Revolution, Personalist Dictatorships, and International Conflict

Revolution, Personalist Dictatorships, and
International Conflict
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Jeff D. Colgan and Jessica L.P. Weeks
Abstract A consensus exists that countries that have recently undergone domestic
political revolutions are particularly likely to become involved in military conflicts with
other states. However, scholars seek to understand when and why revolutions increase
the likelihood of international violence. In contrast to existing work focusing on inter-
national systemic factors, we argue that revolution fosters conflict in part by affecting
states’ domestic political structures. Previous research has shown that revolution
tends to bring particularly aggressive leaders to power. We demonstrate that revolutions
also frequently result in personalist dictatorships, or regimes that lack powerful institu-
tions to constrain and punish leaders. By empowering and ensconcing leaders with re-
visionist preferences and high risk tolerance, revolutions that result in personalist
dictatorships are significantly more likely to lead to international conflict than revolu-
tions that culminate in other forms of government. Our arguments and evidence help
explain not only why revolution so commonly leads to conflict, but also why some
revolutions lead to conflict whereas others do not.
For many observers, revolution and international conflict go hand in hand.1 From
China to Libya to Uganda to Iraq, the domestic upheaval of revolution often culmi-
nates in international strife. But not all revolutions lead to conflict. The Eastern
European revolutions that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union did not lead
directly to large-scale armed conflicts between countries, nor did revolutions in coun-
tries such as Myanmar, the Yemen Arab Republic, or Peru.
When and why do revolutions lead to international violence? Past research focused
mainly on how international systemic factors heighten the risk of war after revolu-
tions. We argue, however, that postrevolutionary domestic political structures
matter greatly. We build on recent research arguing that revolutions tend to bring
leaders with risk-tolerant, revisionist foreign policy preferences to power, leaders
who often resort to international force. We show that the kind of political regime
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The authors are grateful for feedback on earlier drafts from panel participants at the 2010 APSA annual
meeting, the 2011 Peace Science Society meeting, and the 2012 ISA meeting. We also thank Michael
Horowitz, Michael McKoy, Cliff Morgan, Dustin Tingley, Silvana Toska, Nicole Weygandt, and our
anonymous reviewers for invaluable feedback. Finally, we appreciate the excellent research assistance
of Joud Fariz and Kira Mochal. All errors remain our own.
Editor’s note: This manuscript was evaluated by the previous editorial team based at the University of
Toronto.
1. See Walt 1996; Maoz 1996; Gurr 1988; Skocpol 1988; Goldstone 1997; and Enterline 1998.
International Organization 69, Winter 2015, pp. 163–194

© The IO Foundation, 2015 doi:10.1017/S0020818314000307
164 International Organization
that emerges in the wake of a revolution affects the extent to which those leaders are
able to turn to violence internationally. When revolutions culminate in personalist

dictatorships, those countries initiate substantially more international conflict in the
ten years after the revolution than when other types of political systems emerge.
This matters greatly because nearly half of all revolutions have resulted in personalist
regimes.
We develop and test two complementary explanations for why postrevolutionary
regime type matters. Both build on the insight that the individuals who lead revolu-
tions are particularly likely to have revisionist international preferences and to have
high tolerance for risky strategies. First, personalistic regimes place fewer constraints
on these (often-revisionist) revolutionary leaders, allowing them to initiate conflict at
a higher annual rate than revolutionary nonpersonalist leaders. Second, personalistic
political systems tend to ensconce leaders and allow them to enjoy longer tenure in
office. In nonpersonalistic regimes, the leaders of revolutions are more likely to be
removed from office after a short spell and replaced with more moderate nonrevolu-
tionary leaders with fewer international ambitions. Thus, in personalist regimes the
original revolutionary leaders remain in power for a higher proportion of the post-
revolutionary period than in nonpersonalist regimes, leading to more conflict during
that period. We also find that revolutionary leaders and personalist regimes each
have independent effects on the likelihood of conflict initiation, but the main contribu-
tion of this article is to consider how the two variables interact. We show that the type
of postrevolutionary government affects the extent to which revolution fosters interna-
tional armed conflict. Overall, we find that personalist regimes account for 71 percent
of the international conflicts initiated by states with a recent domestic revolution.
These insights help explain striking patterns in the historical record. Leaders such
as Mao Zedong in China, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Idi Amin in Uganda, and
Muammar Qadhafi in Libya all seized on the upheaval of their revolutions to build
personalist dictatorships. The domestic political structures they created in turn
allowed these leaders to survive in office and enact their revisionist international
policy preferences for years or even decades. In contrast, leaders who face the
more institutionalized environment of a nonpersonalist regime tend to face greater
constraints on conflict initiation, and also tend to be replaced more quickly by
more moderate leaders who are less eager to change the international status quo.
Saw Maung of Myanmar, Al-Sallal of the Yemen Arab Republic, and Velasco
Alvarado of Peru all ushered in revolutions that did not engender personalistic
regimes. Our findings suggest that Myanmar, the Yemen Arab Republic, and Peru
likely would have instigated more international conflict if those revolutions had
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resulted in personalist dictatorships.
Existing Literature
For decades, scholars have studied how domestic revolutions affect international re-
lations, especially the likelihood of war. Although some have sought to explain the
Revolution, Personalist Dictatorships, and International Conflict 165
complex factors leading to revolution, we treat revolutions as the starting point and
investigate their consequences.2 Scholars concur that states with a recent domestic
revolution are unusually prone to international disputes and wars.3 The consensus
has been supported by empirical work, often using historical case studies. More re-
cently, quantitative research has also found that revolutionary states are particularly
conflict-prone.4
Despite this consensus about the international effects of domestic revolutions,
scholars have largely overlooked the important question of whether those effects
depend on the type of postrevolutionary government that emerges. Walt, for
example, argues that revolutions increase the likelihood of conflict by altering sys-
temic factors such as the offense-defense balance, perceptions of hostility, and the in-
formation available to state leaders.5 He also offers an account of how domestic
politics increase the probability of war, but he explicitly rejects an emphasis on do-
mestic factors. He does not explore whether his hypothesized mechanisms apply to all
postrevolutionary states, or primarily certain types of postrevolutionary regimes.6
Other scholars place more emphasis on how the domestic characteristics of revo-
lutionary leaders and movements may cause international conflicts, but like Walt they
do not explore whether these effects vary according to the types of political institu-
tions present. Skocpol, for instance, argues that successful revolutionary leaders
are particularly good at organizing and mobilizing their populations for campaigns
of mass violence, a skill that was required for them to be successful in the domestic
revolutionary struggle. Consequently, revolutionary states have greater capacity for
aggression.7 Gurr shares Skocpol’s view that revolutionary leaders tend to be aggres-
sive internationally, but for different reasons.8 He argues that revolutionary leaders
who have secured power and maintained their positions through the use of violence
domestically are disposed to respond violently to future challenges, even if those
challenges arise internationally.
Maoz combines the domestic and systemic views by arguing that revolutionary
states face pressure to engage in conflict from both internal and external sources.
Internally, the new ruling elite feels pressure to “mobilize support for the regime
through scapegoating.”9 Externally, the pressure comes from the threat and oppor-
tunity perceived by foreign powers. Again, whereas Maoz provides evidence of an
overall relationship between revolution and conflict, he does not examine whether
the effects apply equally to different types of postrevolutionary governments.
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2. See, for instance, Gurr 1970; and Skocpol 1979.

3. See Walt 1996; Maoz 1996; Skocpol 1988; Gurr, 1988; and Enterline 1998.
4. See Maoz 1996; and Colgan 2013a.
5. Walt 1996.
6. Although much subsequent scholarship has employed or expanded on Walt’s insights, it has also
tended to ignore the regime type of the postrevolutionary state. See Mansfield and Snyder 2005;
Goldstone 1997; Stinnett and Diehl 2001; and Goldgeier and Tetlock 2001.
7. Skocpol 1988. See also Carter, Bernhard, and Palmer 2012.
8. Gurr 1988.
9. Maoz 1996, 92.
Theory: Revolutions, Personalist Regimes, and International

Conflict
Recently, scholars have extended some of these existing arguments, focusing on how
revolutions select for leaders that have characteristics that make them particularly
likely to instigate conflict.10 Colgan, for example, defines revolutionary leaders as
individuals who personally helped transform the existing social, political, and eco-
nomic relationships of the state by overthrowing or rejecting the principal existing
institutions of society.11 Revolutionary leaders are therefore a strict subset of all
leaders that come to power as a result of the use of force—such as coups, assassina-
tions, and revolts—because revolutions result in substantial transformations of the
very organization of social, economic, and political life.12
Colgan argues that the same types of individuals who succeed as revolutionaries
tend to be more risk tolerant and ambitious to alter the status quo than typical
leaders. These characteristics in turn make it more likely that the leader will seek
to instigate international conflict. In other words, the same characteristics that
allowed revolutionaries to succeed in their domestic struggle also make such
leaders more likely to instigate international conflict once they have obtained office.
This argument builds on a growing body of research suggesting that the char-
acteristics of individual leaders matter for state behavior.13 Foreign policy deci-
sions are ultimately made by individuals, and not all leaders behave the same
way under the same conditions. The possibility that revolutions select for certain
types of leaders therefore provides a fruitful starting point for exploring how
domestic political institutions may condition the effect of revolution on interna-
tional conflict.
Political Institutions and Conflict Initiation in the Aftermath of Revolutions

If revolutionary leaders have preferences and risk tolerances that dispose them toward
international conflict, domestic institutions could have a profound impact on the con-
flict propensity of postrevolutionary states. We focus in particular on the initiation of
international conflict, because this is the activity over which leaders have the most
agency. Although much scholarship has focused on how institutional differences
between democracies and dictatorships affect conflict initiation, newer research indi-
cates that when it comes to the initiation of international conflict, a more important
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distinction is whether the regime—democratic or not—features institutions that
10. See Colgan 2013a and 2013b.

