The field of authoritarian subtypes has usefully described the third wave's undercurrent, an international trend toward plebiscitarian politics among persistent dictatorships. Yet classification does not replace explanation and the proliferation of "authoritarianism with adjectives" risks diverting attention from the core question of comparative regime change studies: Under what conditions do authoritarian regimes become democracies? This paper attempts to reorient the study of contemporary authoritarianism with a theory of ruling parties and coalition management. Whether electoral or exclusionary, authoritarian regimes with ruling parties prove more robust than other nondemocratic systems. Statistical analysis of 135 regimes during the period 1975-2000 shows that the presence or absence of multiparty elections, the key feature of the brand new authoritarianism, has no significant impact on regime survival while party institutionalization remains a strong predictor of regime longevity. Process tracing in four cases with limited multiparty politics details the causal relationship between ruling parties and regime persistence. Egypt and Malaysia evince a pattern of durability in which the dominant party resolves intra-elite conflict and prevents the defection of influential leaders. Iran and the Philippines show that the decline of ruling party institutions generates elite polarization and public rifts, a necessary but insufficient condition for successful opposition mobilization and regime change. Contrary to widespread expectations, elections do not destabilize authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes that have neglected the institutions of coalition maintenance destabilize elections.

Suicide attacks occur in the context of a conflict between warring groups, supported by an organization and sometimes even by families and communities which proudly sacrifice their children. Their design and planning, the construction of weapons and associated equipment, the recruitment of trainers and attackers, and the actual execution all occur within a group engaged in a conflict. Understanding the use of suicide attacks as a tactic of war requires understanding all the factors identified in the study of diplomacy and military strategy - military capability of the warring parties, terrain, payoffs and costs, etc. But that is not enough. Understanding suicide attacks also requires heightened attentiveness to support among the general population, for suicide attacks would not long endure without popular support. Understanding the social climate is thus a key ingredient in understanding suicide attacks.

The conundrum is plain to anyone who wants to see it. On the one side, autocratic regimes in the Greater Middle East complain that without a "resolution" of the Arab-Israeli conflict they cannot accept calls for extensive political, social or even market reforms. The end of "Israeli occupation", we are told, is a sine qua non for domestic change and there could be no real progress without "justice" for the Palestinians. Putting aside for the moment the logic of these claims, it is clear that crying foul and vilifying Israel is highly convenient for the region's authoritarians-serving at once to divert public anger, justify political oppression, excuse sclerotic economies and resist exogenous pressures to democratise. Yet on the other side, the notion that ambitious strategies for Middle East democratisation can be effectively pursued in isolation from the Arab-Israeli conflict is erroneous, for two very different sets of reasons: