Authoritarian regimes and civil-military relations: Explaining counterbalancing in autocracies

How do autocracies structure their civil-military relations? We contend that personalist dictators are more strongly associated withcounterbalancingthan other authoritarian regime types. Personalists are characterized by weak institutions and narrow support bases, a lack of unifying ideologies and informal links to the ruler. They thus have strong incentives to coup-proof and, as we contend, counterbalancing seems particularly attractive. Quantitative analyses of autocratic regimes' counterbalancing efforts since the 1960s provide support for this expectation. By showing that institutional coup-proofing significantly varies across autocratic forms of government, we contribute to the literature on comparative authoritarianism and civil-military relations.