Ungrateful Successors: Why Do Authoritarian Leaders Turn On Their Predecessors?

• In Event: Political Succession and Elite Survival in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Managed succession of power has long been a common strategy of authoritarian regime survival. By hand-picking a trusted and loyal ally as a successor, an outgoing leader aims to maximize their wellbeing under the new administration. However, peaceful managed successions do not always turn out well for outgoing authoritarians. Once executive power changes hands, the fate of the predecessor lies at the mercy of the new leader. Indeed, we increasingly see cases where successors turn on their predecessors with outcomes ranging from being forced out of politics to wide-scale purges and imprisonment. What determines an authoritarian successor’s treatment of their friendly predecessor in the aftermath of a managed power succession? This paper proposes a theory of successor’s legitimacy to explain why authoritarian leaders sometimes turn on their predecessors. Dyads that have the predecessor staying politically active after a managed succession are more likely to see a shift in the successor’s treatment of their predecessor. While the two-tipped pyramid of authority presents a suboptimal, unstable arrangement that longs to be resolved, it is the successor’s legitimacy crisis that explains the incidence of the treatment shift, as well as the relative structural power at the time of contestation that explains the choice of new treatment. Exploring this theory in the context of post-Soviet presidential regimes, this paper examines five pathway cases of friendly managed successions with divergent outcomes for the outgoing leaders. It then assesses the empirical validity of the theory by analyzing an original global dataset of authoritarian power successions and the subsequent fate of corresponding predecessors.

Author

• Akbota Karibayeva, George Washington University