In the July 2024 issue (Volume 76, Issue 3) of World Politics, Edward Goldring, lecturer in political science at the University of Melbourne, and Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, argue that incumbents in autocracies prepare for succession by building a power base of elites outside their inner circle, for their preferred successor. Doing so helps the successor to stabilize the regime. They test their theory “on the prominent but puzzling case of North Korea, when Kim Jong Il was preparing for succession to Kim Jong Un,” they write in their article. “Prior to Kim Jong Il’s death, experts were skeptical about Kim Jong Un’s ability to survive, let alone consolidate power… Unlike when Kim Jong Il came to power after years of preparation, Kim Jong Un was relatively young with limited exposure to North Korean elite politics. So how did Kim Jong Il create the conditions for North Korea to pull off a second peaceful succession?”

In the first in our Storied Teller series — designed to extend World Politics’ content to a non-academic audience — the journal’s executive editor Emily Babson speaks with Goldring and Ward about their article and why it’s important to include North Korea in research on comparative authoritarianism. 

Can you talk about why succession is so important to the case of North Korea, and to other autocracies?

Ward: North Korea is itself a brittle sociopolitical and economic system. Since 1994, it’s acquired nuclear weapons capability. Thus, succession as a potential cause of political instability is an issue with far-reaching ramifications for the region and the world.

Goldring: Succession has been described as the thorny problem for autocrats to resolve; research shows that in autocracies in Africa, regimes have often collapsed after the first leader died. Increasingly, though, in recent years, we’ve seen regimes, including in Asia, navigate succession. There’s been a big focus in research recently on democratic backsliding, but if we want to understand why so many people are living under autocracy — given that over 70% of the world’s population lives under autocracy — understanding succession is absolutely crucial to understanding why this is the case.

You highlight the role that elite support plays in empowering the successor, so he or she can govern and maintain power. Why is helping the successor to govern so important? 

Goldring: We contend that the management of elites prior to succession is about empowering the successor who hasn't yet come to power, so that when he does, he can govern properly. Victor Shih's work, Coalitions of the Weak, posits that dictators don't care what happens after they die, an insight he's gleaned from studying Mao in China. Our evidence from North Korea, however, suggests that dictators do care what happens after they die. We argue that this is because often they want to protect their kin and their allies who have played key parts in their lives while they were alive. It’s also about legacy and policies. Getting in place the right person is crucial. Having in place a successor who they have empowered, who they can also count on to help them stay out of prison, or keep them out of The Hague, if they’re still alive after leaving office is also really important. 

Ward: The dictator’s successor needs to appear plausible. If the dictator’s successor doesn’t look like they will be able to take power after the dictator is gone, then this will further weaken the dictator in a crucial time for the regime. Had Kim Jong Un not appeared to be a plausible replacement for his father, then this may have harmed the regime or hurt Kim Jong Un. 

Can you speak to your methodology? What data did you collect, and why? And how did you collect it?

Goldring: I often get asked, “How do you study North Korea?” My answer is, “It depends on what question you’re interested in.” If someone were interested in studying the relationship between nuclear tests and and stock markets in South Korea, for example, those data are all publicly available and you could study that easily. Through reading North Korea-focused literature, we spotted a common theme: everyone pinpointed Kim Jong-Il’s stroke in August 2008 as the moment when he realized his own mortality and began planning for succession. It gave us what social scientists call a “plausibly exogenous shock,” where we can study a before and after. Since our contention is that elite management matters, we needed data about what elite management looked like in North Korea. That’s when we concluded that leadership event data would be a good way to study this. Whenever Kim Jong-Il went to an event, he had X number of officials, studiously writing in their notebooks, with him. All the information for those events came from North Korea state propaganda. We were interested in the signals that the regime was trying to send regarding the importance of different elites, even to each other, within the regime, and we complemented this by collecting biographical information on all these elites from publicly available South Korea-based sources, such as the Ministry of Unification.

In a counterfactual universe, Kim Jong Il hasn’t had a stroke. How might have this affected his succession planning, if at all?

Ward: Our information indicates that Kim Jong-Il was not immediately thinking about appointing a successor before his stroke and was still telling officials that he planned to lead the country potentially for decades going forward. He had toyed with the idea of anointing one of his other children as successor, at least according to high ranking defector statements to outside journalists. I would suggest had Kim Jong-Il not had a stroke, it's very likely that we would not have seen the kinds of elite management techniques that he did decide to use in 2008, because our data very clearly demonstrate that there were sudden and dramatic shifts in the way he managed elites. 

Why is it important to include North Korea in research on comparative authoritarianism?

Ward: North Korea is a unique system, which makes it an appealing case to study. But the deeper you get into it, the more limiting this is methodologically. It’s helpful to use theories that are used outside of the North Korean context to make more sense of the North Korea case. If we were only to use the conceptual language that the North Korean state itself uses, this would also severely limit our capacity to understand what’s going on inside that country. The flipside of this is that North Korea is not quite as atypical as the North Korean leadership likes to present itself. North Korea has a vast security sector with substantial coup-proofing issues, for instance; as a result, lots of latencies are built into its military organizational structure. Its police state uses methods that are common to the way secret police work in any dictatorship. And, as we show in our article, this is also true for elite dynamics. There are things that could be learned from the North Korean case, which are applicable more broadly.

To read Goldring and Ward’s full article, “Elite Management before Autocratic Leader Succession: Evidence from North Korea,” please visit Project Muse.