The hazard rate of political regimes

Abstract

We present a preliminary study on the stability of political regimes. In a longitudinal data set we study the effect of some observable economic and political conditions on the hazard rate of different types of political regimes. We find that economic development has a stabilizing effect in countries with democratic political institutions, but rich autocracies do not show a lower hazard rate than less developed autocracies. While the stability of autocracies is not affected by their degree of economic development, it is greatly associated with the degree of popular discontent. Widespread discontent with leaders in autocratic regimes highly increases their hazard rate. This relationship is much weaker for regimes with democratic institutions. We also find a non-monotonic time dependence pattern for the hazard rate of political regimes. Political regimes are found to be at an increasing risk of collapse during the first years, with their hazard rates reaching a peak around the fourth year.