Cuban Economist Challenges Regime's Resilience: "Leadership Changes, Regime Persists"

This past Friday, Cuban economist Miguel Alejandro Hayes delivered a provocative analysis in the magazine El Estornudo, challenging common assumptions about political change in Cuba. His statistical conