Last week on Deep Dive, we looked at a paper that investigated the source of institutional strength in revolutionary democracies. The authors found that democratic institutions grew stronger in the Reconstruction-era American South in the areas where federal soldiers were deployed. Black communities were better able to build institutions to access power in a democratic system that could withstand eventual violent white backlash when they were protected in the early years by a strong-armed force.

This week’s paper tracks a different evolutionary pattern. Revolutionary democracies are fragile, but the opposite is true of revolutionary autocracies. Non-revolutionary authoritarian governments last just 15 years on average, while revolutionary authoritarian governments average nearly 40 years in power. The question is, why does the revolutionary origin of an authoritarian government matter so much in determining its durability? In a new article in the journal World Politics, political scientists Jean Lachapelle, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Adam Casey locate the source of durable autocratic regimes not in the safety of the regimes’ early years but in the chaos of that time.

The existing theories of why governments last for long periods have little to say about regime origin, Lachapelle et al. write. Regime origin doesn’t determine a country’s economic growth or natural resource allocations, both of which tend to help authoritarians stay in power. Strong ruling party institutions — another indicator of authoritarian longevity — are more likely the result of a revolution than the cause of one. There is, then, something particular about revolutions that produce long-lasting autocratic rule.

For Lachapelle et al., that particular thing is the disorder of the revolution itself. The period of upheaval brought on by the revolution, they argue, creates a situation in which budding revolutionaries have to achieve supremacy quickly in order to ever take control of the state in the first place. When creating order from chaos, there are powerful incentives to create institutions that lend themselves to autocracy. If the institutions created are powerful enough to take control of the revolution, then it stands to reason that they’ll be powerful enough to remain in place for a long time.

To test their theory, Lachapelle at al. looked at all the autocratic regimes since 1900 and measured their likelihood to fall for each additional year they stayed in power. By controlling for economic growth, prosperity, population and oil and gas production, they set aside all the popular explanations of authoritarian longevity that do not relate to revolutionary origins. Holding those variables equal, growing out of a revolution indicates that an authoritarian government is 74% less likely to fall in any given year than a non-revolutionary authoritarian government.

With the effect of revolutions established, the authors then dug into the question of whether revolutionaries actually produced more effective authoritarian institutions early on in their rule than non-revolutionaries. By measuring civil society strength, military size and party control over the military and government, they checked how quick and effective autocrats were at seizing control. Under revolutionary autocracies, civil society was weaker, militaries larger, and parties stronger, in control of both the military and the government than under non-revolutionary autocracies.

To say that the state makes war and war makes the state is hardly a new observation in political science. Yet, Lachapelle et al. detail how particular forms of ambitious, ideological struggle incentivize particular forms of statehood. An autocracy that brought its form of order from chaos will likely outlast one that simply transitioned from another form of state order.

Shirin Jaafari profiled Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, on the occasion of the release of a new documentary about her life. Sotoudeh, a leading advocate for women, LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and prisoners of conscience in Iran, is serving a 38-year prison sentence herself after representing women who removed their headscarves during a protest. The documentary was shot in secret before Sotoudeh’s most recent arrest, and captures footage of her arguments before Iranian courts and of her daily life outside of her work. Sotoudeh is currently having heart problems in prison, and her husband reports that the Iranian state is denying her medical care. 

Critical State’s own Laicie Heeley is back with another season of “Things That Go Boom,” the Inkstick Media and PRX podcast about current issues in national security. The new season starts Nov. 9, and the preview reminds us that, though it feels like the US presidential election is the end of the world, it is actually just a scene-setter for how the world confronts a range of other problems. And some of those problems, from climate change to nuclear war, could actually be the end of the world.

Halima Gikandi spoke to Sudan watchers about the recent deal struck to remove Sudan from the US government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The designation subjects Sudan’s government and people to harsh financial sanctions that make it difficult to bring money into the country. As part of the deal, the new Sudanese government paid $335 million to American victims of terrorism sponsored by the previous Sudanese regime of Omar al-Bashir. Final removal from the list will require an act of Congress, but many Sudanese are already excited about the prospect of renewed economic opportunity.

Clearly, the first three lightning strikes weren’t enough of an indication that just standing a 70-foot metal missile with a nuclear warhead inside in the middle of a field and hoping for the best was an unsustainable strategy.

Fort Bragg’s Twitter presence died of thirst last week, but the OnlyFans model who prompted the terminal display of horniness isn’t mourning.

The occasional Critical State series, “What’s Going On With These United Nations Training Videos?” continues this week, with some puzzling animation choices from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

There’s a debate in the US about whether giving police military equipment leads them to do more violent, risky and escalatory things. There’s plenty of quantitative data suggesting that it does, but people still wonder whether just having certain capabilities will lead cops to make foolhardy decisions they otherwise would have avoided. Enter this video, from Japan, about what happens when you even give police power tools, much less armored personnel carriers.

When reached for comment about General Richard and his wall decorations, Ayatollah Khamenei referred reporters to his spokeswoman, Mariah Carey.

Three years of law school and six figures of student loans were all worth it for a lawyer to get to say, in federal court, “I understand juggalo, but then they do boogaloos?”

There’s no shot of the whole parliament for comparison, but it’s hard to imagine that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is wrong here.