Somewhere Between Mauritania and Portugal: Possible Trajectories of the Putin Regime Through the Lens of Comparative Data

Regimes and wars

A substantial body of academic research has explored how wars shape political development and political systems. One popular perspective today is that wars are often linked to processes of democratisation – or may even provoke them (→ Ferejohn, Rosenbluth: Forged Through Fire). For example, it was during or after the First and Second World Wars that Western democracies significantly expanded electoral rights. Of course, war can also lead to greater centralisation of power and repression, but that is by no means the only – or inevitable – scenario.

What does comparative data tell us about how political regimes change during and after wars? According to V-Dem classifications, the average autocracy experiences a modest but consistent increase in its democracy score during peacetime. During wartime, there is no clear increase. On average, from 1900 to 2015, authoritarian countries rose on the democracy scale by 2.3 percentage points every five years while at peace. In contrast, the rate of democratization slowed during wartime and was not statistically significant. However, the postwar period tells a different story: in the five years following the end of a war, the average autocracy moved up about 5 percentage points on the democracy scale.

Thus, authoritarian regimes tend to become somewhat more democratic after a war – but actual outcomes depend on many other factors. One of those is a change in leadership. If the leader of an autocracy is replaced after a war, the country's democracy score increases by more than 7 points on average over the next five years. If the leader stays, the increase is smaller – a little less than 5 points on average. Another relevant factor is the country’s income level. The data show that in countries with a GDP per capita of $4,000 or higher, leadership change is associated with even greater democratic reform. However, if the leader remains in power, a higher income level and overall economic progress have no significant effect on democratisation.

These observations raise the question: how does the outcome of a war affect an authoritarian leader’s chances of staying in power? Data on the fate of authoritarian leaders after wars since 1900 show that the odds of a leader remaining in power for at least four years are higher if their country won the war than if it lost it. That’s not particularly surprising. What is unexpected, however, is that when the outcome of the war is ambiguous, the leader’s chances of staying in power are actually even higher than in the case of a 'victory.' In other words, the absence of a clear win typically does not deal a serious blow to an authoritarian leader.

The leader’s tenure may also matter: those who had been in power longer at the end of a war were more likely to survive politically than those who had only recently taken office – regardless of how the war ended.

There has also been some change over time. Since 1946, the chances of authoritarian leaders retaining power after a war have in general been higher than they were before World War II. Today, most authoritarian leaders survive in power at least four years after a war, regardless of the outcome. But survival is more likely in the case of victory, and less likely in the case of defeat. In case of defeat, the chances of survival are only slightly lower than for leaders who did not go through a war at all.

Table 1. Average total change in electoral democracy score, 1900-2015, in autocracies during:

While we lack the tools and sufficient data to predict the exact course of events, the evidence suggests that the probability of democratization increases after a war — particularly when it is accompanied by a leadership change and higher levels of economic development. Conversely, the only factor found to significantly reduce a leader’s chances of remaining in power is a clear military defeat, and even then, the effect is relatively modest in the post-war period.

Table 2. Percentage of authoritarian leaders still in office four years after the end of war, 1900-2015

Personalist dictatorships in comparative perspective

When asking what type of political regime Vladimir Putin has created in Russia, most observers would likely agree that it is a dictatorship. But what kind? Understanding the specific brand of dictatorship is crucial, as it enables us — drawing on comparative data — to make informed assumptions about how the regime might evolve, and to assess which scenarios are more or less likely.

Autocracies can be distinguished on several dimensions. Fifty years ago, it was customary to focus on the extent of control. Authoritarian regimes tolerated some limited pluralism while totalitarian ones aimed for a more complete penetration and atomization of society. Much more recently, Sergei Guriev and I drew a contrast between two methods of rule (→ Guriev, Treisman: Spin Dictators). What we call “fear dictators” intimidate the population into obedience, using violent repression to silence opponents. By contrast, “spin dictators” pretend to be democratic and manipulate information to project an image of competence and commitment to the public good.

