Replication Data for: Reshuffles or Dismissals? The Logic of Elite Management and Autocratic Survival

Co-optation and repression are central to understanding authoritarian power-sharing, but how autocrats implement these strategies with individual elites remains underexplored. We propose a theoretical framework conceptualizing dictators as managers of their ruling coalitions, who routinely appoint, dismiss, promote, demote, shuffle, or reappoint elites for a mixture of strategic, non-strategic, even mundane reasons. We argue that autocrats have agency in choosing between dismissals and reshuffles as general elite management strategies. In the process, they alter the information environment and elite incentives, with consequences for their own survival. While dismissals as a policy reduce elites’ power, they also increase intra-regime conflict and uncertainty, with adverse effects on ruler's survival. In contrast, reshuffles prevent coordination but ensure elites have a stake in regime continuity. We test this argument using novel measures of dismissals and reshuffles in autocratic regimes and communist Politburos, also considering mechanisms and alternative explanations. Our findings suggest that autocratic survival relies on more mundane elite management than seen in predominantly conflictual accounts of authoritarian politics.