Stability Rules: Succession Institutions, Conflict, and Divergent Paths of State Development

Abstract

How do political systems secure stable transfers of power, and what are the long-run consequences of failing to do so? This dissertation argues that the organization of succession is a fundamental determinant of both political stability and state development. Succession institutions matter in two ways. First, clear and impersonal rules reduce uncertainty by coordinating elite expectations over who should rule next. Second, they shape who competes for power in the first place—selecting for claimants with either limited capacity and incentives for rebellion or, alternatively, empowering rivals prone to contest the throne. Where succession institutions fail along these dimensions, transfers of power become focal points for violence, generating recurrent patterns of conflict that shape divergent paths of state development over the long run. The dissertation develops this argument across three chapters. The first examines how variation in succession rules shaped the likelihood of conflict in pre-modern monarchies. I argue that succession institutions differ along three key dimensions: whether successors are identified before or after a ruler’s death, whether succession follows a fixed, rule-based line (e.g., birth-order) or a discretionary process, and whether power transfers vertically across generations or laterally within them. The advanced identification of successors and fixed, rule-based lines of succession reduce uncertainty and help coordinate elite behavior. But succession institutions do more than solve coordination problems, they also shape the pool of viable claimants. In particular, generational direction structures which actors are positioned to compete for the throne, selecting for individuals with distinct capacities and incentives for violent contestation. Using an original dataset of over 2,500 monarchs across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East from 800 to 1800 CE, I show that generational direction is the strongest predictor of peaceful succession: vertical transfers are consistently associated with lower levels of violence, while lateral systems exhibit substantially higher risks of conflict. The second chapter examines the long-run consequences of succession conflict for state development. While external warfare is often seen as strengthening the state, I argue that internal conflicts over succession had the opposite effect. Repeated violent contests over the throne disrupted processes of state building by undermining the accumulation of fiscal and administrative capacity, weakening efforts to monopolize violence, and short-circuiting the bellicist mechanism by reducing states’ ability to engage in external war. Consistent with these mechanisms, I show that early modern European states experiencing more frequent succession conflicts developed weaker fiscal capacity and were less likely to initiate interstate wars. Extending the analysis over the long run, I construct measures of cumulative exposure to succession conflict from 1000 to 1800 and link them to modern outcomes. States with greater historical exposure to succession conflicts exhibit persistently lower state capacity, less effective governance, and bureaucracies characterized by higher levels of neopatrimonialism in 2000. To address concerns of endogeneity, I instrument succession conflict using variation in the likelihood of dynastic competition, proxied by the share of rulers who died with exactly one surviving legitimate son. Instrumental variable estimates—particularly in early modern Europe—suggest a plausibly causal relationship, highlighting how recurrent instability at moments of succession shaped divergent paths of state development over the long run. The final chapter turns to the American founding to reconsider the relationship between succession and political legitimacy. I argue that the Revolution is best understood not as a wholesale rejection of monarchy, but as a rejection of dynastic and sacral forms of legitimacy that had historically underpinned hereditary succession. The constitutional design of the presidency reflects an effort to preserve the advantages associated with a strong, unitary executive—both in terms of stability and effective governance—while severing political authority from lineage and divine sanction. In doing so, the founders constructed a system of executive succession grounded in institutional rules rather than hereditary right, combining regularized transfers of power with the selection of capable leaders. The American founding thus represents an attempt to resolve the succession problem without recourse to dynasty, reconstituting executive authority on a non-hereditary basis. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that succession is not merely a periodic political event but a central institutional problem with far-reaching consequences. By placing succession at the center of comparative and historical analysis, this dissertation offers a new account of how political order is maintained—and why it so often breaks down.