Binding the Successor: Credible Commitment Devices in Autocratic Power Transfers

Abstract. Autocratic power transfers pose a credibility problem: the outgoing leader must entrust their post-tenure safety and wealth to a successor who will soon hold near-total coercive authority. Because ex-post promises are cheap talk absent binding constraints, the anticipation of reneging poisons otherwise peaceful transitions and encourages rulers to cling to office. This note synthesizes comparative, historical, and formal-theoretic scholarship on devices autocrats have used to render successor commitments credible: dynastic succession, single-party hierarchies, regency and hostage structures, privatized property rights, and constitutional guarantees. I argue these are best understood as self-enforcing equilibria of a repeated game among elites, not parchment institutions. Robustness depends on whether third parties—militaries, party cadres, or foreign patrons—have both the capacity and the interest to punish a defecting successor. I conclude with implications for China's post-2018 unraveling of term norms.