What are the most important sources of institutional variation among authoritarian regimes, and how do such institutions influence these dictatorships’ propensity to initiate military disputes? This article argues that most existing studies in both comparative politics and international relations employ a flawed conceptualization of authoritarian institutions. Excessive focus on the personaliza...

Does military rule make a state more belligerent internationally? Several studies have recently established that military autocracies are more likely than civilian autocracies to deploy and use military force in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. I argue that military regimes are more likely to resort to military force because they are located in more hostile security environments, and not b...

This article describes the main components of military potential, including: number army personnel; weaponry and combat vehicles; morale military; quality command staff; organization, discipline internal cohesion army; degree development science doctrine; training troops; population preparation for defense country. Based on these components, we can assess potential some separatist regimes, whic...

This paper enquires into whether economic sanctions are effective in destabilizing authoritarian rulers. We argue that this effect is mediated by the type of authoritarian regime against which sanctions are imposed. Thus, personalist regimes and monarchies, which are more dependent on aid and resource rents to maintain their patronage networks, are more likely to be affected by sanctions. In co...

1 How the Military Shapes Dictatorships 1 Barbara Geddes UCLA All governments depend for their survival on the cooperation of the military. Although democratic regimes in industrialized countries have developed formulas for insulating most aspects of government from military influence, finding ways to insure the support of the armed forces has challenged both democratic and authoritarian govern...

Objectives. We seek to investigate the determinants of corruption in authoritarian polities. We hypothesize that corruption in nondemocratic settings will be greater where the ruling group is personalistic rather than a political party or a military clique and that it will be greater where rulers expect to remain in power longer. We construct a new operationalization of the selectorate theory a...

Contemporary historians usually attribute the East India Company’s military success in India to its military strength. In contrast, we argue that, on its own, military strength was a mixed blessing: it could have led to the formation of coalitions against the Company. This did not happen because the Company’s commitments to Indian regimes were more credible than their commitments to each other....

This paper attempts an analysis of the popular mobilizations in Chile from the perspective of the problem of transition from a military regime to democracy. It begins with some general reflections on the role of social mobilizations under military regimes, distinguishing among various regime phases and types of mobilizations, and goes on to outline changing state/societal relations in Chile in ...