizing as economic crisis itself. We should thus expect personalist regimes to be less affected by poor economic performance than military.

Because officers may decide to return to the barracks for reasons relating to internal military concerns rather than being forced out of office by popular protest or external events, we should expect them to negotiate their extrication. When officers decide to withdraw from power, they enter into negotiations with civilian political leaders to arrange an orderly transition and, if possible, to safeguard their own interests after the transition. We should thus expect that military regimes will be more likely than other kinds of authoritarianism to end in negotiation leading to elections.

Because of the internal sources of fragility in military regimes, we should expect them to be overthrown by armed insurgents or ousted by popular uprisings only rarely. Demonstrations against them occur, but most of the time such demonstrations persuade factions of the military to initiate a transition before popular opposition develops into rebellion. Coups are common in military regimes, but they rarely end the regime. Coups in military regimes are usually leadership changes, the analogue of votes of no confidence in parliamentary systems. Coups that bring a liberalizing military president to power often precede transitions in military regimes; such coups demonstrate that a shift in officer opinion has occurred, and that most officers prefer to return to the barracks.

In strong contrast to military officers, the leaders of personalist regimes generally hang onto power with tooth and claw. In Bratton and van de Walle’s words, “They resist political openings for as long as possible and seek to manage the process of transition only after it has been forced on them” (1997: 83). If they are forced, by foreign pressure for example, to negotiate with opponents, they renege at the first opportunity on the agreements made.[5] Military governments rarely renege on the agreements they make, not because they could not but because agreements are made when most officers want to return to the barracks.

Because personalist regimes often have to be forced from power, we should expect violence to occur more often during transitions from personalist rule. Violence and upheaval do not segue naturally into democratic elections, and consequently transitions from personalist rule should be more likely to result in renewed authoritarianism and less likely to result in democracy than transitions from other forms of authoritarianism. In contrast, transitions from military rule should be expected to lead most of the time to some form of competitive political system.

The cadre interests argument claims that in normal times the members of a ruling personalist clique have little reason to desert their leader or oppose the regime. We should expect to see elite desertions of the regime only if rents and opportunities can no longer be distributed to supporters or if the leader loses control over the security apparatus and armed forces, thus reducing the risk of plotting his overthrow. Loss of control or the ability to distribute benefits can happen for various reasons, but one obvious and usually insurmountable reason for loss of control is the death or physical incapacity of the leader. Dead and incapacitated leaders are replaced in all political systems, but the demise of the leader does not usually end other kinds of authoritarianism. Because control of the armed and security forces is usually concentrated in the dictator’s hands in personalistic regimes, however, his death or incapacity often reduces the risks of opposition. A testable implication of this argument is that the death of the leader is more likely to lead to regime breakdown in personalist than other types of authoritarian regimes.

According to the cadre interests argument, most of the military prefers to return to the barracks in some circumstances, and, even for most of those officers who would prefer to remain in government, the cost of resuming a more ordinary military career is low. The cost of loss of office is higher for cadres in a dominant party, but not, on average, devastating. Many prominent leaders of opposition parties in post-transition democratic regimes are former cadres of the dominant party. Although the cadres of a single-party regime cannot be expected to desert when times are good, if it looks as though the party’s hegemony will soon be ending, those cadres who think they possess the skills to make a success of democratic politics and whose ambitions are frustrated within the ruling party can be expected to form or join opposition parties. Even those who remain in the ruling party to the bitter end need not despair of life after democratization. Many previously dominant parties continue to function as effective political actors after democratization (cf. Van de Walle and Butler 1999). In fact, they have achieved executive office in the second free and fair election after democratization in a number of ex-communist and African countries. The members of personalist cliques, however, have fewer options. Joining the opposition prior to a transition can have very high costs, and many who desert the regime must go into exile in order to safeguard their lives and liberty. From exile, they may plot and organize, but few who remain at home are willing to risk public opposition. Those who stick with the regime to the bitter end are much less likely to find a respected place in the post-transition political world than are the close supporters of single-party and military regimes. For these reasons, the ends of personalist regimes are more likely to be violent in one way or another than are the ends of single-party or military regimes. Thus a testable implication of the cadre interests argument is that personalist regimes are more likely to end in the assassination of the leader, popular uprising, armed insurgency, civil war, revolution, or armed invasion than other forms of authoritarianism (Cf. Skocpol and Goodwin 1994).

