Elizabeth Frantz
Biographic Data
| ID | 227988 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Frantz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Frantz |
| SIGNATURE | FRANTZ E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0021-1628 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Ruling Party Personalism and Central Bank Independence
Democratic Backsliding and Endogenous Polarization
Leading accounts of contemporary democratic decline emphasize the role of polarization in enabling incumbent governments to dismantle democracy from within. This study offers a fuller portrait of this relationship, illustrating how incumbent attacks on democracy themselves produce polarization. We theorize a micro-level link between democratic backsliding events, elite opinion formation, and voter polarization to explain how incumbent efforts to …
Unpacking political parties in autocracies: What Party Structures Reveal About Party Strategies and Patterns of Regime Survival
The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within
Since the end of World War II, democracies typically fell apart by coup d’état or through force. Today, however, they are increasingly eroding at the hands of democratically elected incumbents, who seize control by slowly chipping away at democratic institutions. To better understand these developments, this book examines the role of personalist political parties, or parties that exist primarily to further their leader’s career as opposed to prom…
After Putin: Lessons from Autocratic Leadership Transitions
Personalist ruling parties in democracies
This study introduces a new data set on personalism in ruling parties across the world’s democracies. We conceptualize party personalism as the extent to which parties are vehicles to advance leaders’ personal political careers such that the leader has more control over the party than do other senior party elites and compare this concept with related ones. After describing the measurement strategy and demonstrating measurement reliability and val…
How Personalist Politics Is Changing Democracies
Observers have expressed concerns that democratic politics is growing more personalistic. The absence of cross-national time-series data capturing personalism in democracies, however, has made it difficult to assess the validity of these observations. This study fills that gap. It covers a time-varying index of personalism in the world's democracies from 1991 to 2020. The index combines original data measuring indicators of personalism with exist…
Personalization of Power and Repression in Dictatorships
This article uses new data measuring gradations of personalism in authoritarian regimes to evaluate the relationship between concentration of power and patterns of repression. It shows that the personalization of power in dictatorships leads to an increase in repression and, thus, a decrease in respect for human rights. Given the rise in personalism we are witnessing globally, the findings of this study imply that repression is likely to become m…
Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship
Elections and Capital Flight: A Response to Goldsmith
In a recent study, I show that capital flight follows an electoral cycle, such that it was higher in competitive election years than otherwise. This effect decreased as natural resource wealth increased. Goldsmith (forthcoming) reexamines the impact of competitive elections on capital flight using new data sources for both and finds little evidence of a relationship. In this response, I show that the primary reason that Goldsmith unearths mixed e…
The legacy of military dictatorship: Explaining violent crime in democracies
Violent crime rates have increased dramatically in many parts of the world in recent decades, with homicides now outpacing deaths due to interstate or civil wars. Considerable variations exist across democracies in their violent crime rates, however: different autocratic experiences help explain why this is the case. Democracies emerging from military rule have higher homicide rates because they typically inherit militarized police forces. This c…
Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know®
Despite the spread of democratization following the Cold War’s end, all signs indicate that we are currently seeing a resurgence of authoritarianism. Around forty percent of the world’s people live under some form of authoritarian rule, and authoritarian regimes govern about a third of the world’s countries. In Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to KnowRG, Erica Frantz guides us through today’s authoritarian wave, explaining how it came to be …
How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse
This accessible volume shines a light on how autocracy really works by providing basic facts about how post-World War II dictatorships achieve, retain, and lose power. The authors present an evidence-based portrait of key features of the authoritarian landscape with newly collected data about 200 dictatorial regimes. They examine the central political processes that shape the policy choices of dictatorships and how they compel reaction from polic…
Authoritarian Politics: Trends and Debates
In the past two decades, the field of authoritarian politics has grown substantially. This commentary surveys the major findings in the field, how it is has evolved, and key debates that have emerged in response
Elections and Capital Flight: Evidence from Africa
The developing world currently loses more money via capital flight than it receives through foreign aid and foreign direct investment combined. This "leakage" of capital produces many pernicious consequences for developing economies. What factors influence capital flight? I argue that it follows an electoral cycle. Greater uncertainty prior to elections incentivizes those in the business sector to take their money elsewhere. Using data from thirt…
