The principal threat most autocratic leaders face stems from within the regime. To control militaries and mitigate the risk of coups d’état, many autocratic leaders repeatedly purge strong officers from the military. What are the causes and consequences of such purges? Despite its importance, scholars rarely have studied the question, as they have lacked a systematic and comprehensive dataset. The Military Purges in Dictatorships (MPD) dataset contains information on the dates and characteristics of 1,007 military purges, and covers 566 political leaders in 116 authoritarian countries over the period 1965 to 2005. In this article, I describe MPD, compare it with other datasets, present descriptive statistics on the data, and suggest its applications. By coding the timing and various characteristics of military purges, MPD facilitates empirical study of the relationships between autocratic leaders and their militaries, and thus is useful for researchers studying political violence, repression, civil-military relations, coup-proofing, leader survival, and regime transition.

大多数专制领导人面临的主要威胁来自该政权内部。为了控制军队并减轻发动政变的风险，许多专制领导人多次从军队中清除强大的军官。这种清除的原因和后果是什么？尽管它很重要，但由于缺乏系统和全面的数据集，学者们很少研究该问题。独裁军事清洗（MPD）数据集包含有关1,007军事清洗的日期和特征的信息，涵盖1965年至2005年期间116个专制国家的566位政治领导人。在本文中，我描述了MPD，并将其与其他数据集进行了比较。 ，提供有关数据的描述性统计数据，并建议其应用。通过对军事清洗的时间和各种特征进行编码，