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Autocratic Leadership Turnover and International Conflict
Rough Draft
27 June 2015
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between autocratic leadership
turnover and international conflict. Past theories about leadership change
imply significant differences between autocratic and democratic leaders,
but a lack of empirical evidence exists about how autocratic turnover
affects the likelihood of international conflict for new leaders. Theories
about political survival and experience suggest it dramatically changes
the risk of violence while theories about preference shifts suggest
otherwise. Drawing on these theories, I formulate and test a series of
competing hypotheses about the effect of autocratic leadership turnover
on participation in militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Contrary to
findings about democratic turnovers, I find strong evidence that
autocratic turnover is associated with a drop in conflict-propensity for
new leaders. This paper provides further insight on the pattern by
showing that political insecurity mediates this result.
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What is the effect of autocratic leadership turnover on international conflict? From
Leopoldo Galtieri’s invasion of the Falkland Islands four months into his term to Kim Jong Un’s
sabre-rattling in the wake of his father’s death, the period surrounding autocratic turnovers can
often elicit strange and belligerent behavior from these nascent leaders. Growing research about
leadership change has pointed out differences between autocratic and democratic turnovers on
trade, alliances, and foreign policy changes, but conflict studies, to date, have theorized more
about electoral cycles than autocratic turnovers.1 While democratic leadership change has
received greater focus due to its frequency and institutionalized procedures, autocratic turnovers
often occur through civil wars, coup d’etats, or political assassinations that multiply the risk of
international conflict.2 Given these factors, a critical research gap persists in international
relations about how the domestic politics of autocratic turnovers may shape opportunities for
conflict.
Autocratic transitions can introduce new preferences or incentives for war, but a lack of
empirical evidence exists to explain how this relationship operates. Preference-based
explanations posit autocratic turnovers provoke extreme preference shifts, but I argue these
should not change a new leader’s conflict-involvement.3 Incentive-based theories from research
on democratic turnovers argue a new leader’s inexperience, private information, and domestic
1
See McGillivray and Smith (2008), Leeds et al. (2009), Mattes et al. (2013), and Smith (2014)
for a selection of growing work on leadership turnover. See Gaubatz (1991), Smith (1996),
Leeds and Davis (1997), Huth and Allee (2002), Williams (2013), and Zeigler et. al (2013) on
the relationship between electoral cycles and conflict.
2
See Belkin and Schoefer (2005) on coup d’etats, Gleditsch et al. (2008) and Tiernay (2013) on
civil wars, and Jones and Olken (2009) on assassinations.
3
See Stanley and Sawyer (2009), Croco (2011), and Wolford (2012) on preference shifts and
international conflict.
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instability should drive these rulers to be more conflict-prone.4 In contrast, other research argues
insecure and inexperienced leaders should be less conflict-prone because domestic incentives to
consolidate power outweigh the risk of international conflict.5
I draw on past research about political survival, inexperience, and preference shifts to
formulate a series of tests to assess this relationship. As a result, this paper has two important
contributions to growing research on leadership turnover and the domestic politics of
international relations as a whole. First, it provides the first comprehensive assessment of
autocratic leadership turnover and conflict. As the precipitous rises of Mikhail Gorbachev and
Ruhollah Khomeini demonstrate, autocratic leadership turnover can catalyze dramatic changes in
the international system’s balance of power, alliance networks, and military capabilities.
Outsiders are often reactive to autocratic leadership turnover in neighboring countries. U.S.
foreign policy details several cautionary actions towards autocratic turnover: sabre-rattling
triggers sanctions, coups damage foreign aid, and a new leader’s revolutionary rhetoric invites
foreign military interventions. The research gap into these turnovers leaves the international
community unprepared to effectively respond to these events and risks fueling misperceptions
that unintentionally raise the risk of war (Jervis 1976). Second, this paper provides insight into
the topic by formulating a set of additional tests to identify under what conditions autocratic
leadership turnover decreases the risk of conflict. Since multiple theories produce the same
prediction about the conflict-propensity of new leaders, I derive an additional set of competing
4
See Downes and Rocke (1994) and Chiozza and Goemans (2004a) on diversionary theory. See
Gelpi and Grieco (2001), Potter (2007), and Bak and Palmer (2010) on experience. See Wolford
(2007) on reputation-building incentives.
5
See Chiozza and Goemans (2003, 2004b, 2011), Fravel (2005), and Horowitz, McDermott, and
Stam (2005).
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predictions about the consequences of turnover in order to discriminate between these
mechanisms.
In the first section of this paper, I explore three separate predictions about how turnover
impacts the risk of international conflict.6 Realist or preference-based explanations predict no
change in statewide conflict behavior while changing incentives, experience, and political
instability catalyze significant shifts in foreign policy. The second part of this paper presents a
basic regression of leadership turnover on a leader’s conflict participation as a perfunctory cut of
the data. The results suggest the odds of conflict participation for a leader in his first year of
office are 47% lower than a leader who has more than one year of experience. I next derive a
series of additional claims about insecurity and inexperience consistent with this result in order
to identify the causal mechanism. Section three provides a series of additional tests about the
effect of autocratic turnover including a natural experiment to compare new leaders to
incumbents who survive a turnover, looking at the conflict-behavior of their predecessors, and
testing for heterogeneous effects among how leaders enter office.
In contrast to findings from the literature on democratic turnovers about the conflictpropensity of new leaders, these results provide consistent and robust support for the notion that
political insecurity around a turnover lowers a leader’s conflict-propensity by generating strong
and compelling incentives to consolidate power among domestic elites who can credibly threaten
to oust the leader from office. New autocratic leaders are particularly unstable because they
come to power with limited support and experience leaving them vulnerable to power challenges.
Concerns for political survival drive these new leaders to retrench, pushing foreign conflict to the
6
As a caveat, this means this paper does not address the effect of foreign-imposed leadership
turnover since it lies outside the domestic politics of leadership change. For research on that in
the broader context of regime change, see Werner (1996), Lo et al. (2008), and Peic and Reiter
(2011).
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periphery, and leading to a perceived drop in conflict-propensity. Together, statistical results
clearly delineate among three current schools of thought to show political insecurity drives the
effect of autocratic leadership turnover on international conflict.
I. Theoretical Expectations
Although general research finds stable autocratic leaders to harbor different conflictpropensities than democratic leaders, it remains unclear whether existing evidence about
democratic leadership turnover also describe autocratic turnovers. Theories about political
survival and experience suggest autocratic turnover significantly affects the likelihood of conflict
participation while theories about preference shifts suggest otherwise. This section divides
theoretical explanations about this relationship based on how turnover can yield three observable
changes in conflict-behavior.
A. Leadership Turnover has No Effect on the Risk of Conflict
Autocratic leadership turnover may have no discernible effect on international conflict for
two reasons. First, it is possible leadership turnover does not alter the broader causes which drive
international conflict like borders, military capabilities, or balance of power dynamics (Waltz
1979). Balance of power and other realist factors shaping conflict are invariant to domestic
politics within countries so, in the realist tradition, leadership turnover has no effect on
international conflict.