Voter turnout and opposition performance in competitive authoritarian elections
Are coups good for democracy? A response to Miller (2016)
This article responds to “Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy?” (Miller MK (2016) Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy? Research and Politics 3(4): ) We make clear to readers that Miller (2016) re-reports findings that we originally reported in the Appendix to our original article. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different estimators and re-state Miller’s main point with a visual presentation of how regime-case and co…
How oil income and missing hydrocarbon rents data influence autocratic survival: A response to Lucas and Richter (2016)
This paper re-examines the findings from a recently published study on hydrocarbon rents and autocratic survival by Lucas and Richter (LR hereafter). LR introduce a new data set on hydrocarbon rents and use it to examine the link between oil income and autocratic survival. Employing a placebo test, we show that the authors’ strategy for dealing with missingness in the new hydrocarbon rents data set – filling in missing data with zeros – creates b…
The Global Rise of Personalized Politics: It's Not Just Dictators Anymore
No one would dispute that power in Russia today lies firmly in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. But his command over the political system was not always so sweeping. When Putin assumed power
The Evolution of Autocracy: Why Authoritarianism Is Becoming More Formidable
The twenty-first-century autocrat is not the same as his Cold War predecessor
Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships
Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personali…
Countering Coups: Leadership Succession Rules in Dictatorships
Paradoxically, many dictators agree to institutionalized succession rules even though these rules could regulate their removal from office. This study shows that succession rules, like other pseudo-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes, provide survival benefits for dictators. Specifically, they protect dictators from coup attempts because they reduce elites’ incentives to try to grab power preemptively via forceful means. By assuaging…
Are coups good for democracy
A number of recent studies argue that coups can help usher in democracy. We examine this relationship empirically by looking at the political regimes that follow coups in autocracies, as well as the level of repression against citizens. We find that, though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence
When Dictators Die
Eleven of the world’s 55 dictators are 69 years old or older and are in varying stages of declining health. At first blush, this paints a hopeful picture for democracy scholars who have documented a slow but steady authoritarian resurgence. Yet this article reveals that the advanced age of 20 percent of the world’s autocrats offers little hope for a reversal of this trend. Rather than creating a space for change, the passing of these leaders will…
The Legacy of Dictatorship for Democratic Parties in Latin America
When dictators seize power, they face a choice about how to deal with the pre-existing political parties. Some simply repress all parties, some ally themselves with one of the traditional parties and use it to help organize their rule, and others repress pre-existing parties but create a new party to support themselves. This study examines how these decisions affect the subsequent development of party systems after redemocratization. Looking at t…
Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set
When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. Much scholarship exists on the first kind of transition, but little on transitions from one autocra…
Oil and Autocratic Regime Survival
This article uncovers a new mechanism linking oil wealth to autocratic regime survival: the investigation tests whether increases in oil wealth improve the survival of autocracies by lowering the chances of democratization, reducing the risk of transition to subsequent dictatorship, or both. Using a new measure of autocratic durability shows that, once models allow for unit effects, oil wealth promotes autocratic survival by lowering the risk of …
Military Rule
Military rule as a form of autocratic governance can mean either rule by a military strongman unconstrained by other officers or rule by a group of high-ranking officers who can limit the dictator's discretion. We label the latter form a military regime. Both military strongmen and military regimes are more likely to commit human rights abuses and become embroiled in civil wars than are civilian dictatorships. The behavior of strongmen diverges f…
A dictator's toolkit: Understanding how co-optation affects repression in autocracies
A dictator's motivation for using repression is fairly clear, but why some repress more than others or favor particular types of repressive strategies is less obvious. Using statistical analysis, this article demonstrates that a dictator's reliance on co-optation fundamentally alters how repression is used. Specifically, it finds that co-optation through the use of political parties and a legislature creates incentives that lead dictators to decr…
Countering Coups: Leadership Succession Rules in Dictatorships
Paradoxically, many dictators agree to institutionalized succession rules even though these rules could regulate their removal from office. This study shows that succession rules, like other pseudo-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes, provide survival benefits for dictators. Specifically, they protect dictators from coup attempts because they reduce elites’ incentives to try to grab power preemptively via forceful means. By assuaging…
