​How do rulers with weak or non-existent bureaucracies distribute goods to remain in power and avoid conflict? Unlike their counterparts with robust bureaucracies, low-capacity autocrats face constraints when powersharing with elites. Rulers can overcome this and reduce elite rebellion by distributing goods that 1) transfer sufficient coercive capacity to elites and 2) provide sufficient rents back to the ruler once distributed. I argue that land meets these criteria in the case of late medieval and early modern England (1226-1572). To test this, I collect three novel datasets (600,000 charters and patents, rebellious counties from 32 civil conflicts, and 502 elites’ grants and participation in the Second Barons’ War). Elites who received land grants were less likely to join the rebels during the civil war, and counties were less likely to rebel immediately after receiving a land grant. Thus, even monarchs without bureaucratic buying power can build stable bargains.

Historical scholarship documents the contours of the Great Migration, the movement of millions of black people out of the American South between 1910-1970. Political science literature focuses on the political behaviors of residents after black migrants arrive. Deviating from this perspective, we focus on the strategic reasons for black people to migrate and the factors drawing them to particular locations. We theorize migration from violence and economic distress compelled black migrants to travel different distances and seek different institutions. We leverage micro-census data between 1900-1930 to trace the movement of millions of black individuals after lynchings and the introduction of the boll weevil pest, combined with novel measures of civil society. Black individuals experiencing lynching migrated within the South. Individuals experiencing the boll weevil migrated out of state and to the North and also moved to areas with strong black civil society.

Do brothers/uncles destabilize autocracies? Violent examples of uncles of autocrats murdering their nephews to take power themselves suggest that autocracies face acute threats from within via monarchs’ brothers and uncles. Through a novel dataset on all legitimate and illegitimate siblings of monarchs from 32 European polities between 1000 and 1800, I employ a quasi-experimental design comparing monarchs with brothers to those with sisters to evaluate if brothers of monarchs, or uncles of successors, threaten existing regimes and monarchs’ sons. Then, with novel data on abrupt and exogenous natural deaths of monarchs, I evaluate whether brothers threaten the stability of the next reign with their royal brothers now removed. In neither case are brothers more destabilizing to regimes than sisters. In fact, through personalistic powersharing arrangements, monarchs can protect their sons and translate their ambitious brothers into stabilizing actors. From novel data on secular and ecclesiastical appointments to royal brothers and brotherly conflicts, I find that secular appointments of royal brothers stabilize monarchs’ reigns when monarchs have an heir. In short, uncles are not evil, just buyable.

How do sexualized elite-autocrat ties shape autocratic rule? Though ubiquitous throughout historical autocracies, political science scholarship has yet to investigate the institution of concubinage. We argue that concubinage can foster powersharing between an autocrat and elites by providing a two-way credible commitment device that ties both parties’ hands. Concubines also act as lobbying agents for their families through their close proximity to the monarch. Royal children between an autocrat and his concubine further entangle him with his elites. We evaluate these arguments using the empirical case of nineteenth-century Imperial Vietnam and five novel datasets: royal concubines, royal-elite kinship networks on 400 elite families, elite bureaucratic appointments, imperial-approved infrastructure projects, and elite rebellions. Preliminary results show that elite families with royal concubines received 2.4 times more
appointments than those without one. Our findings highlight women as strategic actors who facilitate political stability and accumulate wealth and political status for their families.