Personalizing Power in Autocracies

• In Event: Leader-Elite Power Dynamics in Dictatorships

Abstract

Why do some dictators successfully consolidate power at the expense of regime elites, while others do not? By focusing on dictators’ actions to purge rival elites from the regime to accumulate their power, I argue that whether the targets of purges are military officers or civilian elites has a crucial impact on the subsequent leader-elite power balance. In particular, I claim that eliminating individuals who have access to the use of armed forces, not civilian elites in the cabinet or ruling parties, would be the key for leaders to consolidate power. Whether a dictator can weaken civilian elites crucially depends on whether the dictator has already purged strong rival military officers, and thus the possibility of countercoups is low. Further, eliminating civilian elites shapes the subsequent leader-elite power-balance only when leaders already have weakened their militaries sufficiently enough. I test this argument using novel cross-national data on elite purges covering 118 authoritarian countries between 1980 and 2010. Using comprehensive human-coded data on dictators' actions to purge of military officers and civilian elites, this paper provides the first systematic analyses of the dynamics of elite purges and consolidation of power in dictatorships.

Author

• Jun Koga Sudduth, University of Strathclyde