Comparing autocracies in the early Twenty-first Century

Download or read book Comparing autocracies in the early Twenty-first Century written by Aurel Croissant and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritarianism research has evolved into one of the fastest growing research fields in comparative politics. The newly awakened interest in autocratic regimes goes hand in hand with a lack of systematic research on the results of the political and substantive policy performance of variants of autocratic regimes. The contributions in this second volume of Comparing Autocracies are united by the assumption that the performance of political regimes and their persistence are related. Furthermore, autocratic institutions and the specific configurations of elite actors within authoritarian regime coalitions induce dictators to undertake certain policies, and that different authoritarian institutions are therefore an important piece of the puzzle of government performance in dictatorships. Based on these two prepositions, the contributions explore the differences between autocracies and democracies, as well as between different forms of non-democratic regimes, in regard to their outcome performance in selected policy fields; how political institutions affect autocratic performance and persistence; whether policy performance matter for the persistence of authoritarian rule; and what happens to dictators once autocratic regimes fall. This book is an amalgam of articles from the journals Democratization, Contemporary Politics and Politische Vierteljahresschrift.