Like members of personalist cliques, cadres of single-party regimes have few reasons to desert in normal circumstances. Furthermore, because power is less concentrated in single-party regimes, they are less vulnerable to the death or illness of leaders. Thus we should expect single-party regimes to last longer than either military or personalist regimes.

Because the dominant strategy of the ruling coalition in single-party regimes is to coopt potential opposition, single-party regimes tend to respond to crisis by granting modest increases in meaningful political participation, increasing opposition representation in the legislature, and granting some opposition demands for institutional changes. They attempt to give the opposition enough to deter them from risky plots and uprisings while continuing to hang on to power. In the most common kind of regime crisis, one caused by poor economic performance leading to anti-regime demonstrations, the ruling elite in any kind of authoritarian regime tends to divide into intransigents and moderates as they decide how to respond. In military regimes, that division itself tends to persuade many officers that the time has come for a return to the barracks. In personalist regimes, the ruling coalition narrows as the intransigents circle the wagons and exclude moderates from access to increasingly scarce spoils. Former regime moderates may then join the opposition (cf. Bratton and van de Walle 1997). Ruling parties, however, attempt to distract citizens from their economic grievances by granting them modest political rights. This strategy only works sometimes, but it works often enough to extend the average lifetime of single-party regimes.

Summary of the Hypotheses

Compared to other kinds of authoritarianism:

· Military regimes last less long.

· Military regimes are more quickly destabilized by poor economic performance.

· Military regimes are more likely to end in negotiation.

· Military regimes are more likely to be followed by competitive forms of government.

· Personalist regimes are more likely to end when the dictator dies.

· Personalist regimes are more likely to end in popular uprising, rebellion, armed insurgency, invasion, and other kinds of violence.

· Personalist regimes are more likely to be followed by new forms of authoritarianism.

· Single-party regimes last, on average, longer.

· Transitions from single-party rule are likely to be negotiated and non-violent.

Data, Classification, and “Measurement”

To test the hypotheses above, I have collected data on all authoritarian regimes (except monarchies) of three or more years duration that existed or came to power between 1946 and 1996, in countries existing prior to 1990 with a population of more than one million. Authoritarian regimes already in existence in 1946, such as those in the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Turkey, are included and their length of time in office is calculated from the time they actually took power. Countries that became independent after 1945 enter the data set at the time of independence (if authoritarian). Countries that have achieved independence since 1990 because of the break-up of the Soviet Union and other communist states have not been included because the inclusion of a fairly large number of countries with severely truncated regimes might have biased conclusions.[6]

Regimes are defined as sets of formal and informal rules and procedures for selecting national leaders and policies. Using this definition, periods of instability and temporary “moderating” military interventions (Stepan 1971) are considered interregna, not regimes. That is, they are periods of holding customary rules in temporary abeyance, struggle over rules, or transition from one set of rules to the next. The three-year threshold is simply a way of excluding such periods from the data set. This cut-off was chosen after considerable empirical investigation of very short-lived authoritarian interludes because it introduced the least misclassification into the data. The military governed during most of these interregna. If they were included in the data set, they would increase the strength of the findings I report below. The 1996 cut-off point for regime initiation follows from the three-year rule

