Scholarship on the breakdown of authoritarian regimes has shown a strong link between ruling
parties and regime longevity. During the same period, comparativists have advocated closer
attention to institutional origins. Engaging both research agendas, this article provides the
antecedent causal story to our understanding of ruling parties and regime persistence. In four
episodes of regime formation—Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines—initial leadership
struggles cast a long shadow over institutional development. Rulers in Egypt and Malaysia
defeated rivals advocating a more inclusive system. In the process they established robust ruling
parties that provided political stability. Conflicts in Iran and the Philippines left an alternate
legacy; rather than defeating their peers, leaders compromised with them. The persistence of
conflict within parties later induced dominant elites to dismantle their organizations. These
historical-institutional patterns help account for rulers’ seemingly imprudent undermining of
parties. In Egypt and Malaysia, they indicate that the “hot family feuds” which forged democracy
in Dankwart Rustow’s transitions theory may also establish enduring authoritarianism.
The article begins by relating the theory of elite conflict to Rustow’s transitions model
and prior work on the origins of parties. Intensity of social unrest has been a key variable in
accounts of party development, but does not explain the observed variation in Egypt, Iran,
Malaysia, and the Philippines. Tracing the process of regime formation and party development in
the four cases, I show that elite conflicts were the branching point for institutional variation. The
third and final section shows why the outcomes of founding leadership clashes explain
subsequent contrasts between ruling party and non-ruling party regimes.
By addressing four regimes from two different world areas this study reaps the
advantages of a cross-regional comparison, contesting rival explanations linked to geographical
Regarding the time periods examined, I based periodization on the process of
national independence or regime change. In Egypt and Iran regimes were built in a relatively
3
Convention