Second, leadership turnover may not significantly change a regime’s conflict-participation
because preferences about the cost of war do not significantly change across rulers. Past work
has noted democratic systems with large winning coalition constrain the degree to which leaders
modify policies across administrations (Smith 1996; Bueno de Mesquite et al. 2003; McGillivray
and Smith 2004, 2008). In democracies, the composition of the winning coalition is fairly
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consistent across leaders so preference shifts are minimal producing no change in conflictbehavior. In autocratic systems, however, leadership change catalyzes extreme preference shifts
because of the non-routine timing and lack of institutionalized procedures governing these
transitions (Smith 2014). Extreme preference shifts mean the disposal of a belligerent leader will
lead to his replacement by a fairly risk-averse individual and vice versa but, on average, these
shifts should not change a country’s propensity towards the use of force.7
While no research, to date, has examined the effect of autocratic leadership turnover on new
conflict, past research suggests new leaders who come to power amidst ongoing wars are more
likely to agree to worse settlement terms or hasten conflict termination because of their different
preferences (Stanley and Sawyer 2009; Croco 2011). Quiroz-Flores (2012) notes this research is
limited, however, because preference changes from leadership turnover are endogenous to
international conflicts; wars going poorly force belligerent leaders to exit thereby systematically
dictating their replacement by a more cooperative leader.8 As a result, these conclusions may
produce biased assessments about how preference changes mediate the effect of leadership
turnover on ongoing conflict. It remains unclear how these preference shifts could operate to
increase the likelihood of a new conflict and not just affect the ongoing dynamics of wars,
military operations, or peace agreements. Finally, recent work has begun to suggest the structural
composition of single-party or military systems might also engender leadership accountability in
autocracies suggesting preferences alone cannot explain variation in the conflict-behavior of
these regimes (Weeks 2008, 2012; Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). Whether realist factors or
7
In an alternate conceptualization, Wolford (2012) models turnover as a commitment problem
between the leader and international outsiders under which leaders strategically change their
preferences before a turnover to prolong their time in office given beliefs about their successors ‘
preferences. However, in autocratic systems where turnovers are unexpected, it can be difficult
to predict the identity and preferences of any particular successor.
8
Quiroz-Flores (2012) uses a structural equation model for survival to correct for this problem.
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preference changes drive the risk of international conflict, both theories predict no systematic
trends in international conflict as a result of leadership change.
B. Turnover Increases the Risk of Conflict
A second field of research, largely borne from work on democratic turnovers, argues that
leadership change heighten the risk of conflict-involvement for new leaders because of
inexperience handling diplomatic crises, insecurity, and private information about the costs of
war. The literature on democratic turnover argues that the frequency of democratic turnovers
perpetually results in less experienced leaders assuming office. These new leaders lack the
knowledge and familiarity to successfully navigate international crises leading to an increased
risk of bargaining failures and an inability to credibly deter outsiders from opportunistic attacks
(Daxecker 2007; Bak and Palmer 2010). Empirical evidence shows that new democratic leaders
are particularly prone to targeted attacks, but this risk erodes the longer they are in office (Gelpi
and Grieco 2001; Chiozza and Goemans 2004b; Potter 2007).9
Second, leadership turnover can generate private information problems because of changes in
offense-defense balances and missing information about each other’s foreign policy intentions
(Maoz 1996; Walt 1996). In order to develop reputations as tough types, new leaders are
motivated to bluff and misrepresent their preferences. 10 Outsiders, conversely, have an incentive
to challenge new leaders to learn about and gauge their resolve (Wolford 2007). Together,
9
In a separate test, Chiozza and Goemans (2004b) find a leader who has survived in office for
three years is up to 50% less likely to be attacked than a leader with only one year of experience,
but this propensity rises again as leaders stay in office for more than three years. They find this
result is only unique to autocratic leaders as democratic leaders face a constant level of insecurity
that lowers their probability of being a target.
10
This is separate from the argument that new leaders may try to develop international
reputations for honesty as developed in Sartori (2002) and Guisinger and Smith (2002). This
work argues that new leaders enter office with honest reputations that can only be tarnished by
cheating.
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asymmetric information increases the probability that either side will miscalculate their
opponent’s willingness to use force and lead to a bargaining failure and war.
New leaders may also face diversionary incentives for conflict due to their political
insecurity (Enterline and Gleditsch 2000). Facing an imminent risk of removal, leaders are likely
to “gamble for resurrection” by initiating conflict to mobilize domestic support with the hope a
foreign victory will ensure their political survival (Downs and Rocke 1994). General Leopoldo
Galtieri’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands four months into his rule is typically treated as a
classical example of diversionary logic. The invasion failed to muster support for Galtieri and he
was forced to leave within days of defeat.
Most new democratic leaders generally enjoy comparatively high levels of personal and
political security when they gain office due to institutional design (Bienen and van de Walle
1991). Gaubatz (1991) notes this relative security means democratic leaders are more likely to
initiate wars early soon after election. This security also means empirical tests on democratic
turnovers have found no link between diversionary conflict and new democratic leaders (Leeds
and Davis 1997; Oneal and Tir 2006). However, unlike democratic leaders, new autocratic
leaders remain insecure because they come to power with limited support and experience to deter
additional challenges. Leaders who enter violently or undertake coercive measures to gain power
are likely to lack broad support for their rule rendering them weak and vulnerable to political
challenges by other elites. This insecurity generates a commitment problem between the new
leader and domestic elites as he would like to commit to acquiesce to the demands of
oppositional forces in order to stabilize his rule, but these commitments are not credible because
both parties recognize that the shock is only temporary (Fearon 2004).
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Non-democratic leaders may find diversionary conflict an attractive option because they
remain insecure and often face worse personal outcomes after expulsion. Diversionary incentives
may be particularly compelling for autocrats as a favorable outcome can actually lengthen their
tenure (Chiozza and Goemans 2004a; Debs and Goemans 2010). Lai and Slater (2006) argue
military regimes are more likely to use diversionary conflict because of pre-existing
organizational biases in the junta towards the use of conflict. This complements newer research
by Colgan (2013) and Horowitz and Stam (2014) that revolutionary or militaristic leaders are
likely to pursue more risk-acceptant policies that increase the likelihood of war. Another
motivating factor that can increase the appeal of diversionary war is a leader’s personal concerns
for survival after office (Goemans 2000). When institutions lack the capacity to credibly protect
leader after irregular turnovers, leaders facing a forcible removal may choose to “fight for
survival” by rationalizing that the costs of war are comparable to the costs of expulsion should
they fail (Chiozza and Goemans 2011).
These theories all suggest the conflict-propensity of new leaders rises because of
inexperience, instability, and private information, but make a few simplifying assumptions. First,
experience-based mechanisms do not accommodate previous times served in office, the
experience other advisors or political elites may bring from past administrations or the rate at
which leaders may acquire this experience to overcome their hindrance. Variation in incoming
experience levels could produce heterogeneous effects among new leaders that moderate their
conflict-propensity. Second, in contrast to the reputational-based predictions posed here, Powell
(2004) argues uncertainty about the perceived costs of conflict can, in some circumstances,
introduce a delay in fighting because outsiders prefer to screen each other with attractive offers
in order to learn about the other state’s true type rather than initiating conflict. Third, support for
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diversionary war theory remains tepid as scholars have found little empirical evidence in support
and note the theory over-exaggerates the willingness of elites to gamble on conflict.11 Further,
some scholars have determined this vulnerability is likely to ameliorate the risk of conflict due to
strategic avoidance logic (Smith 1996; Fordham 2005). Given a credible belief the vulnerable
leader is likely to act belligerent, outsiders may strategically avoid engaging in conflict for fear
of reciprocation or escalation.
New leaders after a turnover may be hampered by inexperience and insecurity that
temporarily change the perceived costs of war in ways that increase the risk of international
conflict. As a consequence, the conflict participation of new autocratic leaders may temporarily
rise as they maneuver to establish tough reputation, strong diplomatic relations, and domestic
support.
C. Turnover Decreases the Risk of Conflict
A third group of scholarly research suggests autocratic leadership turnover decrease the
probability of conflict-involvement as inexperience and political insecurity incentivize riskaverse behavior and retrenchment policies. First, inexperience can decrease the risk of conflict.
In the context of new democratizing leaders, Clare (2007) finds that threats to incumbents by
elites from the old regime encourage the adoption of more cautious foreign policies in order to
avoid foreign policy failures that quicken the likelihood of deposition. Younger leaders are also
unlikely to initiate conflict because the perceived costs of conflict are higher due to inexperience
orchestrating attacks and fear of swift reprisals by the selectorate for an early horizon (Horowitz,
11
See, for example, Gelpi (1997), Davies (2002), Chiozza and Goemans (2003), and Fravel
(2010) for additional critiques and conflicting results about diversionary theory.