Generally speaking, the classification of a regime as authoritarian is not controversial, but some issues arise in cross-regional work that would not in a study limited to a particular area. Those who specialize in the politics of different regions use different criteria for judging regime type. Most Latin Americanists still consider Mexico authoritarian even though it has regular, mostly fair elections now, and the ruling party lost its majority in the legislature in the last election. They consider it authoritarian because of its history of fraudulent elections and managed competition, because its control of the media and state resources give it advantages over opposition parties, and because they do not trust the long-ruling dominant party to abide by its recent commitment to political reform. In contrast, many Africanists consider countries such as Senegal and Botswana, in which the ruling party allows some competition and holds regular elections but has never come close to losing an election, democratic, Though few would currently call Malaysia democratic, until a couple of years ago most observers did. In general, the fewer fully competitive regimes in a region, the laxer region-specific criteria for classifying regimes as democratic. For this study, I needed to use the same criteria across regions, and I have chosen stringent ones. Dominant-party regimes were included in this data set if the dominant party had (1) never lost control of the executive, and (2) won at least two-thirds of the seats in the legislature in all elections prior to 1985. The rationale for this classification rule is that a party (or clique) that has concentrated this much power in its hands over the years can, like the current Malaysian government, very quickly and easily reinstate strict limits on opposition when threatened. Such a regime contains few institutionalized limitations on the power of rulers, even if the rulers have not previously felt the need for repressive measures and hence have not relied on them. The consequence of this rule is that a few cases that are sometimes considered democratic, notably Botswana, Senegal, Malaysia, and Taiwan, are classified as single-party regimes here. Excluding these countries from the data set would reduce the average life-span of single-party regimes by about a year.

The length of time an authoritarian regime lasts is not always obvious. The beginning is usually clear since they start either with an illegal seizure of power or with a change in rules by the ruling party, such as the banning of opposition parties, that in effect eliminates meaningful competition for the top national office, though opposition parties may be allowed minority representation. The ends of authoritarian regimes are sometimes more problematic. I counted an authoritarian regime as defunct if either the dictator and his supporters had been ousted from office or a negotiated transition resulted in reasonably fair, competitive elections and a change in the party or individual occupying executive office. Where ousters occurred, I used that date as the endpoint. Where elections occurred, I used the date of the election but did not include the case unless the winner of the election was allowed to take office. Elections did not have to be direct, but the body electing the executive had to be made up mainly of elected members. Cases in which elections deemed free and fair by outside observers have been held but have not led to a turnover in personnel are not treated as transitions because, until they actually step down, we do not know if long-ruling parties such as the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) or the Revolutionary Party of Tanzania (CCM) really will relinquish power if defeated.[7] The 1992 Angolan elections were deemed free and fair by outside observers, but few would now call Angola a democracy. Several of the countries in which long-ruling parties have won officially free and fair elections, however, probably have taken irreversable steps toward democracy, and most observers consider Taiwan, Ghana, and Tanzania democratic now. Since observers disagree about the classification of these “free and fair” countries, where possible I have done the data analysis classifying them first as continuing authoritarian regimes and then as having ended at the time of the “free and fair” election. These reclassifications make no substantive difference in the results.

Some of the most difficult classification decisions to make involved judgments about whether successive authoritarian governments should be considered one regime (defined as a set of formal and informal rules and procedures for choosing leaders and policies) or not. Authoritarian regimes often follow one another as, for example, the Sandinista regime followed the Somoza in Nicaragua. Data sets that simply identify regimes as authoritarian or democratic create the impression that authoritarian regimes are more stable and longer-lived than they really are because they fail to note that one has broken down and another taken its place. This problem may undermine the findings in a series of papers by Przeworski and co-authors on the relationship between regime type and growth (e.g., Przeworski and Limongi 1993). In putting together their data set, they simply coded each country as authoritarian or not in December of each year. If a country was coded authoritarian two years in a row, the regime was considered to have survived, regardless of whether one authoritarianism had been replaced by another or a democracy had been formed and then overthrown during the intervening year.

I relied on a number of decision rules to avoid this problem. Where a period of democracy intervened between two periods of authoritarianism, I counted the authoritarianisms as separate entities. Where one kind of regime succeeded another, as with Somoza-Sandinista, I counted them as separate. Some of these decisions were much more difficult than the Nicaraguan, however. In a number of cases, periods of collegial military rule were succeeded by one officer's consolidation of his personal power. These I classified as single regimes undergoing consolidation unless there was persuasive evidence that the support base of the regime had changed. Where a coup, especially if accompanied by a change in clan or tribal dominance or a substantial move down the military hierarchy (e.g., a coup by sargeants against a government led by the high command), led to the change in leadership, I counted it as a regime change. Where one individual who was already part of a governing junta overthrew another, I counted it as a single regime.

