A Review of "How Dictatorships Work" by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz PDF

1/24/2020 A Review of “How Dictatorships Work” by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz
REVIEW ESSAY
Paths to Power
e Rise and Fall of Dictators
By Anna Grzymala-Busse January/February 2020
0:00:00
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IN THIS REVIEW
T he world is in an illiberal phase. In recent years, dictators have strengthened their

grip on many countries. Several democracies have witnessed the rise of
authoritarian-minded leaders and movements. ese trends make the task of
understanding dictatorial rule all the more important.
e research on autocracy is vast: the term “authoritarian” garners more than 800,000
citations on Google Scholar. But most analyses of the subject tend to either focus on the
emergence and fall of dictatorships or examine their internal workings. Few examine both
the rise of autocracies and how they rule.
In How Dictatorships Work, the political scientists Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and
Erica Frantz o er a corrective, revealing not only how autocrats win and lose power but
also how they wield it. ey bring a wealth of new data to the table, following autocracies
from cradle to grave and meticulously testing the received wisdom against hard numbers.
How Dictatorships Work masterfully illustrates the paths autocrats take to power and the
ways in which they keep it. Few dictators have a clear strategy, but the ones who seize
control of a country’s security forces or build ruling political parties tend to stay on top.
THE ANATOMY OF DICTATORSHIP

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Geddes, Wright, and Frantz de ne autocracies as regimes in which elections do not

determine who leads or in which democratically elected leaders change the rules of the
game to eliminate the competition. In their view, a regime either is or is not an autocracy.
To compose their study, the authors drew on a database of 280 autocratic regimes that
took power between 1945 and 2010. e data were rst collected by Geddes and then
greatly expanded by Wright and Frantz.
eir rst major nding is that 45 percent of authoritarian regimes in this period were
the result of coups. (Dictatorships also tend to emerge when foreign powers prop up an
unelected ruler or when elected parties change the rules to preclude further free elections
—a move that Geddes, Wright, and Frantz term “authoritarianization.”) Militaries and
political parties are the groups most likely to seize power. But for all their professional
experience, these elites frequently have no detailed plans for how to exercise the power
they have seized.
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Brian Cronin
Contrary to what one might expect, coups rarely defend the interests of economic elites,
nor do they generally emerge from popular movements. Instead, Geddes, Wright, and
Frantz nd that many coups grow out of the grievances of military o cers—those who
have been excluded from promotion on the basis of their ethnicity, for example. It doesn’t
take many conspirators to carry out a coup: in 1969, for instance, Muammar al-Qadda
took over the Libyan state with help from a small number of allies and 48 rounds of
ammunition.
Once in power, a dictator and his inner circle must balance cooperation and con ict.
Autocrats must collaborate with subordinates to create a political base on which to rest
their rule, but they also want to keep their crews loyal.
e dictator’s dilemma consists of giving his immediate supporters enough bene ts to

secure their loyalty but not so many that any one supporter can become a viable
challenger. And the dictator has to deliver a continuous stream of bene ts—promises
alone cannot su ce, because the autocrat’s promises are not credible. After all, there are
no institutions to enforce them, such as independent courts or parliaments. So rulers
often survive by delegating authority and patronage or by redistributing land and other
resources.
One key lesson that emerges from How Dictatorships Work is that an aspiring autocrat
would do well to establish a hegemonic political party. (Consider the late Cuban prime
minister Fidel Castro’s Communist Party, which was founded in 1965 and has endured to
the present day.) Parties mobilize society and provide citizens with bene ts, creating the
kind of dependence that encourages popular support—and, perhaps as important,
complicity. Once schooling, jobs, and travel depend on one’s party a liation, most
members of society remain loyal or at least quiescent.
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is partisan patronage does have the unintended result of lling the party’s ranks with
opportunists who are far more interested in tangible bene ts than in the regime’s putative
ideology. But Geddes, Wright, and Frantz point out that even so, autocracies run through
hegemonic political parties last twice as long as those that do not. (It would have been
interesting to hear more about how leaders create and manage parties—for example, how
they carry out purges without overreaching and provoking a backlash.)
Autocrats survive by delegating authority and patronage or

by redistributing land and other resources.
How Dictatorships Work also makes clear why fraudulent elections and weak legislatures
are useful to autocrats: less because they provide a veneer of legitimacy than because they
o er a way for dictators to monitor their own regimes and their subjects. Local elections
reveal the competence of lower party o cials—low turnout, for example, indicates that a
local leader is unable to mobilize the population in his or her favor. National elections
signal the government’s strength to would-be challengers. Legislatures exist less to create
laws than to divvy up ill-gotten gains.
But sometimes it all comes crashing down. Around a third of autocracies end with a
coup; around a fourth end with an election. Economic crises often hasten the fall of
dictators, but patron-client networks can cushion the autocrats as they fall. Take, for
instance, Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, bu eted by the collapse of oil prices but
still clinging to power. Ultimately, however, patronage and political clout can do only so
much. e Soviet Union stands out as a spectacular example of how economic decay, elite
misperceptions of reform and its consequences, and the withdrawal of international
support can result in a rapid and decisive collapse.
MISSION CREEP
How Dictatorships Workcookies

