The Durability of Client Regimes: Foreign Sponsorship and Military Loyalty, 1946-2010

Conventional wisdom suggests that great power patrons prop up client dictatorships. However, this is generally assumed rather than systematically analyzed. In this paper, Adam Casey offered the first comprehensive analysis of the relationship between foreign sponsorship and authoritarian regime survival with the use of an original dataset of all autocratic client regimes in the postwar period. These results demonstrated that patronage from Western powers – the United States, France, and the United Kingdom – is not associated with client regime survival. Instead, only Soviet sponsorship reduces the risk of regime collapse. Adam explained this variation by considering the effects of foreign sponsorship on the likelihood of military coups d’etat and argued that the Soviet Union directly aided its clients in imposing a series of highly effective coup prevention strategies. In contrast, the United States and its allies did not directly aid their clients in coup prevention which left regimes vulnerable to military overthrow.