Mass Revolutions vs. Elite Coups

Most of the contemporary autocracies were not replaced by a democracy after their collapse. Instead, they were more likely to be replaced by a new autocracy headed by the group that initiated the autocrat’s overthrow. The paper provides a theory of authoritarian breakdown emphasizing the relationship between an autocracy’s economic performance and the probability that it will be replaced by a democracy and the probability that it will be replaced by another autocracy. Our theory is based on the interaction between three political classes: the dictator, who is interested in surviving in power; the elites, who are interested in overthrowing the dictator and in establishing a new autocratic regime wherein they enjoy more power; and the masses, who are interested in overthrowing the dictator and in establishing a democracy. The theory predicts that mass revolutions are likely in bad economic periods, authoritarian stability in good economic periods, and, surprisingly, coups in normal economic periods, not in bad ones. This prediction still holds when we extend our model to an incomplete information environment allowing the dictator to hold less accurate information about his own vulnerability than the elites do. We conclude by showing that this prediction is consistent with available data on authoritarian breakdowns from 1960 2000.