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McDermott and Stam 2005).12 The inability to institutionalize decision-making procedures
quickly and effectively can lead new leaders to become prone to political challenges from other
elites within the regime, introducing political instability, and hastening their expulsion.
Political insecurity can also decrease the risk of conflict-involvement due to domestic
incentives to consolidate power and refrain from international confrontations. First, concerns for
personal survival drive a leader’s reaction to domestic instability. Chiozza and Goemans (2011)
argue a leader’s expected mode of expulsion moderates their preferences towards diversionary
conflict versus retrenchment. When leaders anticipate a peaceful exit, they can make credible
concessions to domestic elites because the consequences of expulsion are lower than those
incurred by a failed diversionary attempt. Consequently, leaders who expect a regular exit should
be less persuaded by diversionary conflict and prefer to focus on domestic consolidation. This
does not make any predictions about the mode of entry for new leaders although violent
entrances through civil wars or coups may also affect the likelihood of new leaders to be
conflict-prone.
Second, political insecurity weakens a leader’s ability to deploy military resources abroad if
security forces must protect him against domestic threats. The resource-intensive nature of war
means leaders will likely pursue other alternatives to quell instability. Domestic policy options
like reforms or repression tactics against potential challengers can secure the same boost in
security as international conflict without engendering the same casualty or resource costs (Levy
1989; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Oakes 2012). Incentives to consolidate power among elites
means leaders are more likely to cooperate with outside states while focusing on addressing
12
Horowitz, McDermott and Stam (2005) treat age as a synonym for experience although Bak
and Palmer (2010) shows age and experience tend to have separate or even countervailing effects
on the likelihood of conflict.
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domestic challenges and unrest at home. Fravel (2005) even argues, in the context of Chinese
territorial disputes, insecure leaders may seek international assistance to legitimate their rule or
acquire resources to put down challenges. New leaders may also be constrained from responding
to international crises with military force if they are insecure. Policy paralysis might arise as
elites abandon a weakened leader or attempt to extract certain bargaining agreements from him
in exchange for their domestic support. A retrenchment policy will make leaders appear less
conflict-prone as they take actions to mobilize support among domestic elites. These two
mechanisms suggest inexperience and insecurity cause leadership turnover to decrease the risk
international conflict by inducing caution and incentives to consolidate power domestically.
The three observational predictions argue changing preferences should lead to no change in
conflict-behavior, but insecurity and inexperience can either heighten or decrease the risk of
conflict involvement for new leaders. To assess the theoretical validity of these claims, I present
my research design and a set of basic results about the effect of leadership turnover on
international conflict in the next section before examining the potential causal mechanisms at
work.
II. How Does Leadership Turnover Affect Conflict?
In order to empirically test the consequences of leadership turnover on international conflict,
I formulate and test a series of competing hypotheses about the effect of autocratic leadership
turnover on militarized interstate disputes. I build on existing data about leadership turnover and
militarized conflict to conduct a series of novel tests about the effect of turnover on a new
leader’s conflict participation.
Research Design
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The unit of analysis is the leader-year with a specific focus on the year after the turnover
for the period 1950-2003. Data on leadership turnover comes from ARCHIGOS which
collectively records 1,402 turnovers during this time including 1,142 regular turnovers, 249
irregular turnovers, and 11 instances of foreign intervention (Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza
2009).13 I use data from Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) and Polity IV to generate a sample of
five non-democratic regime types: personalist, monarchs, party systems, military juntas, and
other systems that hold non-competitive or closed procedures to recruit their executive choice.14
This creates a sample of 643 military junta-years, 423 monarch-years, 1316 single-party-years,
1406 personalist-years, and 611 other-years. Within this subset, there are 699 non-democratic
turnovers including 293 irregular turnovers, 106 entries resulting from a natural death, 107 from
non-competitive elections, and 193 from appointments or successions. I do not include leaders in
my sample who serve for fewer than 120 days for two reasons. First, short-term leaders often
hold interim positions during a succession crisis or transitional period between governments and
thus harbor fewer incentives to act to maintain power. Second, less than four months in office
does not provide a sufficient amount of time for a leader to find an opportunity or mobilize for a
conflict. Including these provisional leaders could erroneously overestimate the effect of
leadership turnover on conflict and imply a new leader is less conflict-prone.
The primary independent variable is a binary variable for a leader’s first year of office
(FirstYear) which is coded one if the leader has served fewer than 465 days by December 31 of
that year and zero otherwise. The year is defined in terms of a leader’s tenure or the physical
13
Regular and irregular turnover classifications are rough approximation of the type of turnover
where the former refers to institutionalized, peaceful, turnovers like elections, retirements, or
successions while irregular turnovers are more violent like assassination, civil wars, or coups.
14
Leaders classified as belonging to others include, for example, French President Charles de
Gaulle, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
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number of days he has served rather than the actual year.15 This measurement is preferable as it
means leaders who come into power during the latter half of a year (e.g. November or
December) do not have the first month of their tenure represent their first year of office. Relying
on the actual year rather than a leader’s tenure can limit the ability to draw comparison between
leaders in their first year of office a leader who has been in power 12 months may act differently
than a leader who has been in power for a week.
The ARCHIGOS dataset has information about the different exits, post-tenure fates, and
tenure of all leaders from 1918-2004, but it does not provide detailed data on the types of
leadership turnovers. If there are heterogeneous effects across different turnovers due to the
unpredictable nature of an exit, it is important to distinguish these for additional tests. To this
end, I collect more detailed information about how non-democratic leaders enter and exit
building on regular, natural deaths, and irregular exits from the ARCHIGOS dataset with
information on non-competitive elections from the National Elections across Democracies and
Autocracies dataset (Hyde and Marinov 2012), assassinations from Jones and Olken (2009),
coup d’etats from Thyne and Powell (2011), and civil wars from the Correlates of War Intrastate
War Dataset. I generate new categories that identify whether leaders entered or exit due to a
natural death, coup d’etat, assassination, civil war, non-competitive election, or resignation.16
15
The first year is any year in which the leader has served fewer than 465 days; the last year is
any year in which the leader has fewer than 465 days remaining. This is similar to the coding
rule employed by Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel (2009) in their analysis of leadership change and
alliance abrogation except they count the next year as the first year of a leader’s rule if he came
to power in October or later.
16
Non-competitive elections, resignations, and appointments are coded by examining the date of
the election with respect to the date of a leader’s entrance or exit. I use three questions from
NELDA and composite indicators of executive recruitment and political participation from
Polity IV to code non-competitive elections. A non-competitive election is classified as one that
failed one of the following criteria: (1) did not allow opposition parties, (2) outlawed additional
parties, (3) had no choice of candidates on the ballot, or (4) suppressed or severely restricted
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Since entries facilitated by natural deaths, assassinations, and non-competitive elections are often
simply marked as regular in the ARCHIGOS dataset, this already provides some important
information about what entrances are potentially unpredictable. Similarly, adding more detailed
information about different political entrances and exits provides an opportunity to lend the data
some external validity as exogenous exits like a natural or accidental death should be associated
with no change in conflict-behavior.
What are the most common types of turnovers? Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of
entries and exits by autocratic regime type. Violent revolutions and midnight palace coups are
vibrant, yet apocryphal, images of leadership turnover in non-democratic systems. Most
autocratic turnovers are not the result of a bloody civil war or assassination, but catalyzed by
death, retirement, and resignations. For example, while General Abdel Nasser was a member of
the military party that ousted the Egyptian monarch in 1952, he did not become leader until 1954
when the elite-driven Revolutionary Command Council voted for his predecessor President
Muhammad Naguib to resign. Saddam Hussein came to power not in a coup, but after he subtly
forced Hassan al-Bakr to resign for “health” reasons. Irregular entries make up 42% of all
turnovers, but jump to 72% and 57% for military juntas and personalist leaders respectively.
