Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brazen decision to invade Ukraine has provoked new questions over the soundness of his leadership. Putin has now joined the ranks of other strongmen whose decisions appeared unpredictable and misguided — men like Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, Uganda’s Idi Amin and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurad Niyazov.
In these and other instances, paranoid and erratic authoritarian behavior was a product of years of “personalist rule” — when leaders successfully concentrate powers in their own hands. Having hollowed out all institutions that could check their moves and purged all voices who could challenge them, personalist dictators find themselves isolated and out of touch. That appears to be the case with Putin, who made the decision to put Russian nuclear forces on high alert while sitting at the head of a long and empty table.
In fact, we’ve come to expect personalist dictators like Putin to be more likely to initiate conflicts and make foreign policy blunders. The track record of such governments poses a clear risk to global peace and stability — and personalist authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. Our research with Barbara Geddes found that 23 percent of all dictatorships were personalist in 1988, and that number now stands at 40 percent. As Putin’s behaviors reveal, this is a trend to take seriously.
The origins of personalist rule
Our research shows that personalist rule has its roots in fractured government institutions, especially a weak security apparatus or weak ruling party. When dictatorships form, two easily observable warning signs typically flag that personalization of power is on the horizon.
There’s a reason Putin can be so aggressive: Oil.
The first red flag is when the seizure of power occurs via a coup led by junior military officers. Such an action suggests that the military is divided, precisely because senior officers did not lead the way. Our research finds that junior officer-led coups are a clear signal that personalization of power is likely, as was true with some of the most notorious dictators of the 20th century, including Libya’s Gaddafi and Yahya Jammeh of Gambia.
By contrast, when senior officers seize control, the military is usually more professionalized and better able to hold the leader’s ambitions in check. While military coups are virtually unheard of in former communist countries, seizures of power by junior military officers have often presaged personalist rule elsewhere.
A second indicator of looming personalization is when dictators gain power with the backing of a weak political party, often one they themselves created. Over the past 30 years, this has been the most common pathway to personalist rule, with democratically elected leaders leveraging the weakness of their ruling party to undermine democracy from within. Our research shows that when dictators created the political party backing them, the odds of personalization of power are high. This was indeed the road to personalism for not only Putin but for Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Can Putin keep the oligarchs and Russian elites on his side?
Other research we’ve conducted with Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jia Li shows that leaders in democracies are increasingly coming to power backed by parties they created to run for office. That suggests the global rise in personalist dictatorships has its origins in this political dynamic. It implies that backsliding democracies such as El Salvador under Nayib Bukele — the creator of his party Nueva Ideas — would also appear to be at high risk of transitioning to personalist rule.
Personalist rule is on the rise
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has sent shock waves throughout the international community, raising the specter of a new world war. With personalist rule on the rise, however, the likelihood of unpredictable and foolish belligerence from other personalist authoritarians is high. The world does not simply have a Putin problem.
Given the clear links between personalization of power and weak and/or fractured militaries and political parties, it’s worth considering how foreign policy choices may contribute to the rise of leaders who put their own wealth and power first. External security assistance to Iraq, for example, probably paved the way for Nouri al-Maliki to personalize the military and consolidate control, as did arms exports to Saddam Hussein years earlier.
Similarly, decisions over where to buy oil, gas and other natural resources appear consequential. Research shows that such inflows of oil and gas export revenue can facilitate the leader’s concentration of power, as experience with Libya under Gaddafi and Putin’s oil wealth make clear. The dynamics enabling wealthy oligarchs to fund their own political parties seems an important consideration, as well, given the role that such parties could play in helping them amass power if elected.
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Research can also inform effective ways to pressure personalist dictators when they engage in bad behavior. These leaders may not require widespread support to maintain power — but they do rely on the backing of their inner circle. Because they are particularly reliant on patronage networks to sustain their rule, choking off these networks is likely to destabilize their base of power.
As recent difficulties tracking down the hidden wealth of Putin and his oligarchs reveal, however, the loopholes that enable personalists and their cronies to hide assets overseas makes targeting them a challenge. Moreover, though sanctions can be an effective strategy for unseating personalist leaders, the situation becomes more complicated if the regime is propped up by natural resource wealth. Sanctions that successfully coerce a change in personalists’ behavior, for instance, entail actions that inflict immediate, lasting pain on those at the top, even if they are also costly for those trying to change that behavior. For Putin’s regime, this might entail sanctions on fuel exports, for example, which so far the United States has not pursued.
Personalist dictatorships are responsible for much of the world’s bad behavior beyond stoking deadly conflicts. They are more likely to pursue nuclear weapons, repress their citizens and rely on corruption to maintain their rule. While dealing with Putin and the crisis in Ukraine is the international community’s current priority, preventing and containing the spread of personalist rule has emerged as a broader and pressing challenge.
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Erica Frantz is an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University, where she researches authoritarian politics and the dynamics of political change.
Joseph Wright is a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University. He studies how international factors shape authoritarian rule and democratization.