Personalization of Power and Repression in Dictatorships
This article uses new data measuring gradations of personalism in authoritarian regimes to evaluate the relationship between concentration of power and patterns of repression. It shows that the personalization of power in dictatorships leads to an increase in repression and, thus, a decrease in respect for human rights. Given the rise in personalism we are witnessing globally, the findings of this study imply that repression is likely to become m…
How Personalist Politics Is Changing Democracies
Observers have expressed concerns that democratic politics is growing more personalistic. The absence of cross-national time-series data capturing personalism in democracies, however, has made it difficult to assess the validity of these observations. This study fills that gap. It covers a time-varying index of personalism in the world's democracies from 1991 to 2020. The index combines original data measuring indicators of personalism with exist…
Are coups good for democracy
A number of recent studies argue that coups can help usher in democracy. We examine this relationship empirically by looking at the political regimes that follow coups in autocracies, as well as the level of repression against citizens. We find that, though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence
The Global Rise of Personalized Politics: It's Not Just Dictators Anymore
No one would dispute that power in Russia today lies firmly in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. But his command over the political system was not always so sweeping. When Putin assumed power
How Autocracies Fall
The article discusses the failures of autocratic governments and dictators in relation to mass uprisings and military coups. Topics include international cooperation in promoting democratization of autocracies, the effectiveness of revolts and revolutions, and the impact of violence on potential democratization after a regime change. Also addressed are the role of regime elites in the stability of autocracies, the role of mass demonstrations in p…
Personalist ruling parties in democracies
This study introduces a new data set on personalism in ruling parties across the world’s democracies. We conceptualize party personalism as the extent to which parties are vehicles to advance leaders’ personal political careers such that the leader has more control over the party than do other senior party elites and compare this concept with related ones. After describing the measurement strategy and demonstrating measurement reliability and val…
Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships
Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personali…
When Dictators Die
Eleven of the world’s 55 dictators are 69 years old or older and are in varying stages of declining health. At first blush, this paints a hopeful picture for democracy scholars who have documented a slow but steady authoritarian resurgence. Yet this article reveals that the advanced age of 20 percent of the world’s autocrats offers little hope for a reversal of this trend. Rather than creating a space for change, the passing of these leaders will…
The Legacy of Dictatorship for Democratic Parties in Latin America
When dictators seize power, they face a choice about how to deal with the pre-existing political parties. Some simply repress all parties, some ally themselves with one of the traditional parties and use it to help organize their rule, and others repress pre-existing parties but create a new party to support themselves. This study examines how these decisions affect the subsequent development of party systems after redemocratization. Looking at t…
Voter turnout and opposition performance in competitive authoritarian elections
Mimicking Democracy to Prolong Autocracies
The article discusses the role of pseudo-democratic institutions in the resilience of autocratic regimes. According to the authors, authoritarian governments have become more skilled at manipulating these institutions since the end of the Cold War, leading to longer-lasting dictatorships. It is suggested that the legalization of opposition political parties and their incorporation into legislative bodies and regular elections can often be a sign …
Elections and Capital Flight: Evidence from Africa
The developing world currently loses more money via capital flight than it receives through foreign aid and foreign direct investment combined. This "leakage" of capital produces many pernicious consequences for developing economies. What factors influence capital flight? I argue that it follows an electoral cycle. Greater uncertainty prior to elections incentivizes those in the business sector to take their money elsewhere. Using data from thirt…
Are coups good for democracy? A response to Miller (2016)
This article responds to “Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy?” (Miller MK (2016) Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy? Research and Politics 3(4): ) We make clear to readers that Miller (2016) re-reports findings that we originally reported in the Appendix to our original article. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different estimators and re-state Miller’s main point with a visual presentation of how regime-case and co…
The legacy of military dictatorship: Explaining violent crime in democracies
Violent crime rates have increased dramatically in many parts of the world in recent decades, with homicides now outpacing deaths due to interstate or civil wars. Considerable variations exist across democracies in their violent crime rates, however: different autocratic experiences help explain why this is the case. Democracies emerging from military rule have higher homicide rates because they typically inherit militarized police forces. This c…
