Why do some authoritarian regimes fall, while others survive? Which autocracies are likely to maintain power in the face of domestic challenges and international pressures? These twin questions have gained prominence in the last decade or so, as scholars increasingly turn their attention to the study of nondemocracy across the globe. Stressing the importance of political institutions and practices that foster loyalty among elites and the masses, scholars have linked autocratic longevity to, among other factors, parties of power, selective patronage, corruption, nationalism, populism, and media manipulation. Scholars have also focused on variation in institutional capacity within particular countries over time, demonstrating the ways that leadership decisions, as well as changes in domestic and international politics, can hinder or enhance regime resilience. In other words, political institutions—and not only those responsible for coercion and repression—matter.

Martin K. Dimitrov’s edited volume, Why Communism Did Not Collapse, complements and builds upon these findings, while also reviving regime type as a central organizing principle of fruitful cross-national comparison. In terms of its theoretical and conceptual contributions, the volume highlights “continuous adaptive institutional change” (p. 4) writ large as the central mechanism undergirding regime durability. Under the overarching category (or umbrella) of institutional adaptation fall four key areas: gradual market reforms, but without genuine political pluralism; the rise of nationalism as the regime’s ideological foundation; the inclusion of regime opponents, including ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and marginalized elites, in the party and patronage system; and institutional accountability that both gives citizens some sense of oversight over elites and ensures the ability of those in power to keep one another in check. Communist regimes that successfully incorporate one or more of these four broad-based adaptations tend to be resilient; regimes characterized by “inflexible political structures” (p. 4), in contrast, are likely to fail.

The volume also yields important methodological contributions, demonstrating the benefits of moving away from a geography-based (e.g., Eastern Europe versus East Asia) research agenda to one that centers on regime type (Barbara Geddes, “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2 [1999]: 115–44). By investigating the full range of single-party communist regimes and comparing those that survived 1989—China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam—to the regimes that fell in Mongolia, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, Dimitrov and his colleagues tease out the specific adaptations (or lack thereof) that matter in each context at particular points in time. Not only does the volume effectively bridge the regional divides that continue to compartmentalize comparative politics but it also bridges temporal divides. The chapters draw important lessons from the past, combining political history with contemporary events to create a comprehensive, yet concise, account of regime dynamics. Autocratic resilience, in short, depends primarily on how well leaders are able to modify political institutions to fit changing circumstances.

It is interesting to note that at the same time this volume unearths general patterns of institutional flexibility versus institutional rigidity and “maladaptation” (p. 7), it also strongly underscores the wide variation that exists within the universe of authoritarian (in this case, communist) rule. While Dimitrov’s institutional explanation of regime failure and success is appropriately parsimonious, the case comparisons clearly demonstrate that what the institutions themselves look like and how they function can vary extensively and thus defy simple categorization. The chapters on North Korea (Chapter 4, by Charles K. Armstrong) and China and Vietnam (Chapter 8, by Kellee Tsai, and Chapter 9, by Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky, and Yu Zheng) do a particularly good job of describing and accounting for this intricate variation, both between and within countries over time.

The editor brings together a notable group of scholars whose diverse approaches shed much light on the institutional factors that contribute to authoritarian resilience and collapse. There are numerous advantages to theoretical and empirical individualism, as suggested here, including drawing on deep knowledge of the cases under investigation to reveal the kind of on-the-ground variation that makes each interesting and unique. At the same time, this diversity can also serve as a potential drawback. Certain chapters, for example, appear geared less toward elaborating institutional (mal)adaptation and more toward presenting the authors’ own explanatory model or research agenda. Examples include the chapters on democratic diffusion and contagion (Chapter 5, by Valerie Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, and Chapter 6, by Mark Kramer) and the critique of the selectorate theory (Chapter 7, by Mary Gallagher and Jonathan K. Hanson). While the findings presented in all three are crucial to our understanding of authoritarian durability, their main insights do not consistently align with the theory of institutional innovation and resilience laid out in Dimitrov’s introductory chapter. The result is a shifting causal narrative, one that is indeed rich and nuanced but whose complexity is at times challenging for the reader. Relatedly, the country comparisons run the risk of coming across as less than systematic. While Dimitrov justifies the volume’s division by type of adaptation rather than by country, it is not completely clear why certain contemporary cases receive sustained attention while others —notably Cuba and Laos—are only cursorily covered.

Despite these minor shortcomings, there is much to admire in this collection of analyses. While the volume as a whole maintains an eye toward generalizability, it does so through close, contextual investigation and comparison of individual country cases. A major benefit of this methodological approach is the way that it seamlessly reinforces one of the volume’s main points: Under the umbrella of adaptive change, there exists a wide range of possible institutional responses. The specific combination and form that these take depends on a country’s particular domestic and geopolitical environment, as well as the specific configuration of tensions at a given point in time. It also depends on the decision-making process of individual leaders, the structural constraints they face, and the resources at their disposal.

Finally, while Dimitrov is careful to delineate the limits of applying these findings beyond the communist cases, his framework of institutional dynamism represents a significant contribution to the study of nondemocracy more broadly. As is true of all political systems, authoritarian regimes undergo change over time, and sometimes this change can be quite dramatic. Yet even dramatic institutional change might not fundamentally undermine or alter the regime’s basic structure. Why Communism Did Not Collapse is a major step toward ensuring that our theories mirror this basic, if underappreciated, fact of political life under nondemocratic rule.