Biography:
Succession has long been thought to destabilize authoritarian regimes. However, many modern autocracies including regimes as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, and Singapore have pulled off succession peacefully. How do autocracies manage it? Succession tends not to destabilize autocracies when regimes treat it as a process rather than an event. This involves the prospective leader: 1) gaining experience in key government roles and building a trusted group of advisers; 2) overseeing consequential decision-making to reassure regime elites that they will be capable of ensuring the regime’s continued stability; and 3) being presented to the public over a prolonged period to socialize them to this individual leading the country. We illustrate the importance of this process through comparative-historical analysis of succession in diverse regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The argument contains implications for academics and policymakers by, respectively, challenging existing explanations of succession that primarily focus on institutional strategies and highlighting key steps to monitor in regimes expected to navigate succession in coming years.

Abstract:
Edward Goldring is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on authoritarian politics, especially purges and succession. He is the author of Authoritarian Survival and Leadership Succession in North Korea and Beyond (Cambridge UP Element, 2025) and Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell UP, 2026), as well as related articles in the British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. The article in World Politics won the 2025 Best Article Award from the Democracy & Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association. He was previously a lecturer at the University of York in the UK and has held fellowships at the University of Southern California, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of California San Diego.

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Biography:
Succession has long been thought to destabilize authoritarian regimes. However, many modern autocracies including regimes as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, and Singapore have pulled off succession peacefully. How do autocracies manage it? Succession tends not to destabilize autocracies when regimes treat it as a process rather than an event. This involves the prospective leader: 1) gaining experience in key government roles and building a trusted group of advisers; 2) overseeing consequential decision-making to reassure regime elites that they will be capable of ensuring the regime’s continued stability; and 3) being presented to the public over a prolonged period to socialize them to this individual leading the country. We illustrate the importance of this process through comparative-historical analysis of succession in diverse regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The argument contains implications for academics and policymakers by, respectively, challenging existing explanations of succession that primarily focus on institutional strategies and highlighting key steps to monitor in regimes expected to navigate succession in coming years.

Abstract:
Edward Goldring is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on authoritarian politics, especially purges and succession. He is the author of Authoritarian Survival and Leadership Succession in North Korea and Beyond (Cambridge UP Element, 2025) and Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell UP, 2026), as well as related articles in the British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. The article in World Politics won the 2025 Best Article Award from the Democracy & Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association. He was previously a lecturer at the University of York in the UK and has held fellowships at the University of Southern California, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of California San Diego.