This research uses formal mathematical models and empirical tests to understand the dynamics of the political survival of regimes. Using game theory the research points to the importance of domestic political survival on the part of leaders of regimes. While such leaders are often concerned with external threats to the regime, they are even more concerned with internal (domestic) threats from rivals. The work builds on the idea that leaders across all political systems care about various mixtures of policy and personal aggrandizement. However, both are secondary to remaining in power. Leaders have only a small set of instruments available to promote their political survival, namely public policies and private goods, and their incentives for particular allocations depends upon two basic aspects of the political regime: the size of the politically active population and the size of the winning coalition. The model developed here leads to specific hypotheses about the ways in which leaders allocate resources. These models are tested under a variety of econometric models.
