Authoritarian diversity and its limits: regime subtypes and climate change adaptation readiness

This study examines whether institutional differences among authoritarian regime subtypes – single-party, monarchical, military, and personalist – are associated with variation in national climate change adaptation readiness. Drawing on comparative authoritarianism, it expects single-party and monarchical regimes to be better positioned than military and personalist systems to sustain the longer-term commitments associated with adaptation readiness. Using cross-national panel data on 73 authoritarian regimes from 1995 to 2010 and estimating two-way random-effects and System GMM models, the analysis does not identify statistically significant differences across regime types. These null findings suggest that the institutional mechanisms highlighted in the theory may be difficult to detect in this domain using available cross-national indicators. One possible explanation is that adaptation readiness is a low-visibility form of collective provision whose benefits are often delayed and realized through avoided losses. Another is that existing indicators may under-capture governance processes relevant to adaptation capacity.