When Dictators Die
The world’s dictators are aging — but democrats shouldn’t be too quick to
rejoice.
There are 55 authoritarian leaders in
power throughout the world. Eleven of these leaders are 69 years old or older,
and they are in varying stages of declining health. Most of these aging
dictators, such as Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos (73 years old),
Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev (75 years old), and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe
(91 years old), have been in power for decades. At first blush this paints a
hopeful picture for democracy watchers, who have recently documented a slow but steady authoritarian
resurgence. Surely the fact that 20 percent of the world’s autocracies face the
specter of succession provides an opportunity for new democracies to emerge —
or does it?
Alternatively, perhaps the number of aging and ailing dictators is a
cause for concern. Some fear that the deaths
of these longtime leaders will spark intense political infighting or public
unrest that could plunge their countries into chaos. The fact that most of this
aging cohort, such as Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika,
Cameroon’s Paul Biya, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, has yet to identify a
political successor seems to add credibility to these concerns.
Both
perspectives seem plausible — but our research shows that there is little merit
to either of them. In our review of the 79 dictators who have died in office
from 1946 to 2014, we find that the death of a dictator almost never ushers in
democracy. Nor does it typically bring down the regime. Instead, in the vast
majority (92 percent) of cases, the regime persists after the autocrat’s death.
The deaths of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2013, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia in
2012, and Kim Jong Il in North Korea in 2011 illustrate this trend. Compared
with other forms of leadership turnover in autocracies — such as coups,
elections, or term limits — which lead to regime collapse about half of the
time, the death of a dictator is remarkably inconsequential.
Not only is it exceedingly rare for an autocrat’s death in office to
result in democracy, but it also does not improve a country’s longer-term
prospects for liberalization. Leaders who come to power following the death of
an autocrat and who seek to deviate from the status quo are likely to provoke
resistance from the “old guard” — elements of the regime who maintain control
over the levers of power and find it in their interest to limit changes in the
new system.
It is often forgotten today that the brutal Syrian
dictator, Bashar al-Assad, came to power after his father’s death in 2000 with
hopes of liberalizing his country.
It is often forgotten today that the brutal Syrian
dictator, Bashar al-Assad, came to power after his father’s death in 2000 with
hopes of liberalizing his country. Soon after inheriting power, he began a series of political reforms, including efforts to
increase press freedoms, release political prisoners, and expand Internet use.
But President Assad’s ability to change the system was limited by influential
figures from his father’s regime who exerted their political power and
influence to block policy changes and inhibit their implementation.
We also find
that coups and public revolts are rare following a dictator’s death. During the
year of a leader’s death in office, coups have occurred in only 6 percent of
cases, compared with 32 percent when autocrats have left power via other means.
Similarly, mass public protests are far less likely to break out following a
dictator’s death than after other forms of authoritarian leader exit. This
pattern persists even when we adjust our time frame and look at the five-year
period following a leadership transition.
In some cases, such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, the
resilience of authoritarian regimes following the deaths of their leaders
reflects the durability of monarchies, where highly institutionalized
succession processes ensure stability across generations. In other cases, a
regime’s resilience is driven by the ability of fathers to position their sons as
heirs, such as in Syria (2000), Azerbaijan (2003), and Togo (2005). But
countries with less formal or obvious mechanisms for succession, such as
Venezuela in 2013, Zambia in 2008, or Turkmenistan in 2006, have also endured
their leaders’ deaths.
Perhaps we
shouldn’t be surprised that there is little change following a dictator’s death
in office. Autocrats who die in office tend to be particularly adept
politicians — having evaded myriad threats to their rule — and they are likely
to have fashioned entrenched political systems capable of persisting beyond
their passing. On average, dictators who die in office have enjoyed 16 years in
power, compared with just seven for those who exit by all other means. Such
longevity is only possible by developing an inner circle of elite supporters
who are highly invested in the status quo and are equipped with institutions
that they can use to maintain it. In other words, the very strategies that are
key to a dictator’s ability to stay in office until death increase his regime’s
resilience after his passing.
The presence of a well-functioning support party is
among the key strategies that enhance the durability of autocracies and
facilitate the succession process. A strong body of academic studies demonstrates
the prolonging power of political parties in authoritarian settings. While
these parties differ from political parties in democracies, they do serve
important functions in autocracies, such as counterbalancing interventionist
militaries, distributing benefits to citizens, and promoting the regime’s
ideology. Moreover, well-functioning political parties can co-opt individuals
with political aspirations or those seeking to gain access to the spoils of
office. Once these potential political rivals to the regime are incorporated
and incentivized to participate in the system, the party serves as a focal
point for negotiations over the choice of a new leader who can continue to
protect their interests.
Although a
leader’s death in office infrequently prompts the downfall of the regime or
instability, these events do occasionally occur. So when should we worry about
prospects for instability? Regimes governed by “strongmen” — where political
power is highly concentrated in the hands of an individual — tend to be more at
risk of instability following a leader’s death. But even then, instability is
rare because many personalized regimes rule with the aid of a political party.
The depth of the party matters, and those that invest in their development tend
to be the regimes that more seamlessly outlive the death of the leader. For
example, after the deaths of the highly personalized regimes of both Hafez
al-Assad in Syria in 2000 and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi in 2012, the ruling
political parties — the Baathist Party in Syria and the Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front — were critical in ensuring the regimes’
resilience.
In addition to countries where the regime lacks an
effective ruling party, we find that countries that have recently experienced
protests and domestic instability also have an elevated risk of coups and
protests in the wake of a leader’s death. These findings are consistent with a body of researchindicating that recent
instability enhances the prospects that a country will experience instability
in the future. Periods of instability produce segments of the population with
networks and experience that prove useful in mobilizing further protests in the
face of any discontent during a leadership transition. For example, previous
episodes of instability likely contributed to unrest in the aftermath of
Guinean President Lansana Conté’s death in 2008 and Gabonese President Omar
Bongo’s death in 2009.
In another
small subset of cases that we reviewed, a leader’s death set into motion
dynamics that spurred instability in the longer term. In these cases,
instability stems not from immediate disagreements over a potential successor,
but from the tactics the new leader uses to consolidate power. In ethnically or
geographically divided societies, opportunistic leaders can leverage divisions
to boost their popularity. This was the case in Ivory Coast, where the death of
President Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993 triggered the rise of Ivoirian
nationalism that planted the seeds for civil war nine years later.
In its 2015 “Freedom in the World”
report, Freedom House reported that the risk of a widespread democratic decline
is higher now than at any time in the last 25 years. Unfortunately, our results
show that the advanced age of 11 of the world’s autocrats offers little hope
for reversing this trend. Instead of creating space for change, the deaths of
these long-standing leaders will most likely leave in place the resilient
autocratic systems they’ve created. Though most leadership transitions generate
opportunities for political transformation in dictatorships, death in office is
not among them. Death in office, it turns out, is a remarkably unremarkable
event.
The opinions expressed in this article are the
authors’ own and do not reflect the view of the United States government.
In the
photo, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe falls after addressing
supporters upon his return from an African Union meeting in Ethiopia on
Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015.
Photo credit:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Correction,
Sept. 10, 2015: Lansana Conté is the name of the Guinean president who died in
2008. An earlier version of this article misspelled his first name as Lasante
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