ABSTRACT
This chapter dives deeper into the nature of personalism. After a brief exposition on labels, the history of the concept and its study, it illustrates the internal power shift that takes place within a regime’s inner circle, and causes the transformation to personalist rule. Once this new state-of-affairs is consolidated, regime behavior changes drastically, and thus one can analytically isolate such cases as separate regime ‘types’ when studying dictatorships. Personalist rule has been on the rise, with 139 cases between 1946 and 2010, it is now the second most common autocratic type today, and this has serious implications for the international system, because these regimes (on average) are more bellicose, more corrupt, more repressive, and they are the least likely regimes to democratize. This chapter finishes by introducing the research questions, which guide this research into tracing the impact of such regimes on their states, societies and development, identifying their impediments to democratization. (Is it the violence during transition or are structural factors at play?) And, do these regimes create self-enforcing path dependencies or so-called vicious circles?
