Personalist Dictatorships and Coercive Diplomacy

• In Event: The Effectiveness of Coercion

Abstract

A widely accepted view in international relations theory holds that personalist dictatorships have unique disadvantages in coercive bargaining. Because these regimes are unable to generate "audience costs," according to this view, their threats are more easily revoked and therefore less credible. But this conventional wisdom overlooks the fact that some of the most successful threat-makers of the twentieth century were personalist dictators. In this paper, we question the conventional view that personalist dictators are uniquely disadvantaged in coercive diplomacy. We contend that threat success is not a function of domestic regime type, but instead depends heavily on militarized actions taken during a crisis – actions that are equally available to democratic and autocratic leaders. First, we demonstrate quantitatively that personalist regimes are no less successful than democracies when making coercive threats. Second, we examine a series of threats made by personalist dictators, finding that militarized signals offer a better explanation for their outcomes than domestic politics or regime type.

Authors

• Todd S. Sechser, University of Virginia

• Alexander B. Downes, George Washington University