Party Leaders, Kings, Generals, and Dictators Are Not Equal: The Varied Influence of Authoritarian Institutional Regime Subtypes on Climate Change Adaptation Readiness

Climate change adaptation readiness—the capacity of states to anticipate, prepare for, and manage climate risks—depends not only on economic resources but also on the nature and quality of political institutions. While democracies are often assumed to be better equipped for effective adaptation, many of the countries most vulnerable to climate change are governed by authoritarian regimes whose institutional structures differ substantially. This study challenges the conventional view that all autocracies operate similarly in shaping climate adaptation outcomes. Instead, it argues that internal institutional diversity among authoritarian regimes creates varying policy incentives and administrative capacities for adaptation. Specifically, it examines how distinct subtypes of authoritarian rule—single‑party, military, monarchical, and personalist—affect national adaptation readiness, focusing on the socio‑economic dimensions measured by the ND‑GAIN framework.

Employing a cross‑national time‑series design with a two‑way fixed‑effects baseline, the analysis covers 95 countries between 1995 and 2010, spanning both authoritarian and democratic systems. Using democracies as the reference group, it evaluates whether institutional configurations within authoritarian regimes hinder or facilitate socio‑economic adaptation readiness relative to democratic counterparts. The results reveal a consistent pattern: only personalist regimes exhibit significantly lower levels of socio‑economic climate adaptation readiness. These findings remain robust across alternative model specifications, including different dependent variables, additional control variables—such as colonial history and settler mortality—and alternative estimation approaches (Naïve Fixed Effects, Panel‑Corrected Standard Errors, Feasible Generalized Least Squares, and System‑GMM), mitigating concerns about heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and endogeneity.

The analysis suggests that personalist regimes are uniquely constrained by their political structure, wherein power is highly concentrated in a single ruler and governance is shaped primarily by loyalty and regime survival rather than institutional performance. This personalized form of rule weakens bureaucratic capacity and undermines the continuity of long‑term policy commitments, leaving such regimes poorly positioned to sustain coordinated, forward‑looking investments essential for climate adaptation. As a result, personalist systems lag behind both democracies and more institutionalized authoritarian regimes—such as single‑party, military, and monarchical systems—in building resilience to the escalating risks of climate change.