Appointments and successions predominate in single-party systems where they comprise 68% of
all entries while successions due to abdications and natural deaths about tie in frequency for
monarchs at 39% each.
political participation in the election. Examples of non-competitive electors include Iran’s
Khatami in 1997, Algier’s Chadli Benjedid in 1979 (an election was held following
Boumediene’s death), and El Salvador’s Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo. Appointees or
successors are those who enter office through regular means, but they pre-date an election that
year and do not involve any violence like a coup, revolution, or assassination. Examples of
appointees include Chad’s Francois Tombalbaye after decolonization, South Africa’s P.W.
Botha, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
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[Figures 1 about here]
Given the rarity of international conflict, the dependent variable is a dummy variable
conflict participation measured by a leader’s involvement in a new Militarized Interstate Dispute
(MID) in the year after the turnover.17 I use the start date of a MID along with the leader’s entry
and exit date to exclude MIDs that start before a new leader’s first year of office so that I do not
double-count MIDs for two different leaders. The decision to focus on participation rather than
initiation is two-fold. First, the Correlates of War data often relies on subjective criteria or
incomplete information about the first participant in a dispute. It is unclear, for example, who
starts a border clash between two states and it is further complicated by news report presenting
contradictory retellings of the events.18 Second, these theories predict relatively little difference
between conflict initiation behavior and conflict targeting. Insecurity may heighten or lower the
perceived utility of conflict for both vulnerable leaders and opportunistic outsiders. I exclude
cases where conflicts are ongoing in the year after the turnover because conflict is often
endogenous to the turnover timing.
To control for omitted variable bias, I include a set of control variables that are correlated
with both leadership turnover and conflict. I do not include controls like military capabilities or a
country’s number of borders because, while they do predict conflict-involvement, these factors
are independent to the timing of turnovers and including unnecessary variables generate noisy
estimates (Angrist and Pischke 2008). Recent work on the conflict-behavior of certain autocratic
regimes suggests important distinctions between personalist and non-personalist systems so I
include regime type dummy variables for military juntas, personalist leaders, and single-party
17
Data comes from the Correlates of War Militarized Interstate Disputes dataset, v 4.0.
See, for example, Kreutz (2015) about the difficulty of making inferences about these types of
conflicts during the 1980s and 1990s.
18
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systems (Lai and Slater 2006; Weeks 2012). Monarchs are excluded due to the relatively higher
security monarchs have throughout their tenure which makes it is hard to assess how they weigh
political insecurity, diversionary incentives, or the need to mobilize support among elites early in
their rule. I also include a dummy measuring whether the state was involved in a civil war in the
year before the turnover (CivilWart-1), the leader’s logged age in that year (LnAge), and a dummy
variable for whether the leader has served in office before (PriorExp) as these could all affect the
likelihood of expulsion and affect conflict-propensity.19 Finally, past research suggests slow or
stagnant economies can hasten the demise of a leader and weaker economic states may be more
likely to facilitate diversionary conflict or attract opportunistic attacks (Jones and Olken 2005;
Oneal and Tir 2006). As a result, two economic measures lagged by one year are included: the
natural log of the country’s GDP/Capita in the year of observation (LnGDPCap t-1) as well as the
one-year percent change in economic growth rate (EconGrowth).20
Preliminary Results
Given the binary nature of the conflict measure, I use a logistic regression to test the
claim that new leaders in their first year of office act differently than at other times. Results are
clustered by country to control for possible serial correlation given that the time-dependent
nature of the observations may raise concern about the distribution of the error terms. It is valid
to suspect heteroskedasticity between countries given knowledge that certain institutionalized
turnover procedures persist in some countries for decade while others may fall into coup traps for
years producing constant periods of instability. Additional models also include country fixed
effects to control for time-invariant factors within a country.
19
The conflict measure comes from the Correlates of War IntraState War dataset. Age and prior
experience data comes from ARCHIGOS.
20
I also use Chiozza and Goeman’s (2011) data on GDP/capita and economic growth which is
itself adapted from Gleditsch (2002) and the Groningen Growth and Development Center.
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The first set of results in Table 1 focus the association between the first year of office and
new conflict participation. The primary variable of interest, FirstYear, immediately adjudicates
between the three competing predictions. Rather than a positive coefficient or null result on the
FirstYear variable consistent with the first two groups of predictions, the sign on the coefficient
is negative and statistically significant. The simplest model in column 1 shows that the odds of
conflict participation for new leaders are 46% lower than for stable leaders. Holding all other
covariates at their mean in model 3, the predicted probability of MID involvement in a leader’s
first year is 0.171 (with 95% confidence interval [0.142, 0.204]). In contrast, the predicted
probability of a MID when it is not a leader’s first year is 0.259 (with 95% confidence interval
[0.243, 0.276]). This is a drop in conflict participation of 52%.
[Table 1 about here]
The results in Table 1 provide strong evidence that leadership turnover decreases the probability
of conflict-involvement for new leaders. This suggests previous research about the role of
preference shifts, private information, and diversionary incentives are not as conclusive as
previous research assumed. Nevertheless, while these results provide evidence about how
leadership turnover affects conflict, it does not explain why new leaders are less conflict-prone.
In order to draw causal claims about the effect of turnover, I derive and test a set of conditional
and competing predictions in the next section about additional turnover effects of political
insecurity and inexperience on international conflict.
III. Why Does Leadership Turnover Decrease the Risk of Conflict?
Within the existing literature, two primary explanations argue new leaders should be less
conflict-prone due to their inexperience or insecurity. If the result is driven by political
experience, then political experience should also imply three additional predictions about the
Malone 19
effect of turnover for other leaders. First, there should be in expectation significant differences
between new leaders and leaders who survive a failed turnover because leaders who survive a
failed turnover already possess more experience than new leaders entering office. Second, there
should be significant differences in the conflict participation of new leaders and their immediate
predecessors for similar reason. Finally, there should be no differences in the type of turnover as
the effect of a leader’s experience on conflict participation is invariant to how they enter or exit.
If new leaders are less conflict-prone as a function of political insecurity, then this
instability should generate divergent predictions about the effect of leadership turnover on
conflict participation. First, there should be no difference in the conflict behavior of new leaders
and incumbents who survive a failed turnover attempt. Surviving leaders are likely to remain
insecure after a failed attempt because the act does not rally supporters around the incumbent and
a failed attempt may embolden outside forces to re-mobilize for another try. A leader who
survives a failed turnover event is still insecure until they take action to consolidate their power
and mobilize support from elites once again.
A second observable implication of political insecurity suggests that leaders shortly
before the turnover should also be less conflict-prone. Given the infrequency of turnover in nondemocracies, elites are likely to seize any opportunity to gain power when they arise thereby
raising the risk of insecurity. If he has previously engaged in coup-proofing methods to stave off
military challenges, his armed forces may be too weak or disorganized to disband the threat or
launch a diversionary conflict to “gamble for resurrection.” As an opportunity for turnover
arises, an incumbent may find himself politically insecure until he takes some measures to either
remobilize support amongst elites or re-organize the military to reduce threat of expulsion.
Malone 20
Finally, if political insecurity mediates the effect of turnover, then turnover should lead to
a drop in conflict participation when the turnover process itself is contentious or unpredictable
enough to generate this commitment problem. When leaders enter forcibly, they can ostracize
domestic elites and lack support for their rule. Leaders who enter through appointments or
successions may harbor some support for their rule, but also be constrained by the preferences
and demands of the elites who expect rewards for their help getting him to power. When leaders
enter via a rigged or non-competitive election, he may harbor some support for his rule and see
no rise in his political insecurity because of the ex ante support he required to gain power. As a
result, non-competitive elections with predictable results may not trigger the same political
insecurities as coups, succession crises, or other appointments and see little change in conflict
behavior.
