Why do authoritarian rulers resist international pressure to democratize? Why do some authoritarian regimes openly defy international calls for respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms while others initiate controlled change and liberalize in a limited way, and still others collapse opening a window of opportunity for democratization? This paper will analyze the behavior of autocracies under conditions of direct and/or indirect international pressure for change from external actors such as the UN, the EU or the US or direct and/or indirect assistance for preserving the status quo by other autocracies such as Russia or China. It will conceptualize the impact of international factors on the chances for survival, reform and collapse of authoritarian regimes, drawing on insights from the literatures on military interventions, international sanctions, Europeanization, democratization and transnational diffusion processes. It will put forward alternative hypotheses for explaining autocracies’ reactions, combining international and domestic variables and capturing the interaction between external factors and domestic conditions. It will propose a research strategy for investigating the conditions under which autocracies are more likely to defy, initiate controlled change or breakdown in the face of international democratization and autocratization pressure.
