Measuring autocratic regime stability

Abstract

Researchers measure regime stability in autocratic contexts using a variety of data sources that capture distinct concepts. Often this research uses concepts developed for the study of democratic politics, such as leadership change or institutionalized authority, to construct measures of regime breakdown in non-democratic contexts. This article assesses whether the measure a researcher chooses influences the results they obtain by examining data on executive leadership, political authority, and autocratic regimes. We illustrate the conceptual differences between these variables by extending recent studies in the literature on the political consequences of non-tax revenue and unearned foreign income.

A certain gamble: Institutional change, leader turnover, and their effect on rivalry termination

“…Regime change, however, significantly increases the hazard of rivalry termination. As noted by Wright and Bak (2016), the Polity IV durable variable fails to capture a number of major changes to institutions governing leader selection and policy formation (p. 2). These uncounted institutional changes remain as an excluded variable in previous analyses and bias findings through their correlation with leadership and SOLS change.…”

“…16 Operationalization Leader, preference, and institutional change Previous analyses of rivalry termination (Rooney, 2018;Bennett, 1997) rely on the use of the Polity IV durable variable (Marshall et al 2009) to measure regime change. Wright and Bak (2016) demonstrate that this is an inappropriate measure of the concept that both ignores many instances of regime change and also over-counts cases by concluding that regime change occurred in cases where no significant change to the exercise of power or leader selection took place. This is a key component of the difference between the empirical analysis presented here and those presented by Rooney and Bennet.…”

“…19 Because Polity seems to focus heavily on formal institutions, measures of regime change based in Polity include a large number of false-positives where regime change is coded despite underlying consistency in leader selection and policy formation. Wright and Bak (2016) point out an important example in the case of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, who legalized opposition parties in 1992, triggering a regime change according to the Polity definition.…”

Autocratic time horizons and the growth effect of foreign direct investment

“… 15 In addition, regime instability is not conceptually equivalent to leadership instability. For example, the theoretical and empirical differences between these two concepts are extensively discussed in Wright and Bak (2016). …”

Autocratic political cycle and international conflict

“… 10. For an extensive discussion about measures of autocratic (in)stability, see Wright and Bak (forthcoming). …”