When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces them, and the regime persists. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. The dataset facilitates the investigation of all three kinds of transition. The data identify how regimes exit power, how much violence occurs during transitions, and whether the regimes that precede and succeed them are autocratic. The data identify autocratic regime breakdowns regardless of whether the country democratizes, which makes possible the investigation of why the ouster of dictators sometimes leads to democracy but often does not, and many other questions.
Data to identify and analyze autocracy-to-autocracy transitions. Version 1.2.
When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens: 1. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. 2. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. 3. the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group, replacing it with a new autocracy. Much scholarship exists on the first kind of transition, but little on transitions from one autocracy to another, though they make up about half of all regime changes.
This dataset facilitates the investigation of all three kinds of transition. It provides transition information for the 280 autocratic regimes in existence from 1946 to 2010. The data identify how regimes exit power, how much violence occurs during transitions, and whether the regimes that precede and succeed them are autocratic.