Liberalization while the autocrat is still alive (if at all). Civil war once he's dead, unless the liberalization has time to take root before the autocrat dies.
If you have sources for this theory, I'd love to see them.
From what I've seen, autocracies in developing countries are "more prone to political instability because oppressed citizenries and displaced groups have no other mechanism to voice dissent other than active mobilization in the streets or subversive activities against the state" [1].
Autocracies are only more stable if they can promote "Rentier-state economic systems," like in North Korea, though that comes at the cost of putting that society further and further behind its international peers.
No, no sources. I was just saying that, if there was a trend of autocrats trying to liberalize, it was not necessarily inconsistent with a trend of civil war.
