Soviet Support, Not Western Backing, Kept Authoritarian Regimes Afloat

What Question Does This Answer?

Adam E. Casey asks whether foreign sponsorship actually prolonged authoritarian 'client' regimes in the postwar era (1946–2010), and whether different patrons—Western powers versus the Soviet Union—had different effects on regime survival.

Scope and Data

This article assembles an original dataset of all autocratic client regimes in the postwar period and uses statistical tests to compare survival outcomes under sponsorship by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union.

How the Analysis Approaches the Problem

The analysis links measures of foreign patronage to regime lifespans and to the incidence of military coups, treating coups as a principal pathway through which external support could help or hurt authoritarian durability.

Key Findings

• Patronage from Western powers (the United States, France, and the United Kingdom) is not associated with longer client regime survival.
• Soviet sponsorship is associated with a reduced risk of regime collapse during the period studied.
• The difference appears to operate through military politics: the Soviet Union provided direct forms of aid and implemented effective coup-prevention strategies for its clients, whereas Western patrons did not supply comparable coup-defensive assistance, leaving their clients more vulnerable to military overthrow.

Why This Matters

These results challenge a simple presumption that great-power backing uniformly props up dictators. Instead, the durability of client regimes depended on the content and mechanisms of support—particularly the extent to which patrons could shape military loyalty. The article offers a systematic, data-driven contribution to debates about Cold War patronage, external intervention, and the political sources of authoritarian resilience.

Contribution

By compiling a comprehensive postwar dataset and tracing a concrete mechanism—coup prevention—Casey provides the first large-scale test of how different forms of foreign sponsorship affected the longevity of client dictatorships between 1946 and 2010.