Regimes were classified as military, single-party, personalistic, or hybrids of these categories. Military regimes were defined as those governed by an officer or retired officer, with the support of the military establishment and some routine mechanism for high level officers to influence policy choice and appointments. Single-party regimes were defined as regimes in which the party has some influence over policy, controls most access to political power and government jobs, and has functioning local-level organizations. Regimes were considered personalist if the leader, who usually came to power as an officer in a military coup or as the leader of a single-party government, had consolidated control over policy and recruitment in his own hands, in the process marginalizing other officers' influence and/or reducing the influence and functions of the party. In the real world, many regimes have characteristics of more than one regime type. When regimes had important characteristics of more than one pure regime type, especially when the area specialist literature contained disagreements about the importance of military and party institutions, I put them in hybrid categories.

It is not uncommon for what we intuitively think of as a single regime to be transformed from one of my classifications to another. As noted above, the transition from military to personalist occurs frequently. I did not count these as regime changes since that would artificially reduce the length of regimes. I assigned such cases to the category in which they seemed to stabilize and remain longest.

In deciding whether a regime led by a single leader of a single party should be classified as personalist or single-party, I gave more weight to the party if: it existed prior to the leader's accession to power, especially if it organized the fight for independence, revolution, or some equivalent mass movement, rather than being formed by the leader after his accession; if the heir apparent or the successor to the first leader already held a high position in the party and was not a relative or member of the same tribe or clan as the leader; if the party had functioning local level organizations that did something important, such as distributing agricultural credit or organizing local elections; if the party either faced competition from other parties or held intra-party competitive elections for some offices; and if party membership was more-or-less required for government jobs. I gave the party less weight if: its membership seemed to be almost all urban (little or no grassroots organization); its politburo (or equivalent) served as a rubberstamp for the leader; all members of the politburo and assembly were in effect selected by the leader; its membership was dominated by one region, tribe, clan, or religion; the dictator's relatives occupied high offices.

Not all regimes headed by officers are in reality controlled by the military. It is common for military interventions to lead to the monopolization of power by a single officer and the marginalization of the rest of the officer corps. These are personalist dictatorships, even though the leader wears a uniform. To classify a regime led by an officer as either military or personal, I leaned toward military if: relationships within the junta or military council seemed relatively collegial; the ruler held the rank of general or its equivalent; the regime had some kind of institutions for deciding succession questions and for routinizing consultation between the leader and the rest of the officer corps; the military hierarchy remained intact; the security apparatus remained under military control rather than being taken over by the leader himself; succession in hierarchical order in the event of the leader's death; the officer corps included representatives of more than one ethnic, religious, or tribal group (in heterogeneous countries); the rule of law was maintained (perhaps after rewriting the laws). I treated the following as evidence of greater personalism: seizure of executive office by an officer who was not a retired or active duty general (or the air force or navy equivalent); disintegration of military hierarchy; dissolution of military councils and other military consultative institutions; the forced retirement or murder of officers within the leader's cohort or from tribes or clans other than the leader's; the murder or imprisonment of dissenting officers or of soldiers loyal to dissenting officers; the formation of a party led by the leader as an alternative base of support for himself; the holding of plebiscites to legitimize the leader's role.

Most of the time it was not difficult to distinguish between military and single-party regimes, though a few cases, especially in the Middle East are problematic. Probably the most difficult decisions in this data set involve the current Egyptian regime and post-1963 Syria. Egypt poses a problem because the regime that took power in 1952 has gone through a series of changes. In my judgment, it began as a military regime under Naguib and the Free Officers, but was transformed when Nasser consolidated his personal power beginning in 1954. Though the military continued to support the regime, Nasser, and Sadat to an even greater extent, increasingly marginalized it (Springborg 1985). Beginning under Nasser, efforts were made to create a single party, and the party achieved some real importance in the mid-sixties but was then undermined by Nasser (Waterbury 1983; Richards and Waterbury 1990). The Nasser period thus seems primarily personalist. Under Sadat, the party became more important, though the Sadat government also retained large personalist elements (Hinnebusch 1985). The dominant party has played a more important role as the regime has gone through a modest liberalization. Syria also presents a serious classification problem. Some experts refer to the whole period from 1963 to the present as a Ba'athist regime (Ben-Dor 1975; Perlmutter 1969; Richards and Waterbury 1990), while others emphasize the personal power of Hafez al-Asad (Hopwood 1988; Ma'oz 1986 and 1988; Rabinovich 1972). As in the Egyptian case, the military is an important supporter of the regime but seems to have been excluded from most decision making. The best way to deal with these difficult cases seemed to be to put them, along with the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the Stroessner in Paraguay, and the Ne Win in Burma (now Myanmar), into a doubly hybrid Personal/Military/Single-Party category.

