Institutions Under Authoritarianism and Coup Attempts: 1950-2008

Why do autocrats allow legislatures, parties and elections? These nominally democratic in- stitutions are thought to be fundamental pillars of democracies, yet they have been common features of authoritarian regimes in the post-World War II period. I argue that autocrats use these institutions to deter the threat of being overthrown by regime elites. More specifically, they contribute to co-optation of potential rivals by sharing power and spoils, gather informa- tion about the opposition and credibly reinforce the perception of the ruling clique’s right to continued rule. Several recent studies have illustrated a relationship between institutions un- der authoritarianism and the longevity of authoritarian rule. However, although most scholars concede that regime elites are both the most pervasive threat to authoritarian rulers and the targets of co-optation strategies, studies of institutions under authoritarianism overwhelmingly focus on the diverse category of regime breakdowns. In order to account for this drawback of previous research, I turn my attention to coup attempts, a threat to incumbents that in most cases involves regime elites, and thus more precisely captures the core argument. In accordance with previous research addressing regime longevity, I find that autocrats ruling with nominally democratic institutions are less likely to be subjected to both coup attempts and successful coups. The findings provide evidence for the proposed theoretical relationship in which authoritarian leaders credibly share their power with potential rivals in a legislature, a regime support party and display strength through elections. However, I find no evidence that institutional differences between autocracies with some variant of nominally democratic institutions in place differ in their propensity to be subjected to a coup attempt. In sum, the results strengthen the claim that nominally democratic institutions under au- thoritarianism are effective tools for co-optation and deterrence of regime elites. It is clear that the institutional characteristics of autocracies matter for the propensity to be subjected to a coup attempt, and should therefore be further scrutinized, especially whether differences in in- stitutional design matters. Moreover, the approach of this thesis underlines that disaggregating regime breakdown and concentrating on more homogenous events such as coup attempts is a fruitful endeavor in order to more accurately test complex theories

Cues To Coup Plotters: Elections as Coup Triggers in Dictatorships

A large proportion of coup attempts in autocracies occur in the aftermath of elections, yet little systematic research exists on the topic. Drawing on recent literature on elections in autocracies, we present an argument to explain postelection coups. While we recognize that electoral institutions have the potential to stabilize autocracies, we illustrate that the election event can spark instability when incumbents reveal electoral weakness. Electoral outcomes—in the form of vote shares and opposition reactions—are signals containing information about the strength of the opposition, and indirectly about the likelihood of a successful full-scale revolution that would compromise the privileged positions of regime elites. In these situations, coups are likely to be initiated to avoid a revolution, either by serving as concessions to the opposition or by facilitating increased repression. We perform a large-N study that supports our argument, significantly nuancing the claim that elections stabilize autocracies

Empowering Activists or Autocrats? : The Internet in Authoritarian Regimes

The reported role of social media in recent popular uprisings against Arab autocrats has fueled the notion of ‘liberation technology’, namely that information and communication technology (ICT) facilitates organization of antigovernment movements in autocracies. Less optimistic observers, on the other hand, contend that ICT is a tool of repression in the hands of autocrats, imposing further restrictions on political and social liberties. We investigate whether the liberation- or the repression-technology perspective can better explain empirically observed patterns. To this end, we analyze two outcomes. First, we look at which autocracies are more likely to adopt and expand the Internet. In line with the repression technology expectation, we find that regimes aiming to prevent any independent public sphere are more likely to introduce the Internet. Second, we study the effects of the Internet on changes towards democracy. This analysis reveals no effect of the Internet on political institutions. These findings provide moderate support for the ‘repression technology’ perspective, and suggest that the Internet has not – at least in its first two decades of existence – contributed to a global shift towards democracy

Making Uncertainty Explicit: Separating Reports and Events in the Coding of Violence and Contention

When coding events from media sources – as the majority of data projects do – different reports may oftentimes contain contradictory information. What do coders make of this? It is up to them to aggregate different reports into one coded event, and to supplement missing information based on other sources or their own background information. If not addressed properly, this may lead to a lack of replicability and to low reliability of the final data product. In this short article, we present an approach for separating (i) event reports and the information contained in them, and (ii) events, which are based on aggregate information from the reports and constitute the final data product. Our procedure preserves uncertainty arising from multiple reports and gives the user control over how missing and conflicting information should be dealt with. We illustrate our procedure with data from a current coding project, the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database (MMAD)

From bad to worse? : How protest can foster armed conflict in autocracies

Many protest movements have brought down dictatorships and paved the way for democracy. However, protests can also foster large-scale violence at the level of civil war. How can we explain the development from protest to armed conflict? In this paper, we use geographically fine-grained data to examine how collective mobilization leads to civil war violence at the local level. We argue that two mechanisms can explain this. First, in a protest escalation dynamic, confrontations between protesters and state security forces increase the willingness of protesters to ramp up the use of force. Second, in a protest capture mechanism, protests attract attention and resources from the state, thereby providing other local non-state actors with the opportunity to use violence. We test our theoretical expectations in a spatial analysis of protests and armed conflict in autocracies from 2003 to 2014. Our results show that protests increase the risk of local armed conflict when violently repressed. Further analysis reveals that the second mechanism, protest capture, accounts for the majority of escalations to armed conflict we see in our data

A review and comparison of conflict early warning systems

We review and compare conflict early warning systems on three dimensions: transparency and accessibility, key parameters, and forecasts. The review reveals a need for improved transparency and accessibility of data and code, considerable variation in key parameters across systems, and significant overlaps in countries with the highest risk. We propose that developing standards and platforms that promote transparency, accessibility, and inter-system cooperation can improve knowledge proliferation and system development to mitigate and prevent political violence

Introducing the MMAD Repressive Actors Dataset

We present the MMAD Repressive Actors Dataset (MMAD-RA). The MMAD-RA is a new data source that provides systematic information on the repressive actors present at protest events in autocracies, including their type, tactics, and level of violence. The data is temporally and geographically fine-grained, allowing for analysis between and within more than 60 countries from 2003 to 2012. The MMAD-RA enables analysis of the variation in repressive actors deployed to protests and their behavior, as well as how these actors impact protest dynamics and outcomes across political and socio-economic contexts. We believe the data will be a valuable resource for pushing forward research on how repressive actors engage with mass protests

The determinants of democracy : a sensitivity analysis

Numerous studies—operating with diverse model specifications, samples and empirical measures—suggest different economic, social, cultural, demographic, institutional and international determinants of democracy. We distinguish between democratization and democratic survival and test the sensitivities of 67 proposed determinants by varying the control variable set, democracy measure, and sample time period. Furthermore, we go beyond existing sensitivity analyses and unpack the aggregate results by analyzing how theoretically motivated control variables affect sensitivity for two prominent determinants in the democracy literature: income and Islam. Overall, our results reveal a far larger number of robust determinants of democratization than of democratic survival. For democratic survival, the only robust factors are income and a law-abiding bureaucracy. In addition, our results highlight uncertainty surrounding the relationship between income and democratization, but show that broader development processes enhance the chances of democratization. Moreover, chances of democratization are lower in countries with large Muslim populations, but that relationship is sensitive to controlling for natural resources, education and neighborhood characteristics. Other results of the sensitivity analysis show that political protests, a democratic neighborhood, and the global proportion of democracies positively influence democratization, while natural resources, majoritarian systems, and long-tenured leaders make countries less likely to democratize