The Politics of Authoritarian Rule by Milan W. Svolik provides several microscopic levels into what fuels authoritarianism. Svolik seeks to find the answer to his main research question of what drives politics in dictatorships. His goal was to help create a unified theoretical framework that would help past and future researchers on the topic of authoritarianism identify the key factors in dictatorships, to “locate the sources of political conflict among them; and thereby explain the enormous variation in institutions, leaders, and policies across dictatorships” (Svolik, 2012). Svolik goes on to explain that the aforementioned key factors are shaped by the twin conflicts of authoritarian power-sharing and control, which is explained in detail in my concepts wiki.
• Throughout the book Svolik theorizes that institutions and the balance of power among the authoritarian elites shape authoritarian power-sharing. Svolik goes on to further characterize this theory by explaining that “when a dictator controls either a very large or a large share of power, he either successfully survives in office without any allies or cannot entirely credibly commit to sharing power.
• Secondly, to answer his question about why some dictatorships rely heavily on their militaries for repression, Svolik argues that acquire leverage to intervene in politics when underlying, polity-wide conflict results in threats to the regime that take the form of “mass organized, and potentially violent opposition (Svolik, 2012). He goes on to theorize that the military “would like to exploit its pivotal political role by demanding greater institutional autonomy, resources, and influence over the policy from the regime” (Svolik, 2012).
• Lastly, in the “Moral hazard in Authoritarian Repression” section, Svolik also argues that there is a correlation between the severity of threats from those excluded from power and the likelihood of overt military interventions will be non-monotonic- meaning that it is first increasing and then decreasing in the magnitude of threats.
These three theories detail the impact power-sharing has on a regime, along with the assistance of the military. The military wields great power in deciding if the dictator will survive or not.