Dominant parties are known to extend the longevity of authoritarian rule. If this is so, why do leaders and elites in many non-democratic regimes refrain from investing in dominant parties? This paper examines why dominant parties emerge in some non-democracies, but not in others. Where existing...

Do local elections under autocracy help the poor? We argue that local appointees in electoral authoritarian regimes have political incentives that undermine public service provision; regime leaders' preoccupation with national electoral control encourages them to overlook local governance...

Does decentralization affect how voters attribute blame for poor economic performance? The question of whether political centralization ties regime leaders to local economic outcomes is particularly important in authoritarian regimes, where economic performance legitimacy is a key source of...

Scholars have identified many ways that politicians use carrots, such as vote buying, to mobilize voters, but have paid far less attention to how they use sticks, such as voter intimidation. We develop a simple argument which suggests that voter intimidation should be especially likely where...

Vladimir Putin has managed to achieve strikingly high public approval ratings throughout his time as president and prime minister of Russia. But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters? We conducted a series of list experiments in early 2015 to estimate support for Putin...

A central claim of the new literature on authoritarianism is that legislatures extend the lifespan of authoritarian regimes. However, there are a wide range of possible mechanisms that might underpin this relationship. In this paper, we contribute both to the theory and the empirics of...

Elite cohesion is one of the fundamental pillars of authoritarian regime stability. Defections from the ruling coalition can signal regime weakness, embolden the opposition, and, sometimes, lead to regime collapse. Using a unique dataset on 4,313 regional legislative candidates from Russia's...

Available evidence indicates that there is considerable variation among autocracies in the extent to which subnational officials are rewarded for economic growth. Why is economic performance used as a criterion for appointment in some autocracies but not in others? We argue that in more...

There is a large literature on the causes of clientelism, but fewer studies examine its effectiveness. We argue that the effectiveness of clientelism depends on 1) the identity of the broker who mediates clientelist exchange and 2) the type of inducement that is used. Using framing experiments...

Political and economic outcomes depend, in part, on the quality of the officials making policy. Many scholars argue that the free and fair elections are the best method for selecting competent officials. Others, however, argue that elections can lead to the selection of amateurs, demagogues, and...