Regime Legitimation Expert Survey (RLES)

We present a data set on authoritarian regimes’ claims to legitimacy that is based on leading experts’ assessments of 98 states for the period 1991–2010. The experts assessed these regimes on the basis of six conceptually distinguishable but interlinked claims to legitimacy – namely (1) foundational myth, (2) ideology, (3) personalism, (4) international engagement, (5) procedural mechanisms and (6) performance.
For the survey, we contacted approximately 800 renowned international and local experts. They were selected on the basis of their publication records, their local expertise and their work for high-quality country-based indices, research institutes, and/or high-profile think tanks. 273 online questionnaires were completed. We collected expert assessments for the most recent non-democratic regime (as of 2013, the year of assessment). The survey comprised questions covering the strength of a regime’s six legitimation strategies, based on a six-point scale ranging from 0-5. In addition, the dataset includes information regarding the number of experts per country and the experts’ average confidence in answering the questions on the respective country.