Stability Wells
Political systems settle into three attractor basins—not two. The democratic plateau (elevated but fenced), the hybrid trap (shallow but genuine), and the tyranny well (deepest, hardest to escape). Between them lie ridgelines of maximum volatility where small shocks produce large transitions.
Svolik (2012), The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Svolik identifies two fundamental problems that authoritarian rulers must solve to survive: the problem of authoritarian power-sharing (managing threats from insiders within the ruling coalition) and the problem of authoritarian control (preventing mass mobilization from below). These two problems map directly onto the stability mechanisms that give the tyranny well its extraordinary depth in the basin model. The 98% ten-year retention of Stage 8 (Totalitarian, L=0–9) and 91% retention of the tyranny basin overall reflect the successful resolution of both Svolik problems: surveillance and atomization solve the control problem, while patronage networks and coup-proofing solve the power-sharing problem. The stability wells framework extends Svolik's analysis by revealing that these mechanisms create not merely regime persistence but a gravitational attractor—the tyranny well is the deepest basin precisely because the solutions to Svolik's two problems are mutually reinforcing. Fear prevents coordination (solving control), while the absence of coordination makes power-sharing among elites the only viable political strategy (solving power-sharing). This self-reinforcing loop is what makes the well deep: each increment of repression increases the cost of opposition, which further stabilizes the regime, which enables further repression. The formal model captures this as a high gravitational constant (k≈0.15), meaning that deviations from the tyranny equilibrium are rapidly corrected. Svolik's framework explains why k is so high in this basin; the stability wells model shows how high it is and what escape requires.
Levitsky & Way (2010), Competitive Authoritarianism. The hybrid trap—the shallow third basin at L≈47 with 67% ten-year retention—is the feature of the stability wells model that most directly validates and extends Levitsky and Way's scholarship. Before their work, the dominant paradigm (reflected in both Polity and the earlier "transition paradigm" critiqued by Carothers, 2002) treated hybrid regimes as inherently transitional—way stations on a path toward either democracy or autocracy. Levitsky and Way demonstrated that competitive authoritarian regimes could persist for decades, featuring real but unfair elections, constrained but not eliminated opposition, and rule by law rather than rule of law. The stability wells model confirms this empirically: the hybrid trap is a genuine attractor basin, not a transitional slope. The GMM identifies a distinct cluster at μ=25.0 (and the broader hybrid zone at L≈20–70), and the retention rate of 67% over ten years shows that countries entering this zone tend to stay. However, the model also reveals what Levitsky and Way's qualitative framework left ambiguous: the hybrid trap is the shallowest of the three basins (k≈0.05 vs. k≈0.10 for democracy and k≈0.15 for tyranny). This means that while it is a genuine attractor, it is less stable than either endpoint—countries in the hybrid trap are more susceptible to shocks, more likely to transition, and more volatile in their trajectories. The implication is that Levitsky and Way were right that competitive authoritarianism is a stable regime type, but the stability wells model adds a crucial qualification: it is the least stable of the three equilibria, and its long-term survival depends on the absence of large shocks more than on its own structural resilience.