Retirement planning for dictators: what happens to outgoing dictators?

What happens to autocratic leaders who hold competitive elections? Autocrats gain a key benefit by holding competitive elections: a better post-tenure fate. According to my argument, autocrats who introduce competitive elections receive implicit or explicit assurances that they will be able to leave office and retire peacefully. By contrast, failing to hold a competitive election is more likely to result in a violent removal such as execution, prosecution and/or foreign intervention. The paper tests the argument by analyzing a cross-national data set of autocrats’ fates between 1960 and 2004, and the results provide evidence that autocratic leaders who hold competitive elections are more likely to lose power peacefully, and the result holds regardless of regime types.