Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-17T12:01:01.898Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2014

Barbara Geddes ,
Joseph Wright  and
Erica Frantz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. Much scholarship exists on the first kind of transition, but little on transitions from one autocracy to another, though they make up about half of all regime changes. We introduce a new data set that facilitates the investigation of all three kinds of transition. It provides transition information for the 280 autocratic regimes in existence from 1946 to 2010. The data identify how regimes exit power, how much violence occurs during transitions, and whether the regimes that precede and succeed them are autocratic. We explain the data set and show how it differs from currently available data. The new data identify autocratic regime breakdowns regardless of whether the country democratizes, which makes possible the investigation of why the ouster of dictators sometimes leads to democracy but often does not, and many other questions. We present a number of examples to highlight how the new data can be used to explore questions about why dictators start wars and why autocratic breakdown sometimes results in the establishment of a new autocratic regime rather than democratization. We discuss the implications of these findings for the Arab Spring.

Type
Articles
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 313 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brownlee, Jason. 2009. “Portents of Pluralism: How Hybrid Regimes Affect Democratic Transitions.” American Journal of Political Science 53(3): 515–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Smith, Alastair. 2009. “Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change.” Comparative Political Studies 42(2): 167–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Smith, Alastair. 2010. “Leader Survival, Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance.” American Journal of Political Science 54(4): 936–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Smith, Alastair, Siverson, Randolph, and Morrow, James. 2003. The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cheibub, José Antonio, Gandhi, Jennifer, and Vreeland, James Raymond. 2010a. “Democracy and Dictatorship Data Set.” https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/cheibub/www/DDpage.html.Google Scholar
Cheibub, José Antonio, Gandhi, Jennifer, and Vreeland, James Raymond. 2010b. “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited.” Public Choice 143(1-2): 67–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chenoweth, Erica, and Stephan, Maria J.. 2008. “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” International Security 33(1): 7–44.Google Scholar
Chiozza, Giacomo, and Goemans, Hein. 2011. Leaders and International Conflict. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary. 2010. “Authoritarian Elections and Leadership Succession, 1975–2000.” Manuscript, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Debs, Alexandre. 2011. “Living by the Sword and Dying by the Sword? Leadership Transitions In and Out of Dictatorships.” Manuscript, Yale University.Google Scholar
Debs, Alexandre, and Goemans, Hein. 2010. “Regime Type, the Fate of Leaders and War.” American Political Science Review 104(3): 430–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escribà-Folch, Abel. 2013. “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival under Autocracy.” International Political Science Review 34(5): 543–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frantz, Erica, and Ezrow, Natasha. 2011. The Politics of Dictatorship: Institutions and Outcomes in Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, Barbara. 1999. “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2: 115–44.Google Scholar
Geddes, Barbara. 2003. Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, Barbara, Wright, Joseph G. and Frantz, Erica. 2012. “Authoritarian Regimes Data Set.” (http://dictators.la.psu.edu).Google Scholar
Gleditsch, Kristian, and Choung, Jinhee. 2004. “Autocratic Transitions and Democratization.” Presented at the 45th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada March 17–20.Google Scholar
Goemans, Hein. 2000. “Fighting for Survival: The Fate of Leaders and the Duration of War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44(5): 555–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goemans, Hein, Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, and Chiozza, Giacomo. 2009. “Introducing Archigos: A Dataset of Political Leaders.” Journal of Peace Research 46(2): 269–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadenius, Axel, and Teorell, Jan. 2007. “Pathways from Authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy 18(1): 143–56.Google Scholar
Hadenius, Axel, Teorell, Jan, and Wahman, Michael. 2012. “Authoritarian Regimes Data Set.” version 5.0. http://www.svet.lu.se/ARD/autoregimecodebook5.pdf.Google Scholar
Haggard, Stephan, and Kaufman, Robert R.. 2012. “Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule.” American Political Science Review 106(3): 495–516.Google Scholar
Haggard, Stephan, Kaufman, Robert R., and Teo, Terence. 2012. “Distributive Conflict and Regime Change: A Qualitative Dataset.” http://hdl.handle.net/1902/18276, version 1.Google Scholar
Janowitz, Morris. 1977. Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing Nations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levitsky, Steven, and Way, Lucan. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Menaldo, Victor. 2012. “The Middle East and North Africa’s Resilient Monarchs.” Journal of Politics 74(3): 707–22.Google Scholar
Nordlinger, Eric. 1977. Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley, CA: Institute for International Studies.Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe, and Whitehead, Laurence, eds. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 4 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, Jeffrey, and Peceny, Mark. 2006. “Forging Democracy at Gunpoint.” International Studies Quarterly 50(3): 539–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polity IV. 2010. “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010.” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael, Antonio Cheibub, Jose, and Limongi, Fernando. 2000. Democracy and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quiroz Flores, Alejandro. 2012. “A Competing Risks Model of War Termination and Leader Change.” International Studies Quarterly 56(4): 809–19.Google Scholar
Remmer, Karen. 1991. Military Rule in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Roeder, Philip G. 1993. Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Roller, Edeltraud. 2013. “Comparing the Performance of Autocracies: Issues in Measuring Types of Autocratic Regimes and Performance.” Contemporary Politics 19(1): 35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schedler, Andreas. 2012. “Judgment and Measurement in Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 10(1): 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharma, Gopal, and Chalmers, John. 2012. “Feuding Politicians Take Nepal to the Brink of Ruin.” Reuters (November 11). (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/11/us-nepal-politics-idUSBRE8AA0GH20121111), accessed May 11, 2013.Google Scholar
Shirk, Susan. 1993. The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Benjamin. 2004. “Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World: 1960–1999.” American Journal of Political Science 48(2): 232–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stepan, Alfred. 1971. The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Svolik, Milan. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulfelder, Jay. 2005. “Contentious Collective Action and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes.” International Political Science Review 26(3): 311–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahman, Michael, Teorell, Jan, and Hadenius, Axel. 2013. “Authoritarian Regime Types Revisited: Updated Data in Comparative Perspective.” Contemporary Politics 19(1): 19–34.Google Scholar
Way, Lucan. 2011. “The Lessons of 1989.” Journal of Democracy 22(4): 17–27.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jessica L. 2012. “Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict.” American Political Science Review 106(2): 326–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weyland, Kurt. 2013. “The Arab Spring: Why the Surprising Similarities with the Revolutionary Wave of 1848?” Perspectives on Politics 10(4): 917–34.Google Scholar
Wilson, Matthew Charles. n.d. “A Discreet Critique of Discrete Regime Type Data.” Comparative Political Studies doi: 10.1177/0010414013488546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Joseph G. 2008. “Do Authoritarian Political Institutions Constrain? How Legislatures Affect Economic Growth and Investment.” American Journal of Political Science 52(2): 322–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Joseph G., and Escribà-Folch, Abel. 2012. “Authoritarian Institutions and Regime Survival: Transitions to Democracy and Subsequent Authoritarian Regimes.” British Journal of Political Science 42(2): 283–309.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Geddes supplementary material

Geddes supplementary material

Download Geddes supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 760.9 KB