The appendix lists all the regimes used in the data analysis and their regime classifications.

Findings

The expectation that military regimes, because they have more endogenous sources of fragility than other types of authoritarianism, survive on average less long is borne out by evidence. If we consider the lifespans of those regimes that had ended by summer 1999, military regimes have lasted on average 8.5 years.[8] Personalist regimes survived 15 years on average, and single-party regimes (excluding those maintained by foreign occupation or threat of intervention) nearly 24 years.[9] Table 1 shows the average lifespans of both the pure and hybrid regime types. If we include in the averages those regimes that continue to survive, the differences are even larger, with military regimes surviving on average about nine years, personalist 16.5 years, and single-party nearly 30 years. The average duration of military and personalist regimes is not much affected by whether surviving regimes are included because, as shown in column 3 of Table 1, the proportion of the total number of these types of regime still surviving is low. For single-party regimes, however, 50 percent still survive if stringent transition criteria are used to determine regime end points, and 33 percent if less stringent criteria are used. As can be seen in column 2 of Table 1, the average length of military regimes that had come to power by 1996 and remain in power now (summer 1999) is only about seven years. The average length of single-party regimes that currently remain in power is 35 years (33.5 if less stringent transition critieria are used).

Although these differences in the average length of different types of regime are quite large, we cannot be sure that they really reflect differences caused by regime type. Military regimes are more common in Latin America, where levels of economic development are relatively high, and personalist regimes are most common in Africa, where levels of economic development tend to be low. It might be that the stronger demand for democracy by citizens of more developed countries accounts for the shorter duration of military regimes. To test for this possibility, I have carried out statistical tests of the effect of regime type on the probability of regime breakdown, controlling for level of development, growth rate, and region.[10] Variables used to assess the possible effects of the length of time already in office have also been included since others have found a relationship between time in office and the probability of regime or government end. Region is used as a quasi-fixed effects estimator. Fixed effects estimators are used to hold constant aspects of history and culture that might affect the outcome of interest but that cannot be directly measured.[11] Results are shown in Table 2.

As can be seen in Table 2, military regimes break down more readily than other types. The coefficient for the military regime variable is positive, substantively large, and statistically significant. The regime category left out for the analysis here is the middle one in terms of expected longevity, personalist. Thus the coefficient for military regime should be interpreted as an estimate of how much more likely military regimes are to break down than personalist. The two intermediate regime types, military/personal and hybrid (in which single-party/personal regimes predominate since there are very few single-party/military regimes) are, not surprisingly, not very different from personalist regimes. Single-party regimes, however, are about as much more resilient than personalist regimes as military are less. Finally, the triple hybrid regimes that combine aspects of single-party, personalist, and military regime characteristics are the strongest of all.

The control variables used in the regression also show some interesting effects. As the level of development rises (measured by the natural log of GDP per capita), authoritarian regimes, like democratic, become more stable. This finding is consistent with that of Londregan and Poole (1990 and 1996), who found that the best predictor of coups, in both democratic and authoritarian regimes, was poverty. It raises some questions, however, about traditional demand-centered explanations for the relationship between increased development and democracy. This finding is not consistent with the idea that the citizens of more affluent countries are more likely to demand democratization. Rather, it suggests that when the authoritarian governments manage the economy well over the long term, regime allies remain loyal and citizens supportive or at least acquiescent. That interpretation is reinforced by the very strong negative effect of short-term economic growth on the probability of regime breakdown. In other words, both long- and short-term economic performance affect authoritarian regime stability.