Authoritarian Politics: Trends and Debates
In the past two decades, the field of authoritarian politics has grown substantially. This commentary surveys the major findings in the field, how it is has evolved, and key debates that have emerged in response
The Evolution of Autocracy: Why Authoritarianism Is Becoming More Formidable
The twenty-first-century autocrat is not the same as his Cold War predecessor
Revisiting the Concept of the Failed State: Bringing the state back in
The policy and donor communities have placed great importance on fixing ‘failed states’. World leaders have cited failed states as one of the greatest threats to the global community. Nevertheless the concept of the failed state is currently subject to a backlash from the academic community. Scholars have criticised the failed states literature on theoretical, normative, empirical and practical grounds. We provide a brief overview of these main c…
Buddhism By Other Means: Sacred Sites and Ritual Practice Among Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Jordan
The present article examines religious practice in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan women working in Jordan. As a minority in a predominantly Muslim country, Buddhist migrants lack some of the supernatural and social resources they may otherwise tap into in times of need. Rather than forgoing ritual activities during their sojourns, Buddhists and Roman Catholics alike use Christian churches as arenas for the making and fulfilling of ritual vows. …
Unpacking political parties in autocracies: What Party Structures Reveal About Party Strategies and Patterns of Regime Survival
Diasporic encounters, sacred journeys
Buddhism By Other Means: Sacred Sites and Ritual Practice Among Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Jordan
The present article examines religious practice in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan women working in Jordan. As a minority in a predominantly Muslim country, Buddhist migrants lack some of the supernatural and social resources they may otherwise tap into in times of need. Rather than forgoing ritual activities during their sojourns, Buddhists and Roman Catholics alike use Christian churches as arenas for the making and fulfilling of ritual vows. …
Jordan's Unfree Workforce: State-Sponsored Bonded Labour in the Arab Region
This article contributes to understandings of contemporary forms of unfree labour by offering an ethnographic perspective on a region which so far has been overlooked in the scholarly literature on the subject – the Arab world. It describes the sponsorship system through which tens of millions of foreign workers are employed in Jordan, Lebanon and the Arabian Gulf states and argues that it constitutes a form of bonded labour. One of the main feat…
Revisiting the Concept of the Failed State: Bringing the state back in
The policy and donor communities have placed great importance on fixing ‘failed states’. World leaders have cited failed states as one of the greatest threats to the global community. Nevertheless the concept of the failed state is currently subject to a backlash from the academic community. Scholars have criticised the failed states literature on theoretical, normative, empirical and practical grounds. We provide a brief overview of these main c…
Mimicking Democracy to Prolong Autocracies
The article discusses the role of pseudo-democratic institutions in the resilience of autocratic regimes. According to the authors, authoritarian governments have become more skilled at manipulating these institutions since the end of the Cold War, leading to longer-lasting dictatorships. It is suggested that the legalization of opposition political parties and their incorporation into legislative bodies and regular elections can often be a sign …
How Autocracies Fall
The article discusses the failures of autocratic governments and dictators in relation to mass uprisings and military coups. Topics include international cooperation in promoting democratization of autocracies, the effectiveness of revolts and revolutions, and the impact of violence on potential democratization after a regime change. Also addressed are the role of regime elites in the stability of autocracies, the role of mass demonstrations in p…
Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set
When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. Much scholarship exists on the first kind of transition, but little on transitions from one autocra…
Military Rule
Military rule as a form of autocratic governance can mean either rule by a military strongman unconstrained by other officers or rule by a group of high-ranking officers who can limit the dictator's discretion. We label the latter form a military regime. Both military strongmen and military regimes are more likely to commit human rights abuses and become embroiled in civil wars than are civilian dictatorships. The behavior of strongmen diverges f…
A dictator's toolkit: Understanding how co-optation affects repression in autocracies
A dictator's motivation for using repression is fairly clear, but why some repress more than others or favor particular types of repressive strategies is less obvious. Using statistical analysis, this article demonstrates that a dictator's reliance on co-optation fundamentally alters how repression is used. Specifically, it finds that co-optation through the use of political parties and a legislature creates incentives that lead dictators to decr…
Oil and Autocratic Regime Survival
This article uncovers a new mechanism linking oil wealth to autocratic regime survival: the investigation tests whether increases in oil wealth improve the survival of autocracies by lowering the chances of democratization, reducing the risk of transition to subsequent dictatorship, or both. Using a new measure of autocratic durability shows that, once models allow for unit effects, oil wealth promotes autocratic survival by lowering the risk of …
