Leader Succession and Civil War

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6245164
AutoresAndrej Kokkonen (0000-0001-8127-0800, University of Gothenburg), Anders Sundell (0000-0002-9698-6964, University of Gothenburg, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume53
Fascículo3-4
Páginas434-468
Data de publicação2020-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoComparative Political Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0010-4140 • E-ISSN: 1552-3829
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0010414019852712
OpenAlexW2952488829
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas16
Referências citadas66

Leadership succession is a perennial source of instability in autocratic regimes. Despite this, it has remained a curiously understudied phenomenon in political science. In this article, we compile a novel and comprehensive dataset on civil war in Europe and combine it with data on the fate of monarchs in 28 states over 800 years to investigate how autocratic succession affected the risk of civil war. Exploiting the natural deaths of monarchs to identify exogenous variation in successions, we find that successions substantially increased the risk of civil war. The risk of succession wars could, however, be mitigated by hereditary succession arrangements (i.e., primogeniture—the principle of letting the oldest son inherit the throne). When hereditary monarchies replaced elective monarchies in Europe, succession wars declined drastically. Our results point to the importance of the succession, and the institutions governing it, for political stability in autocratic regimes

Autocracy · Biology · Democracy · Ecological succession · Monarchy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Throne · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Ecology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Religion and Society Interactions