Another approach that has been influential in political science is to classify autocracies based on who rules—or, to put it another way, who originally seized power. Barbara Geddes and her co-authors distinguish between military regimes run by juntas of officers, one-party regimes headed by party leaders, monarchies under monarchs, and personalist dictatorships built around a single, powerful individual (→ Geddes, Wright, Frantz: How Dictatorships Work). From this perspective, Putin’s regime represents a classic case of a personalist dictator. Russia’s president is almost completely unconstrained by any political party, military clique, independent bureaucracy, or other elite structure. To understand his behavior and predict his next moves, scholars often look to the patterns exhibited by other personalist dictatorships.  

What features are characteristic of such dictatorships, to what extent do they apply to Putin’s system, and what do they tell us about possible scenarios for its evolution?

In domestic governance, personalist regimes tend to suffer from information problems and flawed decision-making processes. In military or single-party regimes, collective bodies or institutional structures often act as filters or checks on the supreme leader’s ideas. Even monarchs may rely on traditional institutions and aristocratic elites for counsel, and such institutions may enable those elites to coordinate to restrain the leader. The legitimacy of personalist dictators rests solely on the demonstration of their superiority over others, which is why such systems of one-man rule tend to gradually replace independent voices with a chorus of sycophants. Personalist dictators suppress or weaken political parties, independent media, economic interest groups, and civil society institutions.

Possibly due to these defects in decision-making, the economic policies of personalist regimes are typically less effective. Joseph Wright (2008) showed that investment and economic growth in personalist dictatorships are, on average, lower than in other types of dictatorships (→ Wright: Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?). This finding is supported by more recent data. However, the causality is not completely clear. My analysis suggests that personalist regimes invest less simply because they tend to be poorer, rather than because of some direct consequence of personalism. 

If we look at Russia under Putin from 2000 to 2019, it is close to the average for personalist dictatorships and shows worse outcomes compared to military regimes and even party-based ones (such as China).

Table 3: Economic performance in dictatorships, 1946-2010, %

In addition to decision-making issues, personalist dictatorships are considered particularly brutal and unpredictable. It is believed that they rely more heavily on repression than other types of authoritarian regimes (→ Frantz, Kendall-Taylor, Wright, Xu: Personalisation of Power and Repression in Dictatorships). On the international stage, personalist dictators are perceived as particularly aggressive. Their behavior beyond their borders is “more erratic and aggressive” than that of their peers, note Geddes and her co-authors in the aforementioned work (see also → Weeks: Dictators at War and Peace). In this context, Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is often seen as a natural outgrowth of a personalist dictatorship.

Such a record of external aggression and internal violence is thought to render personalist dictators especially vulnerable to retribution after leaving office. They are believed to be more likely to be exiled, imprisoned or executed after leaving office (→ Geddes, Wright, Frantz: How Dictatorships Work; Debs, Goemans: Regime Type, the Fate of Leaders, and War). Moreover, if they lose power, their regimes are less likely to transition to democracy--although after the Cold War, the probability of such transitions has increased somewhat. The 'scorched earth' tactics they often apply to their inner circles and political elites leave behind very little “human infrastructure”: the “systematic elimination of politically talented potential rivals reduces the quality of the pool from which new leaders can come.”  Geddes and her co-authors (in the aforementioned book) even caution against foreign interventions aimed at toppling personalist tyrants: 'Such dictators may be hated and incompetent, and they may have committed horrific human rights abuses, but deposing them may… make the average citizen of the countries they have ruled worse off.'

In many respects, Putin’s regime fits this description—and, consequently, the data seem to imply a bleak outlook for Russia’s future.

Level of repressiveness and likelihood of transition in personalist regimes

However, a few caveats are needed here. First, the statistical data on personalist dictatorships is not always completely consistent with what is believed about these regimes. Second, Russia under Putin differs in many ways from most other personalist dictatorships, which limits the extent to which conclusions drawn from comparative analysis can be applied.

For example, the evidence that personalist dictatorships are more repressive than other types of dictatorships is not entirely conclusive. Although it’s easy to misinterpret, Erica Frantz and her co-authors, in the work mentioned above, do not actually show that personalist dictatorships are, on average, more repressive than other regime types – but rather that all dictatorships become more repressive as they become more personalist in nature.