Are coups good for democracy
A number of recent studies argue that coups can help usher in democracy. We examine this relationship empirically by looking at the political regimes that follow coups in autocracies, as well as the level of repression against citizens. We find that, though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence
When Dictators Die
Eleven of the world’s 55 dictators are 69 years old or older and are in varying stages of declining health. At first blush, this paints a hopeful picture for democracy scholars who have documented a slow but steady authoritarian resurgence. Yet this article reveals that the advanced age of 20 percent of the world’s autocrats offers little hope for a reversal of this trend. Rather than creating a space for change, the passing of these leaders will…
The Legacy of Dictatorship for Democratic Parties in Latin America
When dictators seize power, they face a choice about how to deal with the pre-existing political parties. Some simply repress all parties, some ally themselves with one of the traditional parties and use it to help organize their rule, and others repress pre-existing parties but create a new party to support themselves. This study examines how these decisions affect the subsequent development of party systems after redemocratization. Looking at t…
Are coups good for democracy? A response to Miller (2016)
This article responds to “Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy?” (Miller MK (2016) Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy? Research and Politics 3(4): ) We make clear to readers that Miller (2016) re-reports findings that we originally reported in the Appendix to our original article. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different estimators and re-state Miller’s main point with a visual presentation of how regime-case and co…
How oil income and missing hydrocarbon rents data influence autocratic survival: A response to Lucas and Richter (2016)
This paper re-examines the findings from a recently published study on hydrocarbon rents and autocratic survival by Lucas and Richter (LR hereafter). LR introduce a new data set on hydrocarbon rents and use it to examine the link between oil income and autocratic survival. Employing a placebo test, we show that the authors’ strategy for dealing with missingness in the new hydrocarbon rents data set – filling in missing data with zeros – creates b…
The Global Rise of Personalized Politics: It's Not Just Dictators Anymore
No one would dispute that power in Russia today lies firmly in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. But his command over the political system was not always so sweeping. When Putin assumed power
The Evolution of Autocracy: Why Authoritarianism Is Becoming More Formidable
The twenty-first-century autocrat is not the same as his Cold War predecessor
Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships
Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personali…
Countering Coups: Leadership Succession Rules in Dictatorships
Paradoxically, many dictators agree to institutionalized succession rules even though these rules could regulate their removal from office. This study shows that succession rules, like other pseudo-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes, provide survival benefits for dictators. Specifically, they protect dictators from coup attempts because they reduce elites’ incentives to try to grab power preemptively via forceful means. By assuaging…
Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know®
Despite the spread of democratization following the Cold War’s end, all signs indicate that we are currently seeing a resurgence of authoritarianism. Around forty percent of the world’s people live under some form of authoritarian rule, and authoritarian regimes govern about a third of the world’s countries. In Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to KnowRG, Erica Frantz guides us through today’s authoritarian wave, explaining how it came to be …
How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse
This accessible volume shines a light on how autocracy really works by providing basic facts about how post-World War II dictatorships achieve, retain, and lose power. The authors present an evidence-based portrait of key features of the authoritarian landscape with newly collected data about 200 dictatorial regimes. They examine the central political processes that shape the policy choices of dictatorships and how they compel reaction from polic…
Authoritarian Politics: Trends and Debates
In the past two decades, the field of authoritarian politics has grown substantially. This commentary surveys the major findings in the field, how it is has evolved, and key debates that have emerged in response
Elections and Capital Flight: Evidence from Africa
The developing world currently loses more money via capital flight than it receives through foreign aid and foreign direct investment combined. This "leakage" of capital produces many pernicious consequences for developing economies. What factors influence capital flight? I argue that it follows an electoral cycle. Greater uncertainty prior to elections incentivizes those in the business sector to take their money elsewhere. Using data from thirt…
Voter turnout and opposition performance in competitive authoritarian elections
Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship
Political science (31 works) · Law (30 works) · Democracy (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Political economy (22 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Economics (19 works) · Autocracy (14 works)