11. Colgan 2012. This definition is largely consistent with the one used by Walt 1996 and Huntington
1968, but is broader than Skocpol’s narrow concept of “social revolutions.”
12. See Huntington 1968; Gurr 1970; Goodwin 2001; and Colgan 2012.
13. See Byman and Pollack 2001; Chiozza and Goemans 2011; Saunders 2011; and Horowitz and Stam
2014.
allow domestic political actors to constrain their leaders, or whether it is a personalist

dictatorship in which such institutions are largely absent.14

We define personalist dictatorships as regimes in which one powerful individual
dominates the government apparatus and its instruments, including the military, the
ruling party (if one exists), and the state bureaucratic apparatus. The hallmark of
personalist regimes, also known as despotic or sultanistic regimes, is that they
lack institutions to facilitate coordination by regime elites to check the powers
of the individual ruler, such as an effective politburo, party hierarchy, merit-
based rules for military promotions, or rules ensuring the turnover of leaders.15
This lack of coordinating institutions, in turn, means that personalist leaders typi-
cally have free rein to appoint friends, relatives, and other cronies to important
offices in both the government and military, and can then closely monitor their ac-
tivities, ensuring that key regime insiders remain loyal.16 For example, Saddam
Hussein designed elaborate overlapping security apparatuses in Iraq for the
express purpose of keeping watch over subordinates and protecting the regime
from a coup. Any individual who might build an independent support base was
rotated to a different position, or removed. These arrangements meant that no
one inside the regime could prevent Saddam from entrusting the most important
positions to family members, such as his sons, whose fates were already closely
entwined with his own. Other leaders, such as Mao Zedong in China, had
slightly less byzantine security arrangements and relied less on kinship ties,
though the playbook—monitoring subordinates and ousting anyone who became
too powerful—remained the same.
In contrast, in democracies and nonpersonalist dictatorships, leaders face more
powerful institutions, whether through elections, a politburo that meets regularly,
or tacit agreements among military leaders on how succession will be determined.
In nonpersonalist military juntas or single-party regimes, leaders must therefore
work to please elite constituencies, and there are always rivals who would willingly
seize office if the leader violates the internal rules and norms of the regime.17 Because
the leader is not able to fashion the internal security apparatus to act as his personal
protection agency, these potential rivals can also coordinate to put their plans into
action.
Focusing on political institutions in this way reveals two mechanisms through
which the type of postrevolutionary regime could affect the conflict behavior of post-
revolutionary states: by reducing constraints on leaders while they remain in office
(thereby raising the annual rate of conflict initiation), and by ensconcing the individ-
uals who led the revolution in power (thereby allowing conflicts to accumulate over
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time).
14. See Weeks 2012 and 2014.

15. Weeks 2008.
16. See Geddes 2003; and Frantz 2008.
17. Weeks 2012.
Personalist Regimes Provide Fewer Constraints on Conflict Initiation

A first mechanism through which regime type could affect the behavior of post-
revolutionary states is by shaping the extent of domestic constraints faced by the
leader(s). Many scholars have argued that leaders who are constrained by or account-
able to a domestic audience should be less likely to initiate conflict than less account-
able leaders, for two related reasons. The first is that nonpersonalist leaders are more
likely to be punished for poor war outcomes than personalist leaders, which could
mute the willingness of nonpersonalist leaders to take on the risk of war.18
Second, revolutionary leaders in nonpersonalist regimes might be able to constrain
the leader from initiating a conflict in the first place.19 Typically, we expect domestic
audiences to have more dovish preferences than the more hawkish revolutionary
leaders, and in nonpersonalist regimes the preferences of the domestic audience are
more likely to affect the behavior of the state. We test this idea by assessing
whether personalist revolutionary leaders are more likely to initiate conflict than non-
personalist revolutionary leaders.
Personalist Institutions Ensconce Belligerent Revolutionary Leaders

The second way domestic institutions shape the conflict propensity of post-
revolutionary states is by ensconcing revolutionary leaders in office, allowing them
to translate their preferences into foreign policy during the postrevolutionary
period. In other words, personalist institutions influence who occupies office in the
postrevolutionary period: the incumbent who led the revolution, or a more moderate
replacement.
For instance, the Chinese revolution, the Iranian revolution, the Ba’athist revolu-
tion in Iraq, and the Cuban revolution each swept away existing political institutions
and replaced them with more personalized regime structures that allowed the leaders
to remain in power for many years, during which those leaders were able to enact
their belligerent preferences. Other revolutions, however, have produced political
systems in which nonrevolutionary leaders have a better chance of replacing revolu-
tionary leaders. For example, historical accounts suggest that Velasco Alvarado of
Peru sought to initiate a war against Chile as a way of regaining the territory it had
lost in a previous war.20 Velasco greatly increased military spending and laid plans
for war, but he was replaced by a nonrevolutionary leader before he could
make those plans a reality. More generally, when revolutions do not result in person-
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alist dictatorships, the original revolutionary leader is more likely to be replaced by
18. Ibid.
19. See ibid.; and Morgan and Campbell 1991.
20. Masterson 1991.
nonrevolutionary politicians who have not been selected for a propensity for interna-
tional violence in the same way.21

In sum, personalist institutions raise the likelihood of conflict initiation in the post-
revolutionary period by affecting who holds power. Previous research has shown, and
we confirm, that states are more likely to instigate conflict when one of the individ-
uals who helped to lead the revolution holds office.22 When the revolution culminates
in a personalist regime, those revolutionary leaders are able to remain in office well
into the postrevolutionary period, and thus are able to enact their revisionist policy
agendas. When the revolution produces a nonpersonalistic political system, a less
radical leader is likely to replace the incumbent more quickly. To clarify, our argu-
ment is not that a revolutionary leader’s annual rate of conflict initiation increases
over time. Instead, we theorize that revolutionary leaders initiate conflict at a high,
but fairly steady annual rate. Because they are less likely to be replaced by more mod-
erate nonrevolutionary leaders when the regime is personalist, the result is a higher
average rate of annual conflict initiation in the postrevolutionary period. We show
direct evidence of both of these claims in the empirical analysis.23
Why Do Revolutionary Personalists Not Deter Conflict?

Before proceeding to our hypotheses, one might ask whether interstate bargaining
could offset the patterns we described, since regime type and revolutionary politics
are both observable. We think not, for two reasons. First, the relatively high-risk tol-
erance and revisionist preferences of revolutionary personalist leaders should narrow
the range of mutually acceptable bargaining outcomes, and the size of the bargaining
range is important for the probability of conflict. A large bargaining range means that
leaders would have to grossly miscalculate to fail to perceive an acceptable peaceful
bargain. But when the bargaining range is small, the likelihood of war is higher
because even small miscalculations or a small amount of private information could
mean that the parties are no longer able to find a mutually agreeable bargain to
avoid war.24 Second, risk tolerance and revisionist preferences reduce the value of
the status quo relative to war, which means the leader is more likely to challenge
the status quo. More challenges to the status quo generate more opportunities for con-
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21. Of course, personalist leaders are not immune to challenges to their tenure. However, they enjoy a
strong incumbency advantage compared to other forms of government.
22. See Colgan 2013a and 2013b.
23. Tables 3 and 4 show that revolutionary leaders are more violent across the board. Figure 2 shows that
revolutionary leaders survive in office longer when the regime is personalist. Table A2 in the online appen-
dix shows that this rate is relatively steady over time. Figure A1 (in the appendix) shows that this leads to an
accumulation of conflict in the postrevolutionary period.
24. Chiozza and Goemans 2011, 42. Further, there is a smaller bargaining range for peaceful outcomes
but no less uncertainty, and this combination increases the probability of conflict.
flict because each time there is a challenge, states again face the tradeoff between de-
manding greater bargaining concessions and minimizing the risk of war.25 For these
reasons, we expect that postrevolutionary personalist regimes will be more likely to
initiate militarized disputes.
Hypotheses
In sum, this discussion leads to a series of three complementary hypotheses: one that
articulates our central proposition (H1), and two that address the mechanisms behind
it (H2 and H3).
H1: In states that recently experienced a revolution, personalist dictatorship is asso-

ciated with greater militarized dispute initiation.
H2: Revolutionary leaders are more likely to initiate international conflict when their
regime is personalist than when it is not.
H3: When revolutions culminate in personalist regimes, the regime is led by a revo-
lutionary leader for a higher proportion of the postrevolutionary period than when
the revolution does not result in a personalist regime, because personalist leaders
tend to survive in office for longer periods of time.
Does the Nonrandom Occurrence of Personalism Complicate the Analysis?

