How do authoritarian regimes function and change?
WHEN DO DICTATORS GO IT ALONE?: PERSONALIZATION AND OVERSIGHT IN AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES
[ wITH CHRIS CAROTHERS & ANDREW LEBER ]
[ UNDER REVIEW ]
Why are some autocrats able to personalize power within their regimes while others are not? We find that often the crucial relationship is between the autocrat and retired leaders, party elders, and other elites of the outgoing generation. Authoritarian regimes are more likely to resist a personalist takeover when members of this “old guard” retain oversight capacity over their successor, restraining them from overturning norms of collective rule and maximizing individual power. We illustrate this argument with two case studies: China under President Xi Jinping and Vietnam under General Secretary Le Kha Phieu. In addition, we use an original dataset of authoritarian leadership transitions to demonstrate the generalizability of this relationship around the world, and to rule out potential confounders. This study introduces oversight capacity as a new concept that deepens our understanding of elite politics and inter-generational conflict in authoritarian regimes.
UNDERSTANDING MASS PURGES: TESTING HYPOTHESES IN THE HIGH STALINIST CASE
[ working paper ]
Mass purges are costly because they deprive the state of skilled and experienced personnel, yet purges have been characteristic features of some of the most durable authoritarian regimes. This paper uses an individual-level dataset of over 2.3 million political arrests made during Stalin’s “Great Terror” in 1937-38 to test two sets of questions. First: why were purges used to target some national minority groups, but not others? Second: drawing on an influential argument from the Soviet historiography (Fitzpatrick, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite”), was the timing of mass purges constrained by the supply of qualified replacement personnel?
The Democratizing Role of Undemocratic Institutions in 1830s Britain
[With Jared Abbott & Aytug Sasmaz]
[working paper]
Explaining Europe’s ‘gradual’ democratizations means answering the question: When do incumbent power-holders in autocracies choose to put their own influence at risk by extending the franchise to new voters? In this paper, our answer is that incumbents democratize when they anticipate sufficiently low costs of tolerating an expanded electorate. Based on a replication of work on the 1832 Reform Act in Britain by Aidt and Frank (2015), and using original data on political corruption in British electoral boroughs, we show that British conservatives were more willing to extend the franchise when their risk of losing office was cushioned by vote-buying networks that would survive these democratizing reforms.