Replication Data for: Only In It for Power and Wealth? The Neglect of Policy-Seeking Motives among Dictators

Contrary to the dominant literature on autocracies, this article argues and shows that dictators, in addition to being office-seeking, are often driven by policy-seeking motivation, that is, broader beliefs and ideology. The empirical investigation enlists new original data, based on obituaries, on dictators’ political motives. The dataset contains information on 297 deceased dictators who held power at some point during the period 1945-2008. The results reveal that the dictators had a variety of different motives for being in power. Many were strongly ideologically motivated, several were primarily motivated by money and power ambitions, and yet others held power to create stability and democratize. Thus, dictators’ motives seem to be substantially more diverse than normally assumed, and the data make it possible to measure motivation, which is key to investigating the direct as well as the conditional impact on political dynamics in autocracies.