I’m not sure why you’re asking this. That long regimes can (or tend to?) get progressively worse wasn’t part of my argument. I was saying that there tends to be more change at the start of a reign than later on. And therefore, absent data to the contrary, I see no reason to believe these changes trend towards relaxation after regime changes, rather than merely showing regression to the mean.
As for long-term regimes that got worse later on: Mao seems to qualify, since the worst of his tyranny (e.g. Cultural Revolution) happened later on. Hitler didn’t commit any world-scale atrocities until World War II started. Stalinism was worse in the Thirties than in the Twenties, and worse again in WW2.
I’m not sure why you’re asking this. That long regimes can (or tend to?) get progressively worse wasn’t part of my argument. I was saying that there tends to be more change at the start of a reign than later on. And therefore, absent data to the contrary, I see no reason to believe these changes trend towards relaxation after regime changes, rather than merely showing regression to the mean.
As for long-term regimes that got worse later on: Mao seems to qualify, since the worst of his tyranny (e.g. Cultural Revolution) happened later on. Hitler didn’t commit any world-scale atrocities until World War II started. Stalinism was worse in the Thirties than in the Twenties, and worse again in WW2.
Points taken. A dangerous individual at the beginning of a regime can make that regime go much worse over time.