One question that naturally arises is which revolutions lead to a personalist regime,
and which do not? After all, it seems unlikely that personalist regimes arise purely
at random. We do not seek to provide a full explanation for the onset of personalist
dictatorships—that question is too large to be properly explored here. However, we
do need to consider the question sufficiently to avoid either endogeneity because of
reverse causation, or bias because of omitted causal variables.
A first possibility is that preexisting international conflict and/or enduring inter-
state rivalries might make it more likely for a personalist regime to emerge following
a revolution, for example, if revolutionary leaders used external conflict(s) to consol-
idate power and divert attention away from internal problems. In other words, revo-
lutions could lead to interstate conflict, which in turn might lead to the establishment
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of personalist regimes, rather than the other way around. Although this is possible, we
report the results of several tests for reverse causation. We found no evidence that
enduring rivalries foster the emergence of postrevolutionary personalist dictatorships,
25. Schultz describes how this tradeoff leads to conflict under rationalist assumptions. Schultz 2001, 4–5.
nor that external conflict is concentrated in the immediate aftermath of a revolution,

when the postrevolutionary regime type is being selected.

Second, perhaps regime type is affected by regional dynamics that in turn affect the
probability of conflict.26 It seems plausible that personalist dictatorships are most
likely to emerge in geographic regions with weak or developing institutions and
little experience with democracy. Indeed, in our empirical analysis, we find that thir-
teen out of the eighteen cases of revolutions that result in new personalist dictator-
ships (that is, where one did not exist before the revolution) occurred in Africa or
the Middle East. A potential threat to inference occurs if geographic region is an
omitted variable that affects the probability of both personalism and interstate con-
flict. Consequently, we control for geographic region, and a host of other potential
omitted variables, in our robustness checks.
In sum, although a full explanatory model for the emergence of personalist dicta-
torships lies outside the scope of this article, our analysis suggests that neither endo-
geneity nor omitted variables drive the causal relationships theorized here.
Data and Methods

Operationalizing Revolution and Personalism
The time period for our analysis is 1946 to 2000.27 To measure revolutions, we use a
data set developed by Colgan.28 We first create a dichotomous variable REVOLUTION,
with a value of 1 for the state-year in which a revolutionary leader first came to power
and 0 otherwise. Revolutions are identified using two principal criteria.29 The first is
whether the government came to power through use of armed force, widespread
popular demonstrations, or similar uprising (an “irregular transition”). The second
criterion is that once in power, the government must have implemented radical do-
mestic changes for the purpose of transforming the organization of society, including
its social, economic, and political institutions and practices. In all cases, the focus is
on domestic policy, rather than foreign policy. The measure takes into account seven
possible areas of change: the selection and power of the national executive; the struc-
ture of property ownership; the relationship between state and religion; the official
political ideology; the official state name and symbols; the institutionalized status
of ethnicity and gender; and the presence of a governing revolutionary council or
committee. Dramatic changes in policy in at least three of the seven categories are
required for the government’s policy to be considered revolutionary. For example,
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the Iranian revolution in 1979 changed the relationship between state and religion
26. Gleditsch and Ward 2006.

27. But 1951–2000 for the models that control for trade openness, because of the availability of our
measure of trade.
28. Colgan 2012.
29. The description here (in the rest of this paragraph and the next) derives from Colgan 2012.
(political dominance by clerics), the power and selection of the national executive
(replacement of the monarchy by a clerical Supreme Leader), the status of women

(inequality in inheritance law and segregation of the sexes), and the official name
of the country (changed to the Islamic Republic of Iran), as well as many other
changes.
As we mentioned, revolutions are quite distinct from related events such as coups
or assassinations. In the data set, 28 percent of the leaders who used force to come to
power are coded as revolutionary leaders. The data set does not code founding leaders
of new countries as revolutionary (thereby excluding wars of independence or col-
onial transitions), nor leaders installed by foreign governments through international
military actions. A full list of revolutions and revolutionary leaders is provided in the
online appendix. Greater detail on the coding rules, along with an explicit comparison
with related data is available elsewhere.30
Identifying revolutions is difficult, and no list of revolutions will resonate with
everyone perfectly. Using Colgan’s coding rules to identify revolutions at least
ensures consistency across cases and mitigates unintentional selection bias. In our ro-
bustness checks, however, we also take advantage of the AMBIGUOUS CODING variable
in Colgan’s data set to identify only the “unambiguous” revolutions (listed in the
appendix). We reanalyzed our regressions using only this set of “unambiguous”
revolutions, with little impact on the results.
Having identified revolutions, we then create our principal independent variable
for testing H1, POSTREVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. This variable is coded as 1 if the
country experienced a revolution within the last ten years, and 0 otherwise.
Although ten years is an arbitrary length of time, it is consistent with the practice
of previous scholars.31 Moreover, in our robustness checks, this ten-year period
was varied using different cutoffs (for example, eight- or twelve-year cutoffs), and
the results were substantively unchanged (and in fact sometimes grew stronger).
We also define a variable called REVOLUTIONARY LEADER, which simply measures
whether the state leader in question came to power by leading a revolution. It is pos-
sible for more than one leader to have led an irregular transition (for example, Naguib
and then Nasser in Egypt in 1952), but the leadership is restricted to its senior leaders.
Thus both Lenin and Stalin came to power through an irregular transition as leaders of
the Russian Revolution, but not Khrushchev, even though he fought in the Red Army
at a young age. The variable REVOLUTIONARY LEADER is coded positively as long as the
first generation of revolutionary leaders is in power.32
Next, we operationalize the concept of personalist dictatorship. We began by using
Weeks’s data on authoritarian regimes.33 To identify personalism, Weeks uses eight
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30. Colgan 2012. See comparisons to, for example, the Archigos data (Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza
2009), Maoz’s operationalization of revolution, and Enterline’s concept of regime change.
31. Walt 1996.
32. Colgan 2012.
33. Weeks 2012. The Weeks data set draws on Geddes’s data on authoritarian regimes. See Geddes
2003.
characteristics of the regime,34 with additional rules for democracies and monar-
chies.35 These indicators of personalism are coded independently of a leader’s subse-

quent international behavior, based on observable domestic institutional features of a
regime.
We then took two additional steps to fill in missing values. First, we updated the
Weeks data to fill in missing data where possible, based on our own research.36
Second, we used a data set collected by Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (GWF) to fill
in missing data from the post-Soviet states and some other countries missing from
the Weeks data set.37 Note, however, that we also use the unmodified Weeks data
set to test for robustness, and find very similar results (see discussion below).38
Our full data set is available online.39
The Weeks approach to coding personalism best matches our conception of per-
sonalist leaders because it focuses explicitly on the extent to which the leader faces
political constraints on the use of force. For instance, both Mao and Stalin are con-
sidered personalist leaders in Weeks’s coding because both leaders managed to elim-
inate powerful domestic audiences and surround themselves with loyal cronies who
were unwilling or unable to criticize the leader’s policies. In contrast, the GWF typol-
ogy treats both Mao and Stalin as (nonpersonalist) single-party leaders because the
regime featured a dominant party that controlled much of political life at lower
levels of the regime, even though the individual leader maintained an iron grip on
power.40 In general, a comparison of the Weeks and GWF codings of personalism
indicates that although the two lists are similar, the GWF coding undercounts person-
alism according to our conception, sometimes categorizing regimes as single-party
regimes when the Weeks data would consider the leaders themselves to be relatively
free of constraints and the regime thus personalistic.
34. Weeks uses eight yes/no questions: whether access to high government office depends on the per-
sonal favor of the leader; whether country specialists viewed the politburo or equivalent as a rubber
stamp for the leader’s decisions; whether the leader personally controls the security forces; if there is a sup-
porting party, whether the leader chooses most of the members of the politburo-equivalent; whether the
successor to the first leader, or the heir apparent, was a member of the same family, clan, tribe, or minority
ethnic group as the first leader; whether normal military hierarchy has been seriously disorganized or over-
turned, or has the leader created new military forces loyal to him personally; whether dissenting officers or
officers from different regions, tribes, religions, or ethnic groups have been murdered, imprisoned, or
forced into exile; if the leader is from the military, whether the officer corps have been marginalized
from most decision making. A dichotomous indicator is then generated, which codes a state as personalist
if more than half of the questions have been answered positively.
35. Wherever Polity codes a country to be a democracy, Weeks codes the country as nonpersonalist.
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Monarchies are coded as missing. While in theory one could potentially distinguish personalistic, uncon-
strained monarchs from monarchs who are constrained by a powerful ruling family, existing data sets do
not provide that information.
36. We updated Weeks’s data set to correct a handful of regime end dates and to fill in missing values
where our own research unambiguously points toward a coding for personalism.
37. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2011.
38. Weeks 2012.
39. See the online appendix.
40. The Weeks index focuses slightly more on leader constraints and less on lower-level institutions such
as local party organs.
Nonetheless, because the Weeks data are not available for the post-Soviet states
and some other country-years, we fill in missing values with the GWF data, even
though the GWF typology somewhat undercounts personalist leaders according to
our conception. We opt for this approach because otherwise we would need to
throw out a substantial number of observations, including the post-Soviet revolutions.
Again, using this hybrid version of the Weeks/GWF data produces the same substan-
tive conclusions as using the unmodified Weeks, only with more observations.41
Dependent Variables and Model Specification

