Autocrats fear their own inner circle far more than crowds in the street
A lone ruler with total power still needs generals, officials and regional bosses to carry out orders, and those same people are the likeliest to remove him. Most autocracies fall to coups, and history offers almost no case of one toppled by popular revolt alone, without elites switching sides.
The word joins the Greek for self and power. Autokrator became a title of the Roman emperor, passed into Russian as the tsar's designation and then into French and German, before settling as a general and increasingly negative label. In an autocracy one person, or sometimes a small group, holds unchecked authority and decides which civil liberties people may use. Absolute monarchies and dictatorships both qualify, and blends with democratic features are called hybrid regimes or electoral autocracies.
Economists have tried to explain why such rule appears at all. Mancur Olson contrasted roaming bandits, who plunder and move on, with stationary bandits, who settle, tax and therefore have a stake in the long-term prosperity of their territory. Douglass North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry Weingast argue instead that early states were bargains among many people capable of violence, who formed a coalition and shared privileges because fighting destroyed the spoils. Size, wealth, military strength and culture do not reliably predict autocracy, though divided, unequal populations are more prone to it.
Staying in power is a balancing act. Autocrats repress opponents, co-opt influential figures and use propaganda, often claiming legitimacy through ideology, religion, birthright or foreign threats; regimes shunned abroad frequently blame outside enemies for their isolation. They need strong institutions to govern, yet those institutions can become checks on them, and regional elites given too much loyalty may put local interests first.
Succession is the chronic weak point. A designated heir has every incentive to hurry things along, a danger greater with appointed successors than with hereditary ones, who tend to be younger and less powerful. Without any heir, a power struggle follows the ruler's death. When autocracies do fall, they have usually been replaced by another autocracy, though twentieth-century Europe trended toward democracy.
Source: Autocracy