[Table 2 about here]
These two mechanisms produce three separate predictions about how inexperience and
instability should affect the likelihood of conflict under different turnover conditions. A
summary of the different observable implications for each mechanism is summarized in Table 2.
By testing the conditional implications of these mechanisms for other leaders, the empirical
results provide a means to discriminate among these competing explanations to determine why
turnover lowers the risk of international conflict.
A. New Leaders Versus Leaders Who Survive a Turnover
Despite the tentative results above suggesting new leaders are less conflict-prone, it is not
possible to make causal claims about the effect of leadership turnover on conflict because these
results only examine turnovers where an incumbent failed to maintain power and the nonrandomness of leadership turnover can creates a selection bias. In order to draw more robust
Malone 21
claims about the effect of leadership turnover, I employ a matching strategy to make causal
inferences about observational data for close turnovers.
In order to assuage concerns of endogeneity between turnover and conflict, different research
designs have been employed to examine the effects of leadership turnover by trying to
manipulate as-if random assignment of treatment or, in this case, a successful turnover.21 To
overcome selection bias, the matching strategy developed here focuses on MID participation as
the outcome of interest and irregular turnovers including coup d’etats and assassinations as the
unit of analysis. These cases are chosen because it can be shown the likelihood of an incumbent
being replaced during these forcible changes is so close that it is essentially random thereby
providing conditional ignorability and non-interference between units (Morgan and Winship
2007). Ideally, I would like to measure the effect of leadership turnover by comparing the
conflict behavior of individual leaders when they are ousted by a turnover and replaced with a
new leader versus when they survive the turnover attempt. Under the fundamental problem of
causal inference this is not possible, but by comparing turnovers where incumbents narrowly
remained in power, we can impute missing values about these cases in order to estimate the
effect of a successful turnover on the likelihood of MID involvement. That is, the average
treatment effect of the new leader (ATT) or τ, is defined by the counterfactual:
τ = E[Pr(MID) | New Leader Takes Office] – E[Pr(MID) | Incumbent Survives]
21
For example, Jones and Olken (2005) look at the effect of accidental or natural deaths on
economic growth as these transitions are independent of background conditions often related to
turnover; they find heterogeneous effects across countries. Jones and Olken (2009) look at the
effect of political assassinations on democratization and ongoing interstate or civil war. They
find low-intensity conflicts tend to escalate after an assassination, but high-intensity wars may
end sooner.
Malone 22
The main ignorability assumption here is that, conditional on a coup or assassination
attempt taking place, the outcome of that coup or assassination is essentially random (Sekhon
2009). If there are certain unobservable factors not blocked on which systematically lead certain
turnovers to fail or succeed, then this would violate the assumption of random treatment
assignment and inaccurately measure the ATT of a successful turnover.
This may be theoretically plausible for a few reasons. First, many leaders engage in coupproofing strategies that lower the likelihood of success and increase the costs of attempting a
removal (Quinlivan 1999; Belkin and Schofer 2003). This includes re-structuring of the military,
purging certain elites, and implementing more violent punishments for challenging the leader’s
authority all in the hope that these actions create enough risk to deter elites. Elites who
unsuccessfully stage an attack may meet grisly ends and are unlikely to mobilize against the
leader until they are confident of a win. Even so, an attempt does not necessarily translate to
success; half of all attempts in the Thyne and Powell dataset fail. Coup attempts flounder
because coup-plotters face unexpected opposition, implement ineffective strategies, or cannot
maintain power for more than seven days. Assassination attempts falter due to guns misfiring,
improper aim, or poor timing to carry out the attack. To test this randomization assumption, I
show that factors that could affect the probability of a successful turnover do not systematically
predict it. These include the same economic indicators as before, a predecessor’s tenure and age,
civil war, and participation in a hostile MID in case leaders attempt to “gamble for survival” and
send possible coup-plotters to fight abroad.
[Table 3 about here]
A preliminary balance test is shown in Table 3 that compares the mean value of these
pre-treatment variables in the year before the turnover for both failed and successful irregular
Malone 23
turnovers. A variance ratio of one would suggest a covariate is perfectly balanced among those
cases in which a successful or failed turnover occurs. When the variance ratio is greater than one,
it introduces positive bias in favor of the treatment group. The balance tests thus intuitively
suggest that successful turnovers tend to occur to older, longer-serving leaders or leaders
involved in a civil war. While no covariate in Table 3 is perfectly balanced, they are also not so
imbalanced as to produce a statistically significant amount of bias meaning an absolute
standardized difference greater than 10%. Matching strategies do not completely eliminate bias,
but by comparing cases among similar covariates, this research design greatly reduces it (Sekhon
2009). In addition to a balance test, I also perform a logistic regression to see if considering all
these variables jointly matters, but the results show that none of these covariates has a
statistically significant effect on the log-odds of a successful turnover; across three different
models, the p-value of an F-test on these models is never lower than 0.44. Together, this provides
sufficient evidence that the observable characteristics on which we plan to match failed and
successful turnovers is not favorably biased in one direction or another.
Given plausible as-if randomization, I next turn to estimating the effect of turnover on
conflict through a series of different matching strategies. As a whole, matching picks treatment
and control observations similar to each other on the basis of different covariates so that the
principal difference across samples is whether the turnover was successful or not (Rubin 1973;
Abadie and Imbens 2006). There are several methods to match samples, but I use genetic
matching here to overcome problems of imbalance although the primary conclusion is robust to
alternate specifications. Genetic matching improves on multivariate balancing and propensity
scores by iteratively checking and then refining covariate balance in order to maximize
similarities between the treatment and control groups while minimizing the distance
Malone 24
discrepancies that arise from certain covariate imbalances (Diamond and Sekhon 2013; Sekhon
2009). Examples of matched genetic pairs superficially suggest the algorithm does a good job
balancing similar observations. Ne Win, a long-serving dictator of a military junta in Myanmar is
similarly paired with Dimitrios Ioannidis, a Greek military officer who overthrew his
predecessor in a coup d’etat. Iraqi Army Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim who came to power in
the 1958 coup against the Iraqi monarchy is paired with a neighboring monarch in Jordan, King
Hussein, who survived a coup attempt the same year.
The results of genetic matching are included in Table 4 and show no difference between
surviving incumbents and new leaders. After balancing on covariates, the results produce a
difference in conflict participation of 0.14, but it is never statistically significant. I include the
results from two OLS regressions on the original imbalanced data to comparatively demonstrate
how a dependence on regression tactics alone can erroneously suggests a “newness” effect by
leaders even when controlling for regional differences or the number of turnover attempts in that
year.
[Table 4 about here]
Matching suggests no differences exist in MID participation between new leaders and
surviving incumbents in the year after a turnover. Further, a post-balance check shows the
sample is now highly balanced particularly along the two conflict measures. By addressing the
conflict-behavior of surviving incumbents, these matching results suggest theories about
experience are mis-specified since they would suggest substantial differences between the two.
Nevertheless, if there are still unobservable characteristics systematically affecting turnover
outcomes, then these results would be incomplete assessments that political insecurity is correct.
Malone 25
I thus look at two more conditional implications to scrutinize under what additional conditions
political insecurity may mediate the effect of leadership turnover.
B. New Leaders Versus Leaders in the Year Before Turnover
A second conditional implication to distinguish between political insecurity and experience is
to explore how leaders behave in the year before a successful turnover. Insecurity might not be
unique to new leaders, but generate incentives for leaders to retrench when they are threatened
by expulsion at any point in their turnover. To test this, I add a second dummy variable for a
leader’s last year of office (LastYear) and place it into the same regression model used for the
original results. I also add an additional control variable, SumTenure, which measures the
cumulative days a leader has spent in office up through December 31 of that year since these
more-experienced leaders also have a higher likelihood of leaving office.
