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Corruption and Different Types of Authoritarian Regime Change

Thu, August 30, 11:00 to 11:30am, Hynes, Hall A

Abstract

How corruption influences regime legitimacy and stability has been discussed in both democratic and authoritarian countries. This research examines corruption’s impact on three most common causes of authoritarian regime failure, namely coup, losing an election, and popular uprising. This study challenges the conventional wisdom that corruption strengthens the autocratic equilibrium and stabilizes authoritarian regimes. It argues that corruption has different effects on various types of regime failure under different conditions. It threatens authoritarian stability through citizens’ dissatisfaction and a lack of legitimation. The explanatory power of corruption in regime failures caused by coup is thus very limited. However, since authoritarian regimes with support parties or with leaders who have military experience have higher ability to manipulate elections, and create a higher cost of popular uprisings, corruption play different roles under these conditions. Using VDem data and autocratic regime features data, this research looks into all authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010. Results show that the level of corruption does not have a significant influence on authoritarian regime failures caused by a coup. In contrast, a higher corruption level is correlated with a higher possibility of regime failure caused by election and popular uprising. However, if an authoritarian regime has a support party, or has a leader with military experience, a high level of corruption is associated with a lower possibility to lose the election. These findings provide a new insight into corruption in authoritarian regimes. They also highlight the necessity and importance to discuss different types of regime failure separately.

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