The Politics of Authoritarian Succession in Post-Soviet Personalised Autocracies

领导权的继承是政治中最长期存在的问题之一。在政治影响力集中在单一领导人手中的高度个人化的专制国家，这种颠覆性的潜力会得到加强。本研究旨在探讨不同形式的个人主义专制制度如何影响领导人继任策略的选择，以及这些选择如何影响政权的稳定性。为了回答这些问题，拟议中的研究将从后苏联地区的国家样本中获取证据，在这些地区，个人专制已成为一种占主导地位的政权类型。选定的后苏联独裁政权之间的差异将被分析利用，以调查其与具体继任策略之间可能存在的联系。此外，关于公众舆论和精英行为的数据将用于捕捉继任策略对政权稳定的影响。该地区最近的宪法改革浪潮为比较分析修改有关领导权继承的规则的过程提供了一个独特的机会。这项研究的发现将有助于新兴的关于威权主义的新文学。政治的日益个性化和后苏联地区日益增长的重要性，使得在高度个性化的背景下理解继承政治对学者、企业和政策制定者来说极其重要。

Leadership succession poses one of the most perennial problems in politics. Its disruptive potential is heightened in highly personalised autocracies, where political influence is concentrated under a single leader. The aim of the proposed research is to explore how different modalities of personalist authoritarian systems affect the choices of leadership succession strategies and how these choices affect regime stability. To answer these questions, the proposed research would draw upon evidence from a sample of countries from the post-Soviet region, where personalist autocracy has become a dominant regime type. The variation among selected post-Soviet dictatorships would be leveraged analytically to investigate possible links with specific succession strategies. Further, data on public opinion and elite behaviour would be used to capture the impact of succession strategies on regime stability. The recent wave of constitutional reforms in the region provides a unique opportunity for a comparative analysis of the processes of modifying the rules pertaining to leadership succession. The findings of this research would contribute to the burgeoning new literature on authoritarianism. The rising personalisation of politics and the growing importance of the post-Soviet region render the understanding of succession politics in highly personalised settings extremely relevant for scholars, businesses and policymakers.