[Table 5 about here]
The results in Table 5 show that both the year before and after a turnover witnesses a
substantively and statistically significant change in conflict-behavior in comparison to another
year in the leader’s rule. The odds of conflict participation for a leader in their last year are 39%
lower than for a stable leader. Holding all covariates at their mean in model three, the predicted
probability of MID involvement drops 54% from a normal year to a leader’s last year. A
comparison of the coefficients for the first year of a leader’s office and the last year finds no
substantive difference in their means. This large drop both before and after the turnover event
provides additional evidence that political insecurity around a turnover decreases a leader’s
conflict-propensity. The change in conflict participation appears independent of experience.
C. Heterogeneous Effects across Turnovers
Malone 26
The final condition under which it is possible to test the causal impact of political
insecurity and experience is to look for heterogeneous effects among how leaders enter office.
Using the additional entry and exit information collected about appointments, elections, and
violent turnovers, I create categorical predictors for the first and last year of a leader’s rule
organized by the type of turnover. The results in Table 6 illustrate two important results.
[Table 6 about here]
First, leadership turnovers from accidental or natural deaths occur spontaneously so they
are relatively exogenous to the structural conditions which induce insecurity around a turnover.
As a result, I expect no change in conflict-behavior for leaders who leave in this manner. In line
with this prediction, the coefficient for NaturalDeath for a leader’s last year of office is not
statistically significant. It also provides external validity for the coding of different entries and
exits in this dataset as a significant difference here would suggest measurement error in
leadership entries and exists. Second, the coefficient on noncompetitive election entrances is not
statistically significant. As theorized above, new leaders who enter through this manner are more
secure because of the underlying support they require to initially gain power.
By isolating additional competing predictions, this paper formulated a series of tests to
provide further insight into the causal mechanism facilitating this change in conflict-behavior.
Across all three tests, the results provided consistent and robust support for the claim that
political insecurity mediates the effect of autocratic leadership turnover.
Robustness Tests
To assess the robustness of these findings, I conduct a series of tests using alternate
specifications of the primary dependent and independent variables as well as changing the
sample to account for potential confounders. These results are included in the Appendix, but
Malone 27
broadly speaking do not substantively change either the preliminary results for a leader’s first
year of office or the tests corroborating this mechanism.
One potential weakness to only looking at militarized interstate disputes is that they also
include threats to use force or a show of force. If leaders do not pursue these lower-level
conflicts as viable routes to procure “rally-round-the-flag” effects to bolster their rule, then their
inclusion could make leaders appear less conflict-prone. Restricting the sample to hostile MIDs
or MID initiation finds no significant change in the results as seen in Table 2. Further, excluding
the sample to cases of interstate war still finds the odds of interstate war participation are 59%
lower for new leaders than stable leaders.
I also examine how prior experience may affect a new leader’s ability to handle a
diplomatic crisis or engage in more cautious foreign policy behavior. To test this, I compare the
size of the FirstYear coefficient for leaders in the first year of office who have served office one
or more times before compared to leaders with no prior experience. New leaders in their first
year of office with no experience have a miniscule difference of 9% in their predicted probability
of conflict involvement compared to partially experienced leaders. Additionally, I check the
Chiozza and Goemans (2011) argument that regular and irregular turnovers moderate conflictpropensity because these turnovers provide varying levels of personal security assurances for the
leader. Apart from non-competitive elections, I find no support for the claim that irregular and
regular entrances moderate conflict-propensities for new leaders; the odds of conflict
participation for new leaders drop approximately 40% independent of whether they have a
regular or irregular entrance.
More robustness tests and explanation of these results are included in the Appendix.
Throughout different manipulations of the data, however, the results remain the same: leaders
Malone 28
around a turnover, and new leaders in particular, exhibit a decreased conflict-propensity in
comparison to more stable leaders. This change in conflict-behavior by new leaders, their
predecessors, and incumbents who survive a turnover attempt arises because domestic instability
leads these leaders to retrench from foreign affairs as they work to consolidate power at home.
IV. Conclusion
Despite growing research on leaders as the unit of analysis in conflict studies, little
research exists on the consequences of leadership turnover for conflict participation and none in
the context of autocratic turnovers. Previous work on electoral cycles in democracies
consistently suggested inexperience and relative security led to increases in conflict participation
for new leaders, but a lack of empirical evidence on autocratic turnovers rendered the
applicability of these findings to new dictators unclear. Drawing on these theories about political
survival, experience, and preference shifts, I derived a set of new predictions about the effect of
autocratic turnover and international conflict. Contrary to findings from the democratic turnover
literature, the empirical result suggests belligerent leaders like Kim Jong-Un and Galtieri are
outliers, rather than the norm. In order to discriminate between the causal mechanisms implied
by political insecurity and inexperience, I formulated a secondary set of competing predictions
from these theories in order to identify which of these mechanisms was at play. The results of
these additional tests generate further evidence that suggests political insecurity mediates the
effect of leadership turnover. Unlike new democratic leaders, new autocrats are relatively weak
and vulnerable to challenges from other domestic elites. This instability generates large and
compelling incentives for leaders to retrench from international politics and avoid international
confrontations while they purge opponents, reorganize the military, and solicit support for their
Malone 29
rule. International cooperation, rather than conflict, is the least costly and easiest route for new
leaders to pursue during this time while they focus on mobilizing domestic support at home.
Although the results are robust for the sample examined, this paper omits consideration
of other turnovers and research designs that could prove fruitful avenues for future work. First,
this paper examines the first and last year as rough markers for a leader’s tenure and political
insecurity, a more nuanced measurement could explore the time it takes for leaders to
consolidate power or why certain consolidation strategies are more successful than others.
Second, this paper does not examine the effects of foreign-imposed leadership turnover due to its
focus on the domestic politics of leadership turnover. Future research could examine how this
type of turnover affects international conflict and whether it leads to more international support
or if it fuels dissent among the state’s residents, heightening the likelihood of civil war, and
externalization of that conflict abroad. Finally, this paper does not theorize about why
retrenchment policies or new autocratic leaders are able to successfully deter opportunistic
attacks. Given that the results suggest the drop in conflict-propensity is even stronger for MID
targeting rather than MID initiation, this presents an interesting puzzle for autocratic regimes as a
whole. Overall, the conclusions in this paper about the decreased conflict-propensity of new
autocratic leaders around a turnover provide a robust empirical contribution to the growing
literature on leaders and international conflict.
Malone 30
Figure 1: Summary of Leadership Turnover by Regime Type and Cause
Malone 31
Table 1. Effect of First Year in Office on MID Participation, 1950-2003
FirstYear
LnGDPCapt-1
EconGrowtht-1
CivilWart-1
PriorExp
LnAge
SingleParty
MilitaryJunta
Personalist
Transitional
Interrupted
(Intercept)
Country FE
AIC
BIC
Log Likelihood
Deviance
Num. obs.
***
(1)
-0.62***
(0.12)
(2)
-0.63***
(0.14)
(3)
-0.63***
(0.16)
0.04
(0.22)
-1.15
(0.77)
0.39**
(0.16)
-0.22
(0.22)
-0.09
(0.45)
0.07
(0.45)
-0.31
(0.37)
0.02
(0.31)
-0.55
(0.29)
-0.31
(0.31)
***
**
-1.03
-1.03
-0.70
(0.09)
(0.00)
(1.80)
No
Yes
Yes
4620.96 4119.04 3754.08
4633.62 4923.52 4550.95
-2308.48 -1932.52 -1749.04
4616.96 3865.04 3498.08
4165
4165
3735
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. Standard errors clustered by country.
