This typology of authoritarian regimes is based on a distinction between three modes of political power maintenance (probably the three most widely used throughout history): hereditary succession (lineage), corresponding to monarchies; the actual or threatened use of military force, corresponding to military regimes; and popular elections, designating electoral regimes. Among the latter we distinguish among no-party regimes (where all parties are prohibited), one-party regimes (where all but one party is prohibited), and limited multiparty regimes (where multiple parties are allowed but the system still does not pass as democratic); a subtype of these regimes where no parties are present, although not being prohibited, are coded as "partyless'' regimes. A subtype of military regimes are coded "rebel regimes'', where a rebel movement has taken power by military means. We also code hybrids (or amalgams) combining elements from more than one regime type, as well as several minor types of regimes: "theocracies'', "transitional'' regimes, "civil war'', foreign "occupation'', and a residual "other'' category. Using the mean of the Freedom House and Polity scales (fh_ipolity2), the line between democracies and autocracies is drawn at 7.5. This threshold value was chosen by estimating the mean cutoff point separating democracy from autocracy in five well-known categorical measures of democracy: those of Przeworski et al. (2000), Mainwaring et al. (2001), and Reich (2002), together with Freedom House's and Polity's own categorical thresholds for democracy.
Limited Multiparty
Partyless
No-Party
Military
Military No-Party
Military Multiparty
Military One-party
One-Party
Other
One-Party Monarchy
Monarchy
Rebel Regime
Civil War
Occupation
Theocracy
Transitional Regime
No-Party Monarchy
Multiparty Monarchy
Multiparty-Occupied
Democracy
Type of variable: Categorical
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