10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO Meng, Anne Anne Meng University of Virginia Harvard Dataverse 2019 Social Sciences Meng, Anne Anne Meng University of Virginia 2019-01-19 2019-06-18 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/0ZAA0G 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/PGWJL0 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/FFQXW1 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/Y4CMKJ 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/9K5RKX 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/AAETFE 10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO/UNSZDI 46548 5148 9842 4945 1842 11338 6089 application/pdf text/tab-separated-values text/plain text/tab-separated-values application/x-stata-syntax text/tab-separated-values text/tab-separated-values 1.0 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. A key finding in the literature on authoritarian regimes is that leaders frequently rely on ruling parties to stay in power, but we lack systematic ways to measure autocratic party strength. As a result, it is not clear how often ruling parties are actually strong and capable of carrying out important functions. This article demonstrates that strong ruling parties are much rarer than typically assumed. Using a global sample of dictatorships from 1946-2008, I show that most ruling parties are unable to survive the death or departure of the founding leader. This is true even of many parties that have been coded as part of single-party regimes. While strong parties may be key to durable authoritarianism, relatively few parties are actually strong.