In most cases, democratization has followed an authoritarian ruler’s mistake. Bloomberg    Leonid Bershidsky Ceausescu was overconfident. Photo by Spiegl / Ullstein Bild via Getty Images.  With authoritarian rulers ascendant in many parts of the world, one wonders what must happen for their countries to liberalize. The likes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey or Xi Jinping in China are entrenched, experienced and not unpopular — so should their opponents simply resign themselves to an open-ended period of illiberal rule? According to Daniel Treisman, a UCLARead More