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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 personalization or institutionalization of authoritarian regimes' decision-making procedures has distracted attention from the more critical issue of what institutions these regimes deploy to enhance social control and secure political incumbency. Since military regimes are systematically less effective than single-party regimes at developing these types of authoritarian institutions, they more frequently resort to desperate measures to fend off domestic challenges to their power. In particular, we find compelling empirical support for our hypothesis that military regimes are more likely than single-party regimes to initiate military disputes, irrespective of whether those regimes are highly personalized or not. S tates fight wars, but governments in power make the fateful decision whether or not to start them. Warfare thus results not merely from what students of international relations have tended to see as the benchmark interest of states: maximizing relative gains in a Hobbesian world (i.e., Waltz 1979). It also arises from what students of comparative politics typically argue is the benchmark interest of government officials: staying in power (i.e., Bates 1981). Since prospects for retaining power are influenced by domestic political institutions, we expect such institutions to exhibit a powerful effect on the conflict propensity of different types of governments.Unfortunately, we still know much too little about how or even which institutions make governments more or less likely to initiate military disputes. This problem is particularly acute in our study of authoritarian regimes. There is considerable scholarly consensus that dictatorships are more likely than democracies to instigate wars; but why are some dictatorships more belligerent than others? Like many students of the democratic peace, we argue that variation in international aggression arises from variation in domestic political institutions. But 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?We address these questions by applying a novel institutional typology of authoritarian regimes to the question of militarized dispute initiation (Slater 2003). We argue that authoritarian institutions influence conflict propensity through their effect on regime legitimacy and government tenure. The less legitimate the regime and the less secure the government in power, the more likely the political leadership will be to initiate military conflict.We argue further that the critical institutional factor influencing an authoritarian regime...

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Do controlled comparisons still have a place in comparative politics? Long criticized by quantitatively oriented methodologists, this canonical approach has increasingly been critiqued by qualitative methodologists who recommend greater focus on within-case analysis and the confinement of causal explanations to particular cases. Such advice accords with a welcome shift from a combative “tale of two cultures” toward mutual respect for research combining qualitative and quantitative methods in the simultaneous pursuit of internal and external validity. This article argues that controlled comparisons remain indispensable amid this “multimethod turn,” explicating how they too can generate both internal and external validity when their practitioners (a) craft arguments with general variables or mechanisms, (b) seek out representative variation, and (c) select cases that maximize control over alternative explanations. When controlled comparisons meet these standards, they continue to illuminate the world’s great convergences and divergences across nation-states in a manner that no other methods can surpass.