Leader survivability in non-democracies: the role of blame shifting

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1558794 (Table of Contents)

This paper presents an alternative explanation for the possible incentives of the incumbents in authoritarian regimes to hold elections by utilizing a formal model that is derived to simulate the strategic interaction between the incumbent and the people. Equilibria of themodels show us that, there exists feasible circumstances under which the incumbent would prefer to allow elections to be hold with the purpose of the selection of an officer that the incumbentmay later on benefit from by shifting the blame of an external crisis, hence weaken the risk of a regime breakdown.