CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,611Political Conflict and GovernancePolitical Theory and DemocracyInternational Relations and Foreign Policy

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 308 of the 308 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Politics of Authoritarian Rule

Svolik, Milan W.·2012·Cambridge University Press eBooks
DOI 10.1017/cbo9781139176040
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

What drives politics in dictatorships? Milan W. Svolik argues authoritarian regimes must resolve two fundamental conflicts. Dictators face threats from the masses over which they rule - the problem of authoritarian control. Secondly from the elites with whom dictators rule - the problem of authoritarian power-sharing. Using the tools of game theory, Svolik explains why some dictators establish personal autocracy and stay in power for decades; why elsewhere leadership changes are regular and institutionalized, as in contemporary China; why some dictatorships are ruled by soldiers, as Uganda was under Idi Amin; why many authoritarian regimes, such as PRI-era Mexico, maintain regime-sanctioned political parties; and why a country's authoritarian past casts a long shadow over its prospects for democracy, as the unfolding events of the Arab Spring reveal. Svolik complements these and other historical case studies with the statistical analysis on institutions, leaders and ruling coalitions across dictatorships from 1946 to 2008.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/cbo9781139176040

Cites

308 of 308 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 2,611

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Svolik, M. W.
Affiliations
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
Corresponding author
Svolik, Milan W.
ORCID
Svolik, Milan W.
Venue
Cambridge University Press eBooks
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published
2012-09-17
DOI
10.1017/cbo9781139176040
OpenAlex
W296931085
Cited by
2,611
References
308
Citations by year
2026: 184 · 2025: 266 · 2024: 195 · 2023: 233 · 2022: 264 · 2021: 184 · 2020: 324 · 2019: 259 · 2018: 226 · 2017: 140 · 2016: 123 · 2015: 99 · 2014: 68 · 2013: 31 · 2012: 9
FWCI
71.77
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 49 d)
Locations
Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › International Relations and Foreign Policy
Keywords
authoritarian regimes, dictatorship, authoritarian control, regime change, military dictatorship, democratic transition, Arab Spring, ruling coalition, political institutions, elite politics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review