Indeed, the available data do not suggest that personalist dictatorships are significantly more repressive than other regimes. The V-Dem team publishes an index of political violence by country and year, based on expert assessments. If we look at the period from 1946 to 2010 and consider all regimes that Barbara Geddes and her co-authors classified as personalist dictatorships and compare them to other types (excluding hybrid and transitional regimes), it turns out that the highest average level of political violence was not in personalist regimes, but in military ones.

V-Dem’s methods of measurement, based on expert assessments, are difficult to verify or validate. For the book 'Spin Dictators', we attempted to collect more objective data on observable indicators of political violence. For each leader in a non-democratic state between 1946 and 2015, we compiled estimates of the annual number of political killings carried out by the state and the peak number of political prisoners. Personalist dictatorships, although far from humane, did not top the rankings in terms of repressiveness based on this analysis. On average, military dictatorships had more political prisoners, and one-party regimes committed more political killings.

Of course, nearly all data on political repression suffer from a significant degree of approximation and a high likelihood of error. More complex models might reveal a connection between personalist dictatorships and increased levels of violence. However, at least at first glance, the available data do not confirm this. While all regimes tend to become more repressive as personalist control increases, other types of dictatorships still show even higher levels of violence on average than the average personalist regime.

This conclusion fits well within the Russian context. The Kremlin has become significantly more repressive in recent years as Putin has further removed the constraints on his personal power. However, the level of political repression, the number of prisoners, and the number of political killings in Russia remain lower than in many military and one-party dictatorships of the 20th century. From 2000 to 2015, this gap was even more pronounced. One could say that since 2015, Putin has been moving toward the average level of repressiveness for personalist dictatorships.

Another key factor, though, is education. Across all types of dictatorships, the level of repression using V-DEM’s measure tends to be lower in countries with higher levels of education. Thus, the current regime can be viewed as less repressive than the average personalist dictatorship, but more brutal than would be expected given the country’s level of education.

Common assumptions about the likely evolution of a regime after a dictator leaves power also require caveats. The comparative data available to us do not support the previously stated conclusion that personalist dictatorships are the least likely to transition to democracy. Using the Geddes et al. data, I find that within five years after a leader’s departure, democracies emerged in 10% of monarchies, 15% of one-party dictatorships, and 22% of personalist dictatorships. The highest figure (38%) belongs to military regimes, whose leaders typically have the option of safely returning to the barracks.

An Atypical Dictatorship: Features and Implications

Although these comparative statistics provide valuable benchmarks, one might still wonder how useful they are for understanding present-day Russia. On consideration, certain limitations become clear. 

The fact is, Russia under Vladimir Putin is an extremely unusual personalist dictatorship. If we look at the typical profile of a personalist authoritarian regime, we find that such regimes usually appear in poor and economically underdeveloped countries. According to the Maddison Project Database 2020, from 1946 to 2010 the average per capita income in personalist dictatorships was only $3,455 (at purchasing power parity and 2011 prices). In contrast, Russia’s per capita GDP was $12,391 in 2000 and $24,948 in 2019. In addition, Russia in the early 21st century is a significantly more educated country than the 'normal' personalist dictatorship. By 2010, more than a quarter of Russia’s working-age population had higher education, while the average for personalist dictatorships between 1946 and 2010 was only about 2%. Finally, another distinction is that by the time Putin came to power, Russia already had some experience with multiparty and relatively competitive elections.

Thus, Russia is at the very least a highly exceptional personalist dictatorship, which means that the expectations we may have about the evolution of an average personalist regime may not be applicable in this case.

Table 4. Comparative economic performance of personalist dictatorships and Russia

The fate of dictators after leaving office may also differ in wealthier countries. If we compare all dictators for whom post-tenure outcomes are known, personalist regimes indeed show the highest likelihood of the dictator being killed or imprisoned soon after stepping down – 32% in personalist regimes, compared to 26% for military rulers, 21% for monarchs, and 18% for single-party leaders. However, if we consider only those dictators who ruled in countries with a GDP per capita above $4,000 prior to leaving office, the picture changes: only 20% of personalist dictators in such countries were killed or imprisoned – a smaller percentage than among monarchs and military dictators. In other words, the post-tenure prospects for personalist dictators are significantly better in wealthy countries than in poor ones, and the likelihood of a transition to democracy in such cases is also quite substantial.

