In this book I provide a theory of how hegemonic-party autocracies sustain their rule and of the process by which those autocracies can undergo democratization, illustrating this theory with the case of Mexico. Hegemonic-party autocracies are remarkably effective at constructing political order (Huntington, 1968). After the True Whig Party, which ruled Liberia from 1878 until 1980, when it was ousted by a military coup; the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), which ruled for seventy-five years, from 1921 to 1996; and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which ruled for seventy-two years, from 1917 to 1989, the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was the longest-lived autocratic regime of the twentieth century. The PRI governed for seventy-one years, from 1929, when the precursor to the party was created, until 2000, when the PRI lost the presidency to the long-standing opposition party, the National Action Party (PAN). Unlike the MPRP and CPSU, the PRI held regular elections during all these years for all levels of elective office. Parties other than the PRI were allowed to compete, and Mexico continuously replaced government officeholders electorally, including the president.

Like the Mexican PRI, many other autocracies have perpetuated their rule in spite of regular multiparty elections. Some examples are the Senegalese Socialist Party (PS), which governed for forty years, from the nation's independence in 1960.