In light of the arguments about the effects of religion, culture and colonial heritage on the development of democratic values, it is somewhat surprising that most of the region variables show little effect. The left out region here is southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, and Greece), and we might have expected the regions most culturally distinct from Europe to exhibit differences in the likelihood of regime transition. Interestingly, the only region with a large, almost statistically significant coefficient is the Middle East. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are more likely to fall, controlling for economic performance and regime type. This result may at first seem surprising, given the arguments by area specialists suggesting an elective affinity between Islam and authoritarianism. The finding does not imply, however, that democratization is likely. Rather, in the Middle East one authoritarianism has tended to follow another. The finding should be interpreted as suggesting that, given the relatively good economic performance of most Middle Eastern governments, they are surprisingly likely to fall.

The other two regions with substantively large coefficients approaching statistical significance are Eastern Europe and South America. Regimes in Eastern Europe, controlling for level of development, growth, and regime type, were unusually likely to survive. What this means is that regimes in countries experiencing the economic difficulties characteristic of Eastern Europe during the eighties would not, on average, have been expected to survive, but these did until the Soviet collapse. The data analysis excludes the countries in which regimes were maintained by the clear threat of Soviet invasion, but this coefficient should still probably be interpreted as an indicator of the effects of Soviet influence, since it is unlikely that regimes in Yugoslavia, Romania (and Albania) would have ended when they did in its absence.

Authoritarian regimes in South America are also more likely to break down, again even after controlling for regime type and economic performance. My interpretation for this finding, though it cannot be proven using these data, is that democratic values are quite widespread in South America. These values may sometimes be overwhelmed by fear of chaos or economic disaster, but they surface again when things calm down or the authoritarian government shows that it is no better at holding economic disaster at bay than the democratic government preceding it. The bourgeois allies of the South American bureaucratic-authoritarian governments of the sixties and seventies, for example, deserted them very rapidly when economic problems arose.

The time in office variables were included, first, because prior research suggested that time in office might predict breakdown,[12] and, second, because a logit model might not be appropriate if the data showed certain kinds of time trend. The squared and cubed terms are included in case the time trend is non-linear. The time trend suggested by Bienen and van de Walle (1991), for example, would have been confirmed in these data if the coefficient for Time in Office had been positive and significant and the coefficient for Time in Office Squared had been negative and significant. Instead, for the data set as a whole, none of the time trend variables demonstrated any effect.

To summarize the findings to this point, the hypotheses about the average duration of different types of regime have been confirmed by statistical analysis, holding constant the most obvious challenges to the apparent relationship. Growth was found to have the expected effect of reducing the probability of regime breakdown. Higher levels of development also reduced the likelihood of breakdown, suggesting the importance of both long- and short-term economic performance in maintaining the minimum levels of support and acquiescence needed by authoritarian regimes. No time trend was apparent.

The Effects of Economic Crisis on Regime Breakdown

The second hypothesis above is that military regimes break down more quickly in response to economic problems than do other types of authoritarianism. It receives some support from a comparison among the growth rates of different types of regime during the year prior to breakdown. The average growth rate per capita of military regimes during the year prior to the year in which they fall is .006 percent, not a high figure, but not indicative of crisis either. The average growth rate per capita of personalist regimes is -.003, worse than for military regimes, but still not indicative of economic disaster. For single-party regimes, however, the average growth rate per capita at the time of breakdown is -.042, an average indicative of serious economic crisis in many of the countries. Average growth rates for the year of breakdown itself show a similar pattern.

As with differences in lifespan, these differences in growth rate at the time of breakdown might be caused by something other than regime type. To test for this possibility, I have rerun the logistic regression described above within subsets of the data trichotomized by regime type.[13] The results are shown in Table 3 and Figure 4.

The first row of Table 3 shows the effect of growth rate on the probability of regime breakdown in military regimes, with level of development, region, and time in office held constant (though not shown in the table). The very large negative coefficient, statistically significant in a one-tailed test and close to conventional levels of significance two-tailed, shows that military regimes are much more likely to disintegrate when the economy is doing badly than when it is doing well. The coefficients for personalist and single-party regimes are also negative, confirming the standard view that poor economic performance never contributes to regime stability, but they are smaller than that for military regimes and neither reaches conventional statistical significance, though that for single-party regimes is close for a one-tailed test. These results suggest that poor economic performance by itself is less likely to make these regimes fall, and that other events often bring about their demise.

Figure 4 shows a graphic version of this result. To make this graph, level of GDP per capita wa