Political Legitimacy and Leaders' Survival.

This paper supposes that stability in leader survival is the key interest to a leader herself although it may not provide an accountable leader. The hypothesis to test in this paper is whether leader longevity is influenced by mass movement that is indicated as electoral behavior, or depends on a leader's strategy of survival determined by the loyalty norm institution. Based on a composite data set that provides information on electoral politics and the winning coalition institution, I employ three measures of electoral and social stability - the level of mass threats, electoral non-participation, and electoral competition - to test these hypotheses. The empirical findings indicate that electoral non-participation and mass threats are key determinants to the risk of leader deposition, while the leader herself has room to manipulate the risk by constraining the level of mass media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]