To test our hypotheses in which international conflict is the dependent variable (H1
and H2), we draw on the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data set, which cat-
alogues all “historical cases in which the threat, display or use of military force short
of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official
representatives, official forces, property or territory of another state.”42 We begin
with a dyadic analysis of conflict initiation, because countless studies have shown
that important predictors of international conflict, such as geographic contiguity
and distance, relative military power, alliance status, and trade interdependence are
inherently dyadic phenomena that cannot be measured accurately in a monadic
country-year analysis. Therefore we follow common practice and use logit models
with directed dyad-years as the unit of analysis.43
Our primary dependent variable INITMID marks whether Side A of the dyad initiated
an MID against Side B (by being the first to threaten or use military force) in any
given year.44 Additionally, INITFATAL counts only MIDs that resulted in at least one
death of official military personnel. Oneal and colleagues suggest that fatal MIDs
are less prone to reporting bias than lower-level incidents, which may not be
covered consistently around the globe by news sources.45 To control for temporal in-
terdependence, we include cubic splines (or, as a robustness check, cubic polynomi-
als since the last MID initiation).46 We also cluster the standard errors by directed
dyad to account for possible unobserved differences across country pairs. After pre-
senting our core results, we discuss tests we conducted to assure that the relationships
we observe are not a product of endogeneity.
To check robustness, we also carry out a monadic analysis in which country-years,
rather than directed dyad-years, are the unit of analysis. For these models, we code a
variable INITMIDN that counts the number of MIDs that a country initiated in any given
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41. Weeks 2012.

42. Jones, Bremer, and Singer 1996, 168. For the dyadic analysis, we rely on Maoz’s recoded dyadic
version of the data set. See Maoz 2005.
43. See Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008; Most and Starr 1989; and Oneal and Tir 2006.
44. We count joiners on the initiating side as initiators, and joiners on the target side as targets. See Reiter
and Stam 2002.
45. Oneal et al. 2003.
46. See Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998; and Carter and Signorino 2010.
year, that is, is the first state to threaten or use military force in a conflict (Side A).
Second, INITFATALN counts the number of fatal MIDs initiated. We test H1 and H2
using a negative binomial model because the dependent variables are event counts
(that is, the number of MIDs) and the negative binomial model accounts for overdis-
persion in our dependent variables.47 We again include cubic splines to control for
temporal interdependence, and cluster the standard errors by country to account for
unobserved differences across states.
For H3 the dependent variable is leadership TENURE, the number of years that the
leader remains in office.
Control Variables
We also include a number of control variables that might be correlated with revolu-
tion, personalism, and international conflict. These are gathered from a set of well-
known quantitative models of MID initiation.48 As with revolution and personalism,
we lag all of these control variables by one year.
CAPABILITIES: Many scholars have argued that more powerful states have wider-
ranging interests than minor powers and thus may be more conflict-prone. For the
dyadic analysis, we therefore control for each state’s military capabilities and
major power status, as well as Side A’s proportion of dyadic capabilities. For the
monadic analysis, we include the raw military capabilities score of the country,
and a dummy variable indicating whether the state is a major power.49
ALLIANCES: Next, we include a measure of alliances, which may proxy for geo-
political interests.50 In the dyadic analysis, we control for the similarity of the two
states’ alliance portfolios, and also how closely allied they are with the most powerful
state in the system (in this period, the United States). In the monadic analysis, the al-
liance variable counts the country’s number of alliance partners.
CONTIGUITY: Another important predictor of international conflict is geographic
contiguity. In the dyadic analysis, we include a dummy variable for contiguity up
to 400 miles of water, and also the logged distance between the two countries in
the dyad.51 In the monadic analysis, we count how many countries are contiguous
to the state, either by land or across no more than 400 miles of water.
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47. Long 1997. We also checked the results using a zero-inflated negative binomial (zinb) model, which
allows us to model the possibility that some countries have characteristics that lead them to never initiate
MIDs (that is, have an inflated number of zeros). The results using the zinb model are in many cases even
stronger than the results using the negative binomial model, but we report the latter since they are easier to
interpret and the substantive conclusions are the same.
48. See Bennett and Stam 2003; Lai and Slater 2006; Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008; Gowa
2000; Oneal, Russett, and Berbaum 2003; and Gleditsch 2002.
49. These measures rely on the Correlates of War (COW) CINC data.
50. Gowa 2000.
51. For contiguity data, we used Stinnett et al. 2002.
CIVIL WAR: Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz show that states undergoing civil war
are significantly more likely to become involved in MIDs.52 We therefore include

variables indicating whether each country in the analysis was experiencing a civil
war in that year.53 Including this variable also creates a harder test of the hypotheses
regarding revolution, since many revolutions are associated with periods of civil war
(for example, the Iranian Revolution).
TRADE INTERDEPENDENCE AND OPENNESS: Many scholars have argued that trade can
dampen incentives to use military force against a trading partner.54 In the dyadic an-
alysis, we therefore include a variable marking the lower trade dependence in the
dyad using data by Gleditsch.55 In the monadic analysis, we include the logged
value of the country’s total trade as a proportion of its GDP.
Empirical Results
Revolution, Personalist Dictatorship, and International Conflict Initiation
The first hypothesis we assess is that postrevolutionary states initiate more conflict
when the postrevolutionary regime is personalist than when it is not (H1). To test
it, we compare the coefficients on POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, PERSONALIST REGIME (see
Table 1) with those for POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, NOT PERSONALIST REGIME, carrying
out two-tailed Wald tests to assess the significance of the differences in these coeffi-
cients. Recall that coefficients in logistic regression are typically reported in terms of
the change in log odds. We simply exponentiate the coefficients to recover the
amount by which a one-unit change in the predictor variable changes the odds that
the state initiates an MID.56
The results from Table 1 indicate that postrevolutionary personalist regimes have
more than three times greater odds of initiating MIDs than countries that are neither
postrevolutionary nor personalist.57 Moreover, postrevolutionary personalists have
1.7 times greater odds of initiating MIDs than their nonpersonalist counterparts, a dif-
ference that is significant at p < 0.0006. They also have 1.7 times greater odds of ini-
tiating fatal MIDs than leaders of nonpersonalist postrevolutionary regimes,
significant at p < 0.0142. Thus the evidence supports H1: regime type explains var-
iation in dispute initiation in the aftermath of revolution.
52. Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008.

