Conclusions

Abstract

AbstractThe Conclusions first summarize the book’s findings and then discuss their implications for state-formation and for understanding the workings of modern autocratic regimes. The authors point out how the perennial problem of succession is still relevant today: it regularly destabilizes non-democracies such as Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia and it even sometimes creates political crises in democracies, most recently in the United States after the November 2020 election. Against this background, the authors use their findings on European state-formation to shed light on how the politics of succession shapes political dynamics in autocracies more generally. They also show how modern representative democracy can be understood as an attempt to devise a peaceful solution to the problem of succession, in the form of a transfer of power via elections rather than bloodshed.