Social Cleavages, Conflict, and the Fates of Autocratic Regimes

Abstract: This article focuses on two specific social cleavages, ethnic and economic inequality and analyses their respective effects within autocratic regimes. The primary mechanism that was tested was the relationship between these two, and non-state conflict, (defined as a conflict with more than 25 combat fatalities, and the state not directly taking part). The results show support for a positive correlation between ethnic cleavage and non-state conflict, and an inverse effect for economic inequality. To further understand how this affects the regimes in question I then find that non-state conflict increases the chances of regime failure, a finding which can be further strengthened by looking at the relation between the two cleavages and regime duration directly. The findings show cleavages affect the duration of a regime in the opposite direction of their effect on non-state conflict (which correlated with regime failure). The article also analyses a sub categorisation of regimes, based on electoral competitiveness, but these findings are not as statistically certain.