53. For data on civil wars, we rely on the PRIO UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Data set version 4-2009
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and count a state as undergoing civil war if it experiences at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in an internal
conflict in any given year. See Gleditsch et al. 2002.
54. See, among many others, Hegre 2000; Oneal, Russett, and Berbaum 2003; Schultz 2001; and
Gleditsch 2002.
55. Gleditsch 2002. For each member of the dyad, we measure trade dependence as country A’s total
trade with country B as a proportion of its GDP, and vice versa. For the analyses, we follow Russett
and Oneal 2001 and Oneal et al. 2003 and include the trade dependence of the less-dependent country,
though the results do not change if we enter each country’s trade dependence separately.
56. Long 1997.
57. For example, the exponent of 1.12 is 3.06.
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TABLE 1. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (dyadic)
(1) (2) (3) (4)

All MIDs Fatal MIDs All MIDs, unambiguous Fatal MIDs, unambiguous
revolutions only revolutions only
POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, PERSONALIST REGIME 1.12***a (0.12) 1.37***b (0.16) 1.14***c (0.13) 1.30***d (0.18)
POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, NOT PERSONALIST REGIME 0.57***a (0.13) 0.83***b (0.20) 0.60***c (0.15) 0.90***d (0.22)
NOT POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, PERSONALIST REGIME 0.71*** (0.10) 0.87*** (0.14) 0.72*** (0.09) 0.91*** (0.14)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES SIDE A 6.48*** (1.47) 8.15*** (2.60) 6.48*** (1.47) 8.02*** (2.62)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES SIDE B 5.80*** (1.53) 4.66* (2.82) 5.79*** (1.53) 4.72* (2.84)
LOWER TRADE DEPENDENCE IN DYAD −22.91** (10.81) −109.98*** (35.88) −23.07** (10.80) −109.25*** (35.98)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING, SIDE A 0.16 (0.13) 0.19 (0.17) 0.15 (0.13) 0.20 (0.17)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING, SIDE B 0.36** (0.14) 0.59*** (0.18) 0.36** (0.14) 0.57*** (0.18)
DISTANCE BETWEEN CAPITALS −0.33*** (0.09) −0.43*** (0.14) −0.33*** (0.09) −0.43*** (0.14)
Constant −2.12*** (0.72) −2.50** (1.16) −2.10*** (0.72) −2.48** (1.16)
Observations 804,434 804,434 804,434 804,434
Notes: Models are estimated using a logit model with standard errors clustered by directed-dyad, and include additional control variables: cubic splines to control for temporal interde-
pendence; whether or not the two states are geographically contiguous; the major power status of each state in the dyad; the initiator’s share of military capabilities; the two states’ similarity of
alliance portfolio; and each state’s similarity of alliance portfolio with the system leader. All regime predictor variables are lagged by one year. Unit of analysis is the directed dyad-year.
Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1.
a
Wald test: different at p < .0006.
b
c
d
The differences are equally stark when restricting the list of revolutions to “unam-
biguous” revolutions. Here, being personalist again increases the odds of conflict for
a postrevolutionary state by a factor of 1.7, significant at p < 0.0022. When we restrict
the analysis of “unambiguous” revolutions to fatal MIDs only, postrevolutionary per-
sonalists have 1.5 times greater odds of initiating fatal MIDs than their nonpersonalist
counterparts, significant at p < 0.0935.
Note also that the coefficients on POSTREVOLUTIONARY NONPERSONALIST and NOT
POSTREVOLUTIONARY PERSONALIST are positive and significant, indicating that, consis-
tent with previous work, revolution and personalism also exhibit independent
effects on the likelihood of conflict initiation.
Other variables generally perform as expected by the existing literature. A country is
more likely to initiate an MID against another country when the two states are geo-
graphically proximate; when a country or its potential opponent is militarily strong;
when the countries do not trade extensively; and when the countries have few alliances
in common. Civil war in Side B also increases the likelihood of a MID initiation.
Figure 1 demonstrates the substantive importance of the effects of personalism and
the postrevolutionary period. Using estimates generated by Clarify, the graph shows
the predicted percent of the time that State A will initiate an MID against state B in a
given year, according to the various combinations of revolution and personalism,
with 95 percent confidence intervals around the point estimates.58 We base the sim-
ulations on Model 1 (for Figure 1A) and Model 2 (for Figure 1B), and set all control
variables to their median values except for contiguity/distance and military power,
which in our hypothetical example we set at higher values since conflict rarely
occurs between distant, militarily weak states.59
For all MIDs (Figure 1A), the baseline chance that State A will initiate an MID
against State B when it is neither postrevolutionary nor personalist is 4.8 percent.
States that are revolutionary but not personalist are 1.7 times as likely to initiate con-
flict (8.2 percent versus 4.8 percent), whereas states that are both personalist and
revolutionary are 2.8 times as likely.60 For fatal MIDs (Figure 1B), states led by per-
sonalist leaders in a postrevolutionary period are 1.6 times as likely to initiate MIDs
as states that are postrevolutionary but not personalist, and 3.7 times as likely to ini-
tiate MIDs as states that are neither postrevolutionary nor personalist. Note that this
simulation-based approach is different from simply comparing coefficients, as we did
earlier for Table 1, and builds in additional uncertainty around the estimates because
it models the predictions as a function of numerous covariates. Thus, although the
difference between personalist and nonpersonalist postrevolutionary states was
highly significant in Model 2 in Table 1 (p < 0.0014), the confidence interval for
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
58. Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 2003.

59. We set contiguity to 1, distance to 0, military power of side A to the 95th percentile, and military
power of side B to the median value for a major power. Figure 1 looks similar if all variables are
instead set to their median values, though the annual probabilities of conflict are lower.
60. Among personalist regimes, those in postrevolutionary periods initiate roughly 1.4 times as many
MIDs as those that were not.
postrevolutionary personalists in Figure 1B just touches the point estimate for post-
revolutionary nonpersonalists, because of uncertainty around the other values of pre-

dictor variables.
FIGURE 1. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation: Hypothetical sce-

nario between contiguous, strong states
Next, for robustness we carry out a monadic analysis of MID initiation. Table 2
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shows the results of a negative binomial regression with the number of MIDs initiated
as the dependent variable. Model 1 focuses on all MID initiations, whereas Model 2
analyzes fatal MID initiations. We can exponentiate the coefficients to recover the
change in the annual rate of MID initiation.
The table indicates that personalist regimes in a postrevolutionary period initiate
2.6 times as many MIDs as countries that are both nonpersonalist and not in the after-
math of a revolution. Postrevolutionary states with a personalist regime initiate
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TABLE 2. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (monadic)
(1) (2) (3) (4)

revolutions revolutions
POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, PERSONALIST REGIME 0.94***a (0.32) 1.06***b (0.20) 1.01***c (0.37) 0.98***d (0.22)
POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, NOT PERSONALIST REGIME 0.37***a (0.13) 0.52*b (0.27) 0.40***c (0.13) 0.46d (0.31)
NOT POSTREVOLUTION PERIOD, PERSONALIST REGIME 0.39** (0.16) 0.44** (0.20) 0.39** (0.15) 0.49*** (0.19)
LOGGED TRADE OPENNESS 0.04 (0.06) −0.00 (0.08) 0.04 (0.06) −0.00 (0.08)
NUMBER OF NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES 0.07*** (0.02) 0.06** (0.02) 0.07*** (0.02) 0.06** (0.02)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES 7.06*** (1.61) 7.21*** (2.29) 7.03*** (1.55) 6.99*** (2.29)
NUMBER OF ALLIES 0.00 (0.01) −0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) −0.00 (0.01)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING 0.20 (0.18) 0.38** (0.19) 0.19 (0.18) 0.41** (0.19)
MAJOR POWER −0.01 (0.26) −0.39 (0.47) −0.02 (0.26) −0.37 (0.46)
YEARS SINCE LAST MID INIT. −0.38*** (0.07) −0.17*** (0.05) −0.38*** (0.07) −0.18*** (0.05)
Splines estimated but not reported … … … …
Constant −1.17*** (0.33) −2.33*** (0.34) −1.14*** (0.32) −2.27*** (0.32)
Observations 5,554 5,554 5,554 5,554
Notes: Models are estimated using a negative binomial model with standard errors clustered by country, and include cubic splines of the time since the last MID initiation to control for
temporal interdependence. All other regime predictor variables are lagged by one year. Unit of analysis is the country-year. Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .01; **p < .05;
*p < .1.
a
b
c
d
MIDS at about a 1.8 times greater rate, and fatal MIDs at a 1.7 times greater rate, than
nonpersonalist postrevolutionary states. Wald tests indicate that these differences are
statistically significant at p < 0.08 for Model 1 and p < 0.03 for Model 2. Similarly, in
the aftermath of “unambiguous” revolutions, using a more restrictive coding of rev-
olution, postrevolutionary personalist regimes have a rate of MID initiation that is 1.8
times higher than postrevolutionary nonpersonalists (p < 0.11), and a rate of fatal
MID initiation that is 1.7 times higher (p < 0.08). As in the dyadic analysis, revolution
and personalism also have independent effects on conflict initiation, though these
effects are not as strong as when the two coincide.
Why Do Personalist Postrevolutionary Regimes Fight More?