A higher level of economic development does not eliminate the usual decisionmaking problems and information distortions of personalism. I am not aware of quantitative indicators regarding the prevalence of sycophants, echo chamber effects, overconfidence, or decision-making inefficiency in rich versus poor dictatorships – but scattered evidence suggests that these effects manifest themselves in both types. This certainly corresponds to the widely held view of the information environment surrounding Putin. As noted by Michael McFaul and Robert Person, Kremlin insiders maintain 'their privileged positions by telling Putin the things he wants to hear' (→ McFaul, Person: Why Putin Invaded Ukraine). Moreover, as previously mentioned, economic growth rates are indeed lower in both rich and poor personalist dictatorships, indicating low decision-making efficiency. In this regard, Russia’s indicators are consistent with expectations.

Advanced personalist regimes: Libya or Portugal?

The scenarios for a 'post-Putin' Russia will depend on the context in which the transfer of power occurs. The variety of factors that influence this process makes prediction especially difficult. However, these observations at least suggest that the personalist nature of the current regime should not necessarily provoke the degree of pessimism that may arise from a superficial reading of the data. Other careful analysts agree, noting that Russia has an atypical profile for a personalist dictatorship. For example, Timothy Frye observes: 'To be sure, no two personalist autocracies are alike. Russia is better educated and wealthier, and has a larger footprint in global politics than most personalist autocracies.' 

This raises questions about the usefulness of comparing Russia to the average personalistic dictatorship. For instance, the median personalist dictator since 1946 was Sid’Ahmed Taya, who took power in Mauritania in 1984, when the country’s GDP per capita was under $2,000. His ousting in 2005 did not result in democratization. But how relevant are such cases, given that they involve countries with vastly lower levels of wealth, education, and development? 

Personalistic dictatorships do rarely give way to democracy – but that is largely because most of them are very poor, with low education levels. Although the probability of democratisation — if and when a regime change occurs — is still significantly higher for military regimes, the likelihood of democracy emerging in personalist regimes increases and is actually greater than 50% for those with annual income above $5,000. This suggests that the probability of democratisation likely depends as much or more on the level of economic development as on the specific type of authoritarian regime.

Table 5: What follows after regime falls, 1946-2010, %

Figure 1. Probability of autocracy to electoral democracy transition as a function of GDP per capita size, 1900-2015

Within the class of wealthy personalist dictatorships, two types can be identified. Two examples of personalist dictators whose countries had income levels comparable to Putin’s Russia are Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan – in both cases, the source of wealth is oil. Other examples include the postwar dictators of the Iberian Peninsula: Franco, Arias Navarro, and – during the year preceding the return to democracy – Adolfo Suárez in Spain, as well as Caetano and Costa Gomes in Portugal, whose regimes reached per capita income levels of about $11,000 to $15,000.

Table 6: The most developed personalist dictatorships

A question for those inclined to speculate is the following: what does contemporary Russian society more closely resemble – Gaddafi’s Libya or the Iberian Peninsula in the final years of its dictatorships in the early 1970s? 

Russia, like Libya, possesses vast hydrocarbon reserves – although its per capita oil revenues are significantly lower. Still, optimists may see greater similarities with the countries of the Iberian Peninsula. Despite the fascist regimes’ efforts to reshape society, destroy leftist parties, and impose reactionary ideological frameworks – remember, for example, Franco’s delusional declarations about the threat of global Freemasonry! – both Iberian dictatorships eventually collapsed. Demands for greater freedom, coming both from within the elites and from external influences, proved to be a powerful force, along with the appeal of returning to an open world. After the country took important steps in this direction, exiles returned from abroad to help rebuild civil society, which had been devastated by decades of repression. Although the nature of Putin’s regime and its current trajectory may seem to render that outcome unlikely, comparative data suggests that we should not rule such a development out.