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restrict information about themselves. Marshaling a great deal of data, the authors
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uncover deep-seated patterns that observers might otherwise miss. But Geddes, Wright,
and Frantz too readily discount studies based on “impressive local expertise” as lacking
“evidence.” And in using crisp categories such as “democracy” and “autocracy,” they
provide analytic clarity but overlook hybrid regimes in which the playing eld is slanted
toward incumbents even if the outcome of any particular election is not predetermined.
Also, because the book’s database ends in 2010, just as democratic erosion began to
quicken, the authors aren’t able to shed much light on one of the most urgent phenomena
in contemporary politics—the creeping authoritarianism that follows democratic decay.
Today, in established democracies across the world, the slow but steady undermining of
norms and institutions poses a greater threat than sudden coups. After all, it’s risky and
costly to try to overthrow an established government. Few people or organizations have
the means to carry out such a plot. But a wide range of actors can undermine democracy
gradually under the cover of law, prompting international concern and domestic protest
but few real challenges.
e informal norms that uphold democracy have become

fragile.
at is why today’s would-be dictators do not rely simply on censorship, repression, and
patronage. Instead, they follow a course similar to those charted by democratically elected
strongmen in countries such as Hungary and Turkey: go after the courts, intimidate the
press, hamper civil society, and use parliamentary majorities to push through new laws
and constitutions. If one squints, things look normal: elections take place, people can
travel in and out of the country, the cafés are full, and the secret police’s dungeons are
(nearly) empty. But underneath the surface, checks and balances that had once prevented
dictatorship are falling away.
Even in places where formal institutions are more robust, such as the United States, the
informal norms that uphold democracy have become fragile. e political scientists
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have identi ed forbearance (not using the law to
entrench the incumbent) and toleration (accepting opposition and criticism) as critical to
the health of democracies. One might also add equality before the law: the idea that
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neither the government nor the law can make distinctions that favor some groups over
others. ese norms are breaking down, and not just in young democracies.
Informal norms also keep autocracies a oat. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz give little
attention to the world’s most important dictatorship in this regard: the People’s Republic
of China, an autocracy that has not only endured but thrived by adapting. e authors’
model would account for the regime’s stability, since it is governed by a hegemonic
communist party. But other communist parties around the world have failed. How, then,
was the Chinese Communist Party able to renegotiate its relationship with capitalism
and society? What gave it the ability to shift course after Mao and open up China’s
economy without opening up its political system? Scholars have argued that informal
norms and institutions played a signi cant role, ensuring good governance and economic
growth, on the one hand, and maintaining party control over society, on the other. is
careful balance allowed the party to shift course without destabilizing the regime.
How Dictatorships Work is reassuring, in a way: the book demonstrates that even the most
outlandish tyrants act according to familiar patterns. But understanding the current wave
of democratic erosion requires closer attention to informal norms, how they contribute to
a regime’s durability, and how they shape the path by which democracies can become
autocracies or are able to stop someplace along the way.
More: World Civil & Military Relations Political Development State Failure Theory
In This Review
How Dictatorships Work

By Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright,
Erica Frantz
Cambridge University Press, 2018,

270 pp.
PURCHASE CONTINUE
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1/24/2020 A Review of “How Dictatorships Work” by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz

T he world is in an illiberal phase. In recent years, dictators have strengthened their

THE ANATOMY OF DICTATORSHIP

Geddes, Wright, and Frantz de ne autocracies as regimes in which elections do not

e dictator’s dilemma consists of giving his immediate supporters enough bene ts to

Autocrats survive by delegating authority and patronage or

How Dictatorships Workcookies

e informal norms that uphold democracy have become

How Dictatorships Work

Cambridge University Press, 2018,

Most Read Articles

Why America Must Lead Again

The Cost of an Incoherent Foreign Policy

The Imperial Presidency Is Alive and Well

This Time Is Diﬀerent

How Poverty Ends

A World Safe for Autocracy?

e Dictators’ Last StandCONTINUE

Give the Gift of Insight

COUNTRY FOCUS GRADUATE SCHOOL FORUM

The Most: Recent Shared Viewed

9 Female Leaders Gaining Notice

Which Countries Have the Highest Voter Turnout?

Published by the Council on Foreign Relations

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