Making Autocracy Work

One of the key goals of political economy is to understand how in-stitutional arrangements shape policy outcomes. This paper studiesa comparatively neglected aspect of this - the forces that shape het-erogeneous performance of autocracies. The paper develops a simpletheoretical model of accountability in the absence of regularized elec-tions. Leadership turnover is managed by a selectorate - a group ofindividuals on whom the leader depends to hold onto power. Goodpolicy is institutionalized when the selectorate removes poorly per-forming leaders from office. This requires that the selectorate's holdon power is not too dependent on a specifi…c leader being in office. Thepaper looks empirically at spells of autocracy to establish cases whereit has been successful according to various objective criteria. We usethese case studies to identify the selectorate in specifi…c instances ofsuccessful autocracy. We also show that, consistent with the theory,leadership turnover in successful autocracies is higher than in unsuc-cessful autocracies. Finally, we show by exploiting leadership deathsfrom natural causes, that successful autocracies appear to have foundways for selectorates to nominate successors without losing power - afeature which is also consistent with the theoretical approach.[...]