The breakdown of the non-democratic regimes unveils an apparent paradox, because it happens notwithstanding that they do not have to confront any legal and public contestation (obviously, thanks to the extension of internal control and repression of any opposition), and that the free access to the political power is denied. The non-democratic regimes consolidate and stabilize quickly once those two conditions are guaranteed (internal control over any potential opposition, no open access to the political power) but they eventually breakdown, Why?
The article aims at exploring theoretically the conditions of political stability, in search of an interpretation. Firstly, the non-democratic regimes are negatively identified through a conceptual sketch of the democracy as opposite regime. Secondly, three main approaches to the study of the political stability are identified: the political culture approach addressed to the investigation of the dominant beliefs and sources of legitimacy of a given regime; the socio-centered approach drew attention to the distribution of the social and economic resources; finally, the institutional approach focused on the institutional and organizational control of the social and political mobilization. Assuming that the stabilizing factors underlined by the three approaches may be combined in a multi-dimensional interpretation of the democratic political stability, it is argued a contrario that their absence could be an explanation of the instability of the non-democratic regimes and of their breakdown in the long run. The political culture and the socio-centered approaches point out the «social factors», while the «institutional» approach focuses on «regime factors» which may stabilize a non-democracy. A hypothetical model is developed and applied to the recent cases of the authoritarian breakdown in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and it is argued that although the «social factors» do have a role in the political crises, the «regime factors» are the key variables explaining the durability of the non-democratic regimes and their capacity to delay the breakdown.