Malone 32
Table 2. Summary of Causal Mechanism Predictions for Leadership Turnover and Conflict
First Year After Turnover
New Leader Incumbent Survives
Last Year
Before
Turnover
Experience
(-)
Null
Null
Political Insecurity
(-)
(-)
(-)
Mechanism Types of
Turnovers Homogeneous
effects
Heterogeneous
effects
Table 3. Balance Test for Successful versus Failed Irregular Turnover
Variable
Civil War (0/1)
Age
Ln(SumTenure)
Hostile MID (0/1)
Ln(GDP/Capita)
Economic Growth Rate
N
Mean for
Successful
Turnover
0.119
52.993
6.937
0.14
0.397
0.008
121
Mean for
Failed
Turnover
0.079
51.325
6.845
0.22
0.456
-0.004
111
Variance
Ratio
1.444
1.014
1.022
0.71
0.916
0.404
Standardized
Difference
T-pval
12.43
15.35
11.38
-22.14
-10.76
15.602
0.286
0.228
0.583
0.12
0.553
0.362
Table 4. Treatment Effect for New Leaders and International Conflict
Result/Method
τ
T-Statistic
Region FE
Number of Failed
Attempts FE
Regression
Unmatched,
n = 231
-0.14
(0.06)
Regression
Unmatched,
n = 231
-0.12
(0.06)
Genetic Matching
Matched, n = 121
-2.49
No
No
-2.10
Yes
Yes
-1.11
---
-0.07
(0.06)
Malone 33
Table 5. Effect of First Year and Last Year in Office on MID Participation, 1950-2003
FirstYear
LastYear
(1)
-0.52***
(0.12)
-0.42***
(0.12)
(2)
-0.56***
(0.14)
-0.45***
(0.13)
LnGDPCapt-1
EconGrowtht-1
CivilWart-1
PriorExp
LnAge
SumTenure
SingleParty
MilitaryJunta
Personalist
Transitional
Interrupted
-0.98***
(0.10)
Country FE
No
AIC
4607.24
BIC
4626.24
Log Likelihood -2300.62
Deviance
4601.24
Num. obs.
4165
Intercept
***
-1.01**
(0.00)
Yes
4106.83
4917.64
-1925.41
3850.83
4165
(3)
-0.55***
(0.17)
-0.53***
(0.15)
0.06
(0.22)
-1.19
(0.78)
0.40**
(0.16)
-0.23
(0.23)
0.05
(0.49)
-0.00
(0.00)
0.01
(0.47)
-0.31
(0.38)
-0.07
(0.32)
-0.48
(0.29)
-0.29
(0.32)
-1.21
(1.93)
Yes
3742.90
4552.21
-1741.45
3482.90
3735
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. Standard errors clustered by country.
Malone 34
Table 6. Effect of Different Entrances and Exits on MID Participation, 1950-2003
FirstYear:
NaturalDeath
Irregular
Non-Competitive Election
AppointmentSuccession
LastYear
NaturalDeath
(1)
(2)
(3)
-0.09
(0.29)
-0.49**
(0.18)
-0.76**
(0.32)
-0.63*
(0.24)
-0.64*
(0.28)
-0.53**
(0.21)
-0.47
(0.33)
-0.67*
(0.25)
-0.65*
(0.30)
-0.51*
(0.23)
-0.46
(0.32)
-0.63*
(0.26)
-0.09
(0.33)
-0.46*
(0.21)
-0.40
(0.30)
-0.76**
(0.29)
-1.00**
(0.00)
No
Yes
3772.68
4551.67
-1761.34
3522.68
3759
-0.08
(0.32)
-0.44*
(0.22)
-0.37
(0.30)
-0.75**
(0.29)
-0.92
(0.58)
Yes
Yes
3779.46
4627.00
-1753.73
3507.46
3759
0.24
(0.27)
Irregular
-0.56**
(0.19)
Non-Competitive Election -0.51*
(0.28)
ResignationRetirement
-0.72**
(0.22)
Intercept
-0.96***
(0.10)
Covariates
No
Country FE
No
AIC
4179.41
BIC
4235.50
Log Likelihood
-2080.71
Deviance
4161.41
Num. obs.
3759
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. Standard errors clustered by country.
Malone 35
Appendix. Robustness Tests and Additional Matching Tests
Additional robustness checks for the regression results include:
•
Monarchs in the sample: As mentioned earlier, monarchs are omitted because they do
not undergo the same insecurity or turnover experiences as other non-democratic
systems. Including them in the sample, however, has no effect on the overall result
although a separate consideration of the predicted probability of MID involvement for
their first and last years show an overlap in the confidence intervals of threatened
monarchs and stable leaders.
•
Change Operationalization of First and Last Year Measurements: Leaders may have
varying learning curves that enable them to mobilize support for their rule more
quickly than others. Confining a leader’s first and last year to the physical data can
exclude time periods that are far away from the actual turnover event and could bias
the result by aggregating the conflict-behavior of stable leaders with more vulnerable
ones. Changing the measurement to refer to the physical year actually strengthens the
result for new leaders, as we expect, whose odds of conflict participation drop to 60%
compared to stable leaders.
•
Change Dependent Variable to Hostile MIDs or MID Initiation: One potential
weakness to only looking at militarized interstate disputes is that they also include
threats to use force or a show of force. If these actions are not viable diversionary
mechanisms, then their inclusion could make leaders appear less conflict-prone
because leaders purposely do not pursue these lower-level conflicts as viable
incidents to procure “rally-round-the-flag” effects to bolster their rule. Restricting the
sample to hostile MIDs or MID initiation finds no significant change in the results as
seen in Table 3 and 4.
•
Include Cubic Splines or a Time Cubic Polynomial Variables: Beck, Katz, and
Tucker (1998) argue that the relative rarity of conflict necessitates the inclusion of
knots to increase the regression’s flexibility and mitigate bias due to temporal
dependence. More recent work by Carter and Signorino (2010) argues these might not
be necessary as cubic polynomials for a country’s peace years provide sufficient
Malone 36
flexibility. Adding either splines or a cubic polynomial to control for this does not
change the main results.
•
Subset Sample to Leaders Who Serve for Greater Than Three Years: It is possible that
leaders who serve for fewer than three years are inherently less secure as a function of
them being unable to effectively consolidate power and remain in office for a long
time. Military juntas, in particular, are likely to engage in ‘musical chair coups’ which
unseat ruling leaders fairly periodically thereby truncating the leader’s expected time
horizon for office or undermining the relative infrequency of turnover. When the
sample is subset to only those leaders who manage to stay in power for longer than
three years, the results do not change the estimates for the conflict-propensity of new
leader. The odds of conflict participation for leaders in their last year drop slightly to
32%.
•
Take the Last Year or First Year of a Leader’s Tenure as-if randomly assigned and
match: If there are concerns about the validity of statistical regression to accurately
model turnover or adjust for bias given the non-randomness of the event, then it is
plausible the statistically significant result is an artifact. One possible way to get
around this is to employ a matching strategy by presuming a leader’s first or last year
of office is randomly assigned based on a set of covariates from the year before.
Given the non-routine timing of non-democratic turnover as explored in the matching
section of this paper, this is plausible although the identification assumption is more
tenuous. Matching still finds a negative treatment effect for the first and last years of
office in comparison to other years.
These regression results are included below.
Malone 37
Table 1. Include Monarchs in Sample
(1)
(2)
(3)
***
***
FirstYear
-0.54
-0.60
-0.61***
(0.12) (0.14) (0.16)
LastYear
-0.51*** -0.55*** -0.52***
(0.13) (0.14) (0.14)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
4602.13 4181.22 4172.96
BIC
4621.08 4970.82 5038.36
Log Likelihood -2298.07 -1965.61 -1949.48
Deviance
4596.13 3931.22 3898.96
Num. obs.
4092
4092
4092
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Table 2. Alternate Independent Variable: Measurement for FirstYear and LastYear
FirstYear
LastYear
(1)
-0.78***
(0.14)
-0.59***
(0.15)
(2)
-0.90***
(0.17)
-0.61***
(0.17)
(3)
-0.90***
(0.18)
-0.57***
(0.17)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
4875.45 4447.67 4440.35
BIC
4894.57 5244.42 5313.59
Log Likelihood -2434.72 -2098.84 -2083.17
Deviance
4869.45 4197.67 4166.35
Num. obs.
