C:\Research\Democracy\Iraq&democracy_400.wpd 2/24/2005 ( 816a)
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These numbers are significantly smaller when the analysis is restricted to the twentieth century, during
which the pace of political change has clearly accelerated.
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Uzbekistan (11) and Turkmenistan (10) date only from the demise of the Soviet Union.
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Iraq’s 34 years as a “coherent autocracy” is exceeded by nearly half of the 22 others currently holding
that status, including Bhutan (96), Saudi Arabia (77), North Korea (55), China (54), Vietnam (53), Libya (52),
Cuba (51), Oman (46), Laos (42), and Kuwait (42).
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This does not include East Germany (-9 from 1960 to 1988), incorporated into Germany (+10). Thirty-
five additional countries endured one or more briefer bouts with extreme autocracy during the twentieth century.
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A total of 35 additional countries have a generational experience of CA, but not SA. Ten are currently
(continued...)
2.12, statistically significant beyond .05, indicates that the more years spent under extreme
autocracy, the lower the likely Polity score 20 years hence. Predictions 10 years in the future are
more strongly effected (t= -4.01).
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It is less clear that twenty years is the appropriate cut-off
point. As a practical matter, we require some criteria to differentiate those nations we will regard
as similar enough to Iraq to provide some insight into its likely future.A series of probit analyses
not shown demonstrates that status as an “established extreme autocracy” does significantly
diminish the likelihood of becoming a coherent democracy within five, ten, and twenty years, but
the results are not very robust across plausible specifications.
Iraq’s 23 year stretch as a extreme autocracy is hardly unprecedented, but neither is it
especially common. Among 2003's extreme autocracies, only four others meet the condition of
twenty consecutive years at -9 needed to be considered established extreme autocracies: Saudi
Arabia (77 years), North Korea (37), Qatar (32), and Swaziland (30).
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Of course, these nations
do not offer much guidance to Iraq today, except to confirm that autocracy of various degrees is
often a highly stable governance form relatively immune to political change.
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With the polity
associated with Saddam Hussein’s dominance decisively shattered by the war and foreign
occupation, however, these long-lived autocracies no longer constitute Iraq’s peer group. (That is
not to say, of course, that a new autocracy may not emerge in its place.) Instead, we now look to
guidance from those nations that have emerged from a generational experience as an established
extreme autocracy. That list is a manageable one. Since the beginning of the twentieth century,
only 30 current nations have endured twenty continuous years of extreme autocracy.
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The post-World War II cases are sometimes cited as precedents, but they are really quite
different. Germany’s extreme autocracy was brief (1933-1944) and preceded for a longer period
(1919-1932) by the Weimar Republic’s +6. Italy had no democratic tradition, but its extreme
autocracy (-9) was also relatively brief (1928-1942). Japan’s last coherent autocracy ended in
1857. Closer were the thirteen now-independent nations which had extreme autocracy experience
as Soviet republics for slightly under 20 years, which we treat separately below.
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Convention