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

Authoritarian dominant parties are said to ensure elite loyalty by providing elites with regularized opportunities for career advancement. This paper uses data on the distribution of leadership posts in Russia’s regional legislatures (1999-2010) to conduct the first systematic test of this...

Does online social media undermine authoritarianism? We examine the conditions under which online social networks can increase public awareness of electoral fraud in non-democracies. We argue that a given online social network will only increase political awareness if it is first politicized by...

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

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

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

A number of studies show that autocracies with ruling parties are more long-lived than those without. Much of the literature attributes this to party institutionalization at the elite-level, which is said to reduce elite schisms. Others point to the ability of grassroots party organizations to...

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

Elections are among the most important and least understood institutions in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Theoretically, electoral authoritarian regimes should have an informational advantage that makes them more robust than other types of authoritarian regimes, but much empirical evidence...