The Politics of Authoritarian Succession in Post-Soviet Personalised Autocracies

领导层更替是政治中最长期存在的问题之一。它的颠覆性潜力在高度个人化的独裁政体中得到了增强，在那里，政治影响力集中在一位领导人的领导下。本研究旨在探讨不同形式的人格主义专制制度如何影响领导层继任策略的选择，以及这些选择如何影响政权的稳定性。为了回答这些问题，这项拟议的研究将借鉴后苏联地区国家的样本证据，在那里，个人主义独裁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性地利用，以调查与具体继任战略的可能联系。此外，有关民意和精英行为的数据将被用来记录继任战略对政权稳定的影响。该区域最近的宪法改革浪潮为比较分析修改有关领导人继任规则的进程提供了一个独特的机会。这项研究的发现将有助于关于威权主义的新文学的兴起。政治日益个人化，以及后苏联地区日益重要，使得在高度个人化的背景下理解继任政治对学者、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.