In a series of reports and meetings in Spring 2011, intelligence analysts and officials debated the chances that Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Estimates ranged from a low of 30 or 40 per cent to a high of 95 per cent. President Obama stated that he found this discussion confusing, even misleading. Motivated by that experience, and by broader debates about intelligence anal...

When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. Scholarship exists on the first two kinds of t...