Having established that, in the aftermath of a revolution, states led by personalist
regimes are more belligerent than states with other domestic institutions, we next eval-
uate why. The first part of our explanation has to do with individual leaders. (H2) sug-
gests that personalist revolutionary leaders initiate MIDs at a higher annual rate than
revolutionary leaders who do not preside over personalist regimes, due to lower do-
mestic constraints. We therefore turn our attention to the REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS
who helped fashion the original revolution, rather than focusing on postrevolutionary
periods. This allows us to investigate how institutions affect the conflict propensity of
revolutionary leaders regardless of how long they remain in office.
Table 3 shows the results of this analysis. Model 1, which analyzes all MID initi-
ations, indicates that revolutionary leaders have about 1.6 greater odds of MID initi-
ation when they lead a personalist regime than when they lead a more
institutionalized, nonpersonalistic, and hence more constraining political system. A
Wald test indicates that this difference is significant at p < 0.001. Similarly, revolu-
tionary leaders of personalist regimes have 1.6 times greater odds of fatal MID initi-
ation as revolutionary leaders of nonpersonalist systems, a difference significant at
p < 0.025. Columns (3) and (4) show that, as before, the results are similar using
the more restrictive “unambiguous” definition of revolutionary leaders.
Table 4 shows a similar analysis using the monadic set-up, with similar results.
Revolutionary leaders initiate about 1.6 times as many MIDs when they lead a per-
sonalist regime than when they lead a nonpersonalist regime, a difference that is sig-
nificant at p < 0.065. Similarly, revolutionary leaders of personalist regimes initiate
1.5 times more fatal MIDs than revolutionary leaders of nonpersonalist systems, a dif-
ference significant at p < 0.083. As before, the results are similar using the more re-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
strictive “unambiguous” definition of revolutionary leaders.

Next, we focus on the second mechanism: that personalist regimes increase MID
initiation in the postrevolutionary period by allowing revolutionary leaders, who
are particularly likely to have revisionist preferences, to remain in office (H3).
Therefore personalism allows revolutionary leaders to occupy office for a greater pro-
portion of the postrevolutionary period (of ten years, for example) when the regime is
personalist than when it is not, accumulating a greater number of conflict initiations.
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TABLE 3. Revolutionary leaders, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (dyadic)
(1) (2) (3) (4)

revolutions only revolutions only
REVOLUTIONARY PERSONALIST LEADER 1.19***a (0.11) 1.32***b (0.15) 1.24***c (0.11) 1.30***d (0.16)
REVOLUTIONARY NONPERSONALIST LEADER 0.73***a (0.13) 0.86***b (0.20) 0.69***c (0.15) 0.90***d (0.23)
NONREVOLUTIONARY PERSONALIST LEADER 0.49*** (0.12) 0.70*** (0.16) 0.51*** (0.11) 0.76*** (0.16)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES SIDE A 6.60*** (1.48) 8.09*** (2.66) 6.58*** (1.49) 7.98*** (2.67)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES SIDE B 5.72*** (1.56) 4.62 (2.84) 5.66*** (1.58) 4.58 (2.87)
LOWER TRADE DEPENDENCE IN DYAD −22.12** (10.68) −106.50*** (35.05) −22.57** (10.69) −106.66*** (35.32)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING, SIDE A 0.15 (0.13) 0.21 (0.17) 0.14 (0.13) 0.21 (0.17)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING, SIDE B 0.34** (0.14) 0.55*** (0.18) 0.34** (0.14) 0.56*** (0.18)
DISTANCE BETWEEN CAPITALS −0.32*** (0.09) 0.42*** (0.14) −0.32*** (0.09) −0.42*** (0.14)
Constant −2.13*** (0.72) −2.46** (1.16) −2.10*** (0.72) −2.44** (1.16)
Observations 804,434 804,434 804,434 804,434
Notes: Models are estimated using a logit model with standard errors clustered by directed-dyad, and include additional control variables: cubic splines to control for temporal interde-
pendence; whether or not the two states are geographically contiguous; the major power status of each state in the dyad; the initiator’s share of military capabilities; the two states’ similarity of
alliance portfolio; and each state’s similarity of alliance portfolio with the system leader. All regime predictor variables are lagged by one year. Unit of analysis is the directed dyad-year.
Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1.
a
b
c
d
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TABLE 4. Revolutionary leaders, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (monadic)
(1) (2) (3) (4)

revolutions revolutions
REVOLUTIONARY PERSONALIST LEADER 0.83***a (0.25) 0.79***b (0.20) 0.91***c (0.29) 0.76***d (0.22)
REVOLUTIONARY NONPERSONALIST LEADER 0.38***a (0.13) 0.37b (0.26) 0.36**c (0.14) 0.31d (0.35)
NONREVOLUTIONARY PERSONALIST LEADER 0.26* (0.13) 0.42** (0.21) 0.25* (0.13) 0.47** (0.20)
LOGGED TRADE OPENNESS 0.04 (0.06) −0.00 (0.08) 0.04 (0.06) −0.01 (0.08)
NUMBER OF NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES 0.07*** (0.02) 0.05** (0.02) 0.06*** (0.02) 0.05** (0.02)
MILITARY CAPABILITIES 7.01*** (1.59) 6.66*** (2.38) 6.89*** (1.48) 6.51*** (2.36)
NUMBER OF ALLIES 0.00 (0.01) −0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) −0.00 (0.01)
CIVIL WAR ONGOING 0.24 (0.18) 0.44** (0.19) 0.23 (0.18) 0.45** (0.19)
MAJOR POWER 0.02 (0.26) −0.34 (0.45) 0.01 (0.25) −0.33 (0.44)
YEARS SINCE LAST MID INIT. −0.39*** (0.07) −0.18*** (0.05) −0.39*** (0.07) −0.18*** (0.05)
Splines included but not reported … … … …
Constant −1.12*** (0.30) −2.25*** (0.33) −1.06*** (0.28) −2.21*** (0.32)
Observations 5,554 5,554 5,554 5,554
Notes: Models are estimated using a negative binomial model with standard errors clustered by country, and include cubic splines to control for temporal interdependence. All regime
predictor variables are lagged by one year. Unit of analysis is the country-year. Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1.
a
b
c
d
FIGURE 2. Personalist regimes ensconce revolutionary leaders
The evidence is consistent with this contention. First, recall that the analyses
shown in Tables 3 and 4 demonstrated that revolutionary leaders are indeed more
likely to initiate MIDs on an annual basis. Separate tests confirm that this finding
also applies specifically within the ten-year postrevolutionary period. Second,
Figure 2 indicates that revolutionary leaders occupy office longer into the postrevo-
lutionary period when their regime is personalist than when it is not. The unit of an-
alysis is the leader, so, for example, Mao counts as one observation. Overall, whether
or not they led a revolution, personalist leaders survive almost twice as long (9.2
years) as nonpersonalist leaders (4.8 years), a difference that is statistically significant
according to a standard t-test.61 Leaders who first come to power in the ten-year
period during or after a revolution survive in office for 10.6 years when the regime
is personalist, compared with 5.5 years when the regime is not personalist.
Conditional on having led a revolution, leaders survive for 13.2 years when the
regime is personalist and 8.0 years when the regime is not.62
To be clear, we do not argue that revolutionary personalists instigate conflict at an
increasing annual rate the longer the leader has been in office. Instead, when revolu-
tionary leaders are in office for a larger proportion of the postrevolutionary period,
they instigate more conflicts in the aggregate, based on a fairly steady (but high)
annual rate. We substantiate this empirically in the appendix. The result is a
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
greater aggregate number of MIDs in the postrevolutionary period.
61. Even if one restricts the sample only to nondemocracies (not shown in Figure 2), personalist leaders
have an average tenure of 10.3 years, compared to 6.0 years for nonpersonalists.
62. This comparison is different from the previous one because it omits leaders who came to power
within ten years of a revolution but did not lead it, and includes individuals who helped lead a revolution
even if they did not come to power right away (for example, Stalin).
Why Postrevolutionary Regime Type Matters

Having examined why states are more belligerent in the aftermath of revolution, we
finally show that our focus on personalist regimes is particularly important because
postrevolutionary governments are in fact disproportionately likely to take the
form of personalist dictatorships. Revolutions encourage the emergence of a person-
alist dictatorship for two reasons.
First, there is a selection effect: revolutions are unlikely to succeed unless they are
led by a charismatic, forceful, risk-tolerant, politically savvy, and ambitious leader,
and these are precisely the types of individuals most likely to create personalist dic-
tatorships. Compared with nonrevolutionary leaders, revolutionary leaders are there-
fore particularly likely to have the desire and political skill to create a personalist
regime in which they reign supreme.
Second, because revolutionary movements by their very nature overturn the polit-
ical institutions of the previous government, revolutionary leaders are especially
likely to be able to consolidate a personalist dictatorship. Such leaders face few, if
any, limits on their formal legal powers in the immediate aftermath of the revolution,
and therefore often have the opportunity to structure the regime as they wish.63 The
sorts of norms and rules that allowed, for example, the post-Stalin and post-Mao
Communist Parties to constrain their leaders have simply not yet developed. Thus,
the absence of preexisting institutions that might otherwise allow elites to coordinate
or share political power makes it unusually likely that leaders of postrevolutionary
governments will successfully establish personalist dictatorships, when compared
with other political settings.64
Table 5 shows a variety of ways to assess how revolutions affect the likelihood of
personalist dictatorship. First, columns (1) and (2) indicate that among the sixty-two
revolutions for which we have pre- and postrevolution regime type data,65 states are
1.4 times as likely to be personalist in the year immediately following the revolution
(47 percent) as in the year immediately preceding the revolution (34 percent). Stated
differently, twenty-nine of the sixty-two cases either installed a personalist regime, or
allowed a new personalist regime to take the place of an old one. Although simple,
this test is highly informative, because it compares each country with its prerevolu-
tionary self, and therefore controls for most other aspects of a country that could
63. Of course, not all revolutions are led by a single individual. In some cases a revolutionary group or
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
council initially holds power collectively, but the highly fluid and underinstitutionalized nature of revolu-
tionary politics typically allows a single individual to consolidate power in his/her hands and personalize
the regime, particularly compared to more stable, institutionalized settings.
64. On power-sharing in authoritarian regimes, see Magaloni 2008; Svolik 2009; and Bratton and Van de
Walle 1997.
65. There are seventy-six revolutions in our data sample as a whole, but twelve of them are not available
for this analysis due to missing data on regime type either before or after the revolution. Some of the
missing data are due to revolutions that occurred in small countries (for example, Fiji and Comoros) for
which the personalist data were not coded. In other cases, the revolution occurred at the edge of our
data sample (for example, 1946), and we lack data on the prior regime.
TABLE 5. The relationship between revolution and personalist regimes

