In nonviolent mass protests against dictators, the military is the ultimate arbiter of regime survival. Drawing on a global survey of forty “dictator’s endgames” from 1946 to 2014, this essay examines how dictators and their militaries respond to popular protests, and what the consequences are in terms of the survival of authoritarianism or the emergence of democracy. The authors argue that the type of the authoritarian regime and the military’s legacy of human rights violations go a long way in explaining whether a military will employ violence against the protesters or defect from the ruling coalition.
About the Authors
Aurel Croissant
Aurel Croissant is professor of political science at Heidelberg University. In 2017, he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.
Advanced AI faces twin perils: the collapse of democratic control over key state functions or the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few. Avoiding these…
The recent global progress of democracy has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. What are the implications for the quality of democracy and for its ability to endure?
The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the corrupt and rotten core of the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorial rule over China. It is a moment of revelation. Can it also become one…