4333
***
*
**
p < 0.001, p < 0.01, p < 0.05
4333
4333
Malone 38
Table 3. Alternate Dependent Variable: MID Initiation
(1)
(2)
(3)
-0.31* -0.32* -0.33*
(0.14) (0.16) (0.19)
LastYear
-0.69*** -0.72*** -0.73***
(0.17) (0.18) (0.18)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
3344.12 2920.51 2930.83
BIC
3362.95 3667.25 3746.60
Log Likelihood -1669.06 -1341.26 -1335.42
Deviance
3338.12 2682.51 2670.83
Num. obs.
3925
3925
3925
FirstYear
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
Table 4. Alternate Dependent Variable: Hostile MID
(1)
(2)
(3)
***
***
FirstYear
-0.47
-0.53
-0.52***
(0.13) (0.15) (0.17)
LastYear
-0.49*** -0.50*** -0.46**
(0.14) (0.15) (0.15)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
3926.42 3525.92 3528.13
BIC
3945.25 4272.66 4343.90
Log Likelihood -1960.21 -1643.96 -1634.07
Deviance
3920.42 3287.92 3268.13
Num. obs.
3925
3925
3925
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Malone 39
Table 5. Include Splines
(1)
(2)
(3)
***
***
FirstYear
-0.47
-0.58
-0.57***
(0.12) (0.15) (0.16)
LastYear
-0.44*** -0.50*** -0.47***
(0.12) (0.14) (0.14)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
4314.07 3915.75 3923.40
BIC
4351.72 4681.31 4757.99
Log Likelihood -2151.04 -1835.87 -1828.70
Deviance
4302.07 3671.75 3657.40
Num. obs.
3925
3925
3925
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Table 6. Include Time Cubic Polynomial
(1)
FirstYear
-0.47***
(0.12)
LastYear
-0.42***
(0.12)
Covariates
No
Country FE
No
AIC
4289.17
BIC
4326.82
Log Likelihood -2138.58
Deviance
4277.17
Num. obs.
3925
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
(2)
-0.60***
(0.15)
-0.49***
(0.14)
No
Yes
3899.09
4664.65
-1827.54
3655.09
3925
(3)
-0.60***
(0.16)
-0.47***
(0.14)
Yes
Yes
3905.63
4740.22
-1819.81
3639.63
3925
Malone 40
Table 7. Only Include Leaders Who Serve For At Least 3 Years
(1)
(2)
(3)
***
**
FirstYear
-0.50
-0.49
-0.55**
(0.15) (0.19) (0.22)
LastYear
-0.47** -0.41* -0.38*
(0.15) (0.19) (0.19)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
3044.20 2761.35 2763.48
BIC
3061.97 3436.86 3504.17
Log Likelihood -1519.10 -1266.67 -1256.74
Deviance
3038.20 2533.35 2513.48
Num. obs.
2767
2767
2767
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Table 8. Effect of Different Turnovers on MID Participation, 1950-2003
(1)
(2)
(3)
***
***
RegularEntryFirstYear -0.52
-0.61
-0.62***
(0.16) (0.18) (0.19)
IrregularEntryFirstYear -0.44** -0.45* -0.46*
(0.17) (0.21) (0.22)
RegularExitLastYear
-0.44** -0.52** -0.50**
(0.16) (0.19) (0.19)
IrregularExitLastYear -0.55** -0.48* -0.46*
(0.18) (0.20) (0.21)
Covariates
No
No
Yes
Country FE
No
Yes
Yes
AIC
4379.05 3955.61 3962.04
BIC
4410.42 4714.90 4790.36
Log Likelihood
-2184.52 -1856.81 -1849.02
Deviance
4369.05 3713.61 3698.04
Num. obs.
3925
3925
3925
***
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Malone 41
Figure 1. Balance Plot for First Year
Table 9. Matching Results for First Year Effect
Multivariate Matching
Genetic Matching
Matched N
-0.19
(0.08)
72
-0.21
(0.08)
72
T-Statistic
-2.24
-2.63
Result/Method
τ
Figure 2. Balance Plot for Last Year
Malone 42
Table 10. Matching Results for Last Year
Multivariate Matching
Genetic Matching
-0.24
(0.08)
-0.26
(0.08)
Matched N
54
54
T-Statistic
-3.09
-3.25
Result/Method
τ
Table 11. What Predicts a Successful Irregular Turnover?, 1950-2003
D.V. Successful Turnover (0/1)
(1)
CivilWar
0.71
(0.45)
LeaderAge
0.01
(0.01)
Ln(SumTenure) 0.04
(0.11)
HostileMID
-0.55
(0.39)
Ln(GDP/Capita) -0.14
(0.20)
EconGrowthRate 2.72
(1.35)
(Intercept)
-0.78
(0.87)
p-value F-test
.797
Region FE
No
Decade FE
No
AIC
347.92
BIC
372.51
(3)
0.84
(0.53)
0.02
(0.01)
0.06
(0.12)
-0.57
(0.44)
-0.04
(0.30)
1.91
(1.34)
-0.88
(1.09)
.443
Yes
Yes
354.98
411.20
Log Likelihood -166.96 -166.21
161.49
Deviance
333.92 332.42 322.98
Num. obs.
248
248
248
***
(2)
0.78
(0.47)
0.02
(0.01)
0.03
(0.12)
-0.49
(0.42)
0.05
(0.28)
2.62
(1.36)
-0.38
(1.06)
.999
Yes
No
356.42
398.58
p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. Errors clustered by country.
Malone 43
Table 12. Example of Matched Pairs in the Year after Turnover
Treated: New Leader, Country Year
Karrim Kassem, Iraq 1958
Ongania, Argentina 1966
Stevens, Sierra Leone 1968
Namphy, Haiti 1986
Francois Bozize, Central African Republic 2003
Ioannides, Greece 1974
Hector Caraccioli, Honduras 1957
Qaddafi, Libya 1969
Control: Surviving Incumbent, Country Year
Hussein Ibn Talal El-Hashim, Jordan 1958
Odria, Peru 1956
Siles Zuazo, Bolivia 1959
Najibullah, Afghanistan 1990
Al-Assad H., Syria, 1982
Ne Win, Myanmar 1976
Loranzo Diaz, Honduras 1956
Selassie, Ethiopia 1961
Table 13. Matching Results for Turnover Using Alternate Specifications
τ
Matched
N
T-Statistic
1:1
Multivariate
Matching
-0.07
(0.07)
121
2:1
Multivariate
Matching
-0.10
(0.06)
121
Propensity
Score
Matching
-0.08
(0.07)
121
2:1
Genetic
Matching
-0.07
(0.05)
121
Propensity
Score SubClassification*
-0.14
(0.06)
121
-1.10
-1.71
-1.11
-1.28
-2.54
*This method subdivides the propensity score into five different bins and then compares MID
involvement between treatment and control in each bin. Since the propensity score generates
greater imbalance in the sample then other matching methods, this result could be erroneously
picking up a selection effect in who survives office similar to the regression method.
Malone 44
Figure 4. Balance Test Comparison between Pre-Test and Post-Matching Covariates
Table 14 Post-Balance Test with Genetic Matching
Post-Matching
Variables
Leader Age
Ln(SumTenure)
Civil War
Hostile MID
Ln(GDP/Capita)
Econ Growth Rate
Mean for
Successful
Turnover
53.231
6.899
0.124
0.14
0.36
0.006
Mean for
Failed
Turnover
53.008
6.919
0.124
0.14
0.371
0.009
Variance
Ratio
1.307
1.293
1
1
1.196
1.143
Standardized
Difference
T-pval
1.41
-1.56
0
0
-2.75
-5.08
0.625
0.744
1
1
0.705
0.606
Malone 45
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