1 2 3 4 5
One year before One year after Country-years not Country-years All
revolution revolution within within ten observations
ten years after a years after a
revolution revolution
Nonpersonalist 66% (41) 53% (33) 73% (3,912) 48% (311) 71% (4,223)
Personalist 34% (21) 47% (29) 27% (1,415) 52% (335) 29% (1,750)
Total 100% (62) 100% (62) 100% (5,327) 100% (646) 100% (5,973)
Notes: Numbers following the percentages give the number of observations. Unit of analysis is a state-year. Columns (3)
and (4) use all observations in the data set, whether or not they ever had a revolutionary government.
explain a relationship between revolution and personalism.66 Despite the small

sample size, the difference in the incidence of personalism before and after a revo-
lution is significant at the .07 level. Moreover, this analysis probably undercounts
the effect of revolution on personalism because it omits nine cases of revolution in
which we do not have prerevolution regime type data (and three cases of revolution
for which we do not have postrevolution regime type data). In the nine cases in which
we lack prerevolutionary regime type data but have postrevolution regime type data,
56 percent consolidated into personalist regimes. Columns (3) to (5) also indicate that
when looking at all of the state-year observations, personalist regimes are nearly
twice as likely to exist in the ten-year wake of a revolution (52 percent of observa-
tions) than at other times (27 percent of observations).
Overall Result: Personalist Dictatorships Account for Most Postrevolutionary

Conflict Initiations
Figure 3 shows that fully 71 percent of the MIDs instigated by states in the ten-year
period following a domestic revolution are initiated by personalist regimes. This
overall finding is driven by three factors highlighted in this article. First, revolutions
generate personalist regimes at a much higher rate than average: at least 47 percent of
revolutions have culminated in a personalist regime. Second, revolutionary leaders
tend to have higher average rates of MID initiation when the regime is personalist
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
than when it is not (H2). Third, in personalist regimes, revolutionary leaders

manage to survive in office for much longer than in nonpersonalist regimes (H3).
Together, these three factors account for the high number of international conflicts
instigated by postrevolutionary personalist regimes.
66. The patterns are even more striking if we include only states experiencing their first revolution.
FIGURE 3. The relationship between revolution, personalism, and conflict
Robustness
In Tables 1 to 4, we checked that the results were robust to alternative codings of
revolution (all revolutions, and only those that are coded as unambiguous) and differ-
ent dependent variables (all MIDs, and only those involving at least one fatality). We
also carried out the analyses using both dyadic and monadic specifications. In addi-
tion, we carried out an extensive set of further robustness tests. Replication data and
instructions, including all of the robustness checks, are available online.67
First, we verified that our use of the hybrid Weeks/GWF measure did not affect our
core results by running the same analyses using the unchanged Weeks (2012) data
rather than our hybrid measure. For Models 1 and 2 (Table 1), the coefficients
change slightly because about 17 percent of the observations are dropped because
of missing data, but the relative differences between postrevolutionary regimes
that are personalist and those that are not remain large and statistically significant
(p < .0056 and p < .0177, respectively). In Models 3 and 4, which focus on “unambig-
uous” revolutions only, the differences remain substantively large and significant at
the p < 0.0097 and p < 0.0935 levels.68
Second, we implemented a series of additional tests, including:
• Dropping some control variables (for example, the Gleditsch trade measure) and
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
adding others (for example, Polity scores).
67. See the online appendix.

68. In the monadic analyses (associated with Table 2), the p-values using the Weeks-only data are p <
0.063 (Model 1); p < 0.10 (Model 2); p < 0.076 (Model 3); and p < 0.232 (Model 4). We attribute the weak
result in the final model to the combination of a significantly reduced sample size because of missing data,
and the more restrictive definition of revolution, which reduces the amount of variation we observe.
• Dropping important countries such as China or the Soviet Union from the analysis
to ensure that influential countries were not driving the results.

• Dropping the Tanker Wars from the analysis to ensure that the results were not
driven by the large number of attacks on international shipping carried out by
Iran and Iraq during the 1980s.
• Dropping all observations associated with the founding leaders of new states,
which might be incorrectly classified as nonrevolutionary.69
• Using different thresholds for considering a regime to be personalist.
• Controlling for low-intensity civil wars.70
• Controlling for the trade dependence of Side A, rather than the lower trade de-
pendence in the dyad.
• Controlling for previous experience with democracy.
• Adding a dummy variable for the Cold War.
None of these changes altered our central findings.71

Finally, we consider whether the results hold when we restrict the analysis to only
high-fatality MIDs (in which at least twenty-five deaths occur). We again find the
same pattern, though the rarity of these events limits the degree of statistical confi-
dence in some models.72
Evaluating the Possibility of Endogeneity

A skeptical reader might ask whether there is an endogenous relationship between our
dependent variable, INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT, and our primary independent variables,
REVOLUTIONS and PERSONALIST DICTATORSHIP. Earlier, we described our measures of
revolution and personalist regime and established that there is no endogeneity intro-
duced by the coding of these variables. Here, we discuss other possible forms of
endogeneity. First, we attempted to mitigate one possible concern—that war
69. Colgan’s data focus on what some call internal revolutions, meaning those that occur within a pre-
viously defined polity, as opposed to external revolutions, meaning wars of independence or other decolo-
nization processes. It is possible that our theory also applies to external revolutions, and thus some of these
founding leaders would be misclassified as nonrevolutionary (hence the robustness check).
70. Using the PRIO civil war data set, Version 2009. See Gleditsch et al. 2002.
71. In addition, we experimented with adding country and directed-dyad fixed-effects to the analyses to
account for potential unobserved country-specific predictors of conflict. The challenge with using a fixed-
effects approach for our question, however, is that it is extremely demanding of the limited data nature has
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
provided, because the fixed-effects analyses discard all peaceful countries and dyads that never initiated an
MID. While each of the individual coefficients was significant in the fixed-effects analysis (nonpersonalist
postrevolutionary regime, personalist nonpostrevolutionary regime, and personalist postrevolutionary
regime), the differences among them are not statistically significant.
72. In the dyadic analysis, postrevolutionary personalist regimes have 1.6 and 1.4 times greater odds (all
revolutions and unambiguous revolutions) of initiating high-fatality MIDs than postrevolutionary nonper-
sonalist regimes. The result is statistically significant at the 0.044 level for the analysis of all revolutions,
though not significant at conventional levels when we consider the unambiguous revolutions only. We note
that there are only 219 of these major MID initiations, of which postrevolutionary personalists initiated
thirty and postrevolutionary nonpersonalists initiated eleven.
causes revolution73—by lagging all of the predictor variables. A second kind of endo-
geneity is more difficult to remedy: personalism might emerge in the aftermath of a

