2025/12/17 by Matilde Tofte Thorsen · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Political Conflict and Governance #Eastern European Communism and Reforms
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1049096525101509
openalex created_date 2025/12/17 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
ABSTRACT Contrary to the dominant literature on autocracies, this article argues and demonstrates that dictators, in addition to being office-seeking, often are driven by policy-seeking motivation—that is, broader beliefs and ideology. The empirical investigation enlists new original data, based on obituaries, about dictators’ political motives. The dataset contains information on 297 deceased dictators who held power at some point during the period 1945–2008. The results reveal that the dictators had a variety of different motives for being in power. Many were strongly ideologically motivated, several were primarily motivated by money and power ambitions, and others held power to create stability and democratize. Thus, dictators’ motives seem to be substantially more diverse than typically assumed, and the data make it possible to measure motivation. This is key to investigating the direct as well as the conditional impact on political dynamics in autocracies.