revolution because international war is anticipated in the future.74 This would be
compatible with our empirical results: international conflict follows revolution and
personalism temporally. For instance, a population located in a geographic region
that is prone to international conflicts might be fearful of being attacked, and thus
choose to put a personalist leader in power who could fend off attacks, or even act
aggressively to pursue the population’s interests.
We took three major steps to address this possibility. First, we controlled for geo-
graphic region by inserting regional dummy variables in a reanalysis of Table 1; the
results did not materially change. Second, we investigated the possibility of reverse
causation because of preexisting rivalries. The logic here is that if the old regime has
many international enemies, then perhaps personalist regimes are more likely to
emerge out of revolution in anticipation of future conflict. We tested for this possibil-
ity using data from Bennett to identify interstate rivalries, and we found no evidence
that preexisting rivalries make it more likely that a personalist regime emerges out of
a revolution.75 Third, diversion and opportunism would be most likely in the imme-
diate aftermath of the revolution (for example, years 1 to 3). We would then expect
the correlations observed in Table 1 to depend heavily on those early years after the
revolution. If, on the other hand, the nature of personalist rule (few constraints, etc.) is
most causally important, then the higher likelihood of MIDs would persist long after
the initial aftermath of the revolution. We tested this possibility by simply dropping
all observations that occur in the first three years after the revolution, and the results
do not materially change.76
Overall, these analyses suggest that endogeneity is not a major concern. Instead, it
is useful to view a revolution as a starting point: having observed a revolutionary gov-
ernment come to power, scholars and policy-makers could reasonably want to know
about its future conflict propensity. At a minimum, our results demonstrate that revo-
lutions are most dangerous for peace when they culminate in regimes with extremely
low constraints on leaders—personalist dictatorships.
73. Skocpol 1979, for instance, argues that revolutions are often preceded by a failed outcome in a pre-
ceding war.
74. One additional possibility is that the revolution itself might occur because a country expects to fight
an international war in the future, and wants a new regime to fight the war. However, we do not consider
this scenario very likely; it is hard to find any modern examples of this kind of political behavior.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
75. Bennett 1998. We found that for revolutions that led to a new personalist dictatorship (in other words,
where one had not existed before the revolution), only 17 percent (three out of eighteen) had an ongoing
interstate rivalry. This is lower than the rivalry rate among revolutions that led to the end of a personalist
dictatorship, which was 50 percent (three out of six). For the sake of thoroughness, we also used the rivalry
data from Klein, Goertz, and Diehl 2006 and found similar results—again, no evidence that preexisting
rivalries lead to personalist regimes.
76. We also constructed a table that shows the annual rate of MID initiation for each of the ten years after
a revolution, for both personalist and nonpersonalist regimes. This table (Table A2) is in the Appendix, and
shows that the rate of MID initiation continues to be high long after the initial one to three-year period fol-
lowing a revolution.
Discussion and Conclusion

Scholars have long recognized that in the wake of domestic revolution, states are
much more likely to become involved in international conflict. But although a
growing body of research has found support for this general empirical relationship,
there is much less understanding of the great variation in the aggressiveness of post-
revolutionary regimes and the mechanisms driving it.
This study provides part of an explanation. In contrast to previous work on revo-
lutions and conflict that focused on international systemic factors, we argue that the
leaders and domestic regime structures of revolutionary governments play a key role
in explaining their strong propensity to initiate conflict. Postrevolutionary states are
more belligerent when they result in personalist regimes than when they result in
other kinds of domestic political systems. This is both because personalist regimes
feature fewer constraints on leaders and because personalist regimes tend to allow
belligerent revolutionary leaders to survive in office for a greater proportion of the
postrevolutionary period. Our findings are especially important because revolution-
ary movements have a strong tendency to result in personalist dictatorships.
Indeed, whereas only 27 percent of country-years (1946 to 2000) were under person-
alist rule when a country had not had a recent revolution, almost half of postrevolu-
tionary country-years were personalist dictatorships. Revolution appears to be a
breeding ground for personalist rule.
This link between revolution and personalist dictatorship is an important part of the
reason that revolutionary regimes are so belligerent. Although both personalism and
revolution independently increase the likelihood that a state initiates international
conflict, revolutions that install a personalist dictator appear to generate significantly
more international conflict than those that do not. The empirical results are stronger in
the dyadic analyses than the monadic ones, but overall the evidence points to a sig-
nificant difference between personalist and non-personalist regimes following a revo-
lution. In sum, scholars who wish to understand why some countries are more
conflict-prone than others must not overlook the importance of domestic political
revolutions and the leaders and institutions that they produce.
Our analysis has a number of implications for future research. Most generally, our
findings cast further doubt on the wisdom of treating states as black boxes and ignor-
ing domestic political factors.77 A large literature has found that domestic political
institutions affect leaders’ policy choices, and more recently, scholars have (re)turned
to the importance of individual leaders.78 We extend these insights by arguing that
revolutions tend to usher specific types of leaders into office, and often result in po-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000307
litical institutions that place few constraints on those leaders. Future research might
study how institutions and political events empower certain kinds of leaders,
which may matter for a variety of policy questions.
77. See Fearon 1995; and Slantchev 2003.

78. See Saunders 2011; Chiozza and Goemans 2011; Colgan 2013b; and Horowitz and Stam 2014.
This study’s findings therefore have considerable implications for questions

beyond the initiation of international conflict. First, revolutions and regime type
may be important for other security-related issues such as the likelihood of economic
sanctions and the transnational nature of the civil wars that often follow revolutions
(for example, Iran in the early 1980s).79 Second, our conclusions are relevant to the
study of a range of political economy variables, from exchange rate regimes to mil-
itary expenditures, which can be shaped by revolutions or authoritarian regime
type.80 Understanding that revolutions select for certain kinds of leaders, and that
revolutions appear to frequently result in personalist regimes, may therefore shed
light on causal mechanisms in international political economy. Third, revolutions
often produce a period of contested domestic legitimacy and human rights abuses
even as constitutions, courts, and other institutions are redesigned; we demonstrate
that the regime established in that period sets a pattern for interactions with outsiders,
which may stymie the efforts of international organizations.81
Of course, all of these issues raise the question of why some revolutions lead to
personalist dictatorships whereas others lead to less centralized forms of government.
Researchers would do well to explore whether structural or historical factors make the
emergence of personalist regimes more likely, and what strategies emerging dictators
use to centralize their rule. Understanding the determinants of the postrevolutionary
form of government may generate significant policy insights, especially for policy-
makers seeking to intervene in an ongoing revolution and alter its course toward a
preferred outcome.
Supplementary Material
Replication data and an online appendix are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/

S0020818314000307.
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Revolution, Personalist Dictatorships, and International Conflict

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Revolution, Personalist Dictatorships, and

Jeff D. Colgan and Jessica L.P. Weeks

International Organization 69, Winter 2015, pp. 163–194

able to turn to violence internationally. When revolutions culminate in personalist

resulted in personalist dictatorships.

2. See, for instance, Gurr 1970; and Skocpol 1979.

Theory: Revolutions, Personalist Regimes, and International

Political Institutions and Conflict Initiation in the Aftermath of Revolutions

distinction is whether the regime—democratic or not—features institutions that

10. See Colgan 2013a and 2013b.

allow domestic political actors to constrain their leaders, or whether it is a personalist

dictatorship in which such institutions are largely absent.14

14. See Weeks 2012 and 2014.

Personalist Regimes Provide Fewer Constraints on Conflict Initiation

Personalist Institutions Ensconce Belligerent Revolutionary Leaders

alist dictatorships, the original revolutionary leader is more likely to be replaced by

tional violence in the same way.21

Why Do Revolutionary Personalists Not Deter Conflict?

H1: In states that recently experienced a revolution, personalist dictatorship is asso-

Does the Nonrandom Occurrence of Personalism Complicate the Analysis?

nor that external conflict is concentrated in the immediate aftermath of a revolution,

when the postrevolutionary regime type is being selected.

Data and Methods

26. Gleditsch and Ward 2006.

(replacement of the monarchy by a clerical Supreme Leader), the status of women

chies.35 These indicators of personalism are coded independently of a leader’s subse-

Dependent Variables and Model Specification

41. Weeks 2012.

are significantly more likely to become involved in MIDs.52 We therefore include

52. Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008.

TABLE 1. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (dyadic)

(1) (2) (3) (4)

58. Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 2003.

revolutionary nonpersonalists, because of uncertainty around the other values of pre-

FIGURE 1. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation: Hypothetical sce-

TABLE 2. Revolutions, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (monadic)

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Why Do Personalist Postrevolutionary Regimes Fight More?

strictive “unambiguous” definition of revolutionary leaders.

TABLE 3. Revolutionary leaders, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (dyadic)

(1) (2) (3) (4)

TABLE 4. Revolutionary leaders, personalist regimes, and MID initiation (monadic)

(1) (2) (3) (4)

FIGURE 2. Personalist regimes ensconce revolutionary leaders

greater aggregate number of MIDs in the postrevolutionary period.

Why Postrevolutionary Regime Type Matters

TABLE 5. The relationship between revolution and personalist regimes

explain a relationship between revolution and personalism.66 Despite the small

Overall Result: Personalist Dictatorships Account for Most Postrevolutionary

than when it is not (H2). Third, in personalist regimes, revolutionary leaders

FIGURE 3. The relationship between revolution, personalism, and conflict

adding others (for example, Polity scores).

67. See the online appendix.

to ensure that influential countries were not driving the results.

None of these changes altered our central findings.71

Evaluating the Possibility of Endogeneity

geneity is more difficult to remedy: personalism might emerge in the aftermath of a

Discussion and Conclusion

77. See Fearon 1995; and Slantchev 2003.

This study’s findings therefore have considerable implications for questions

Replication data and an online appendix are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/

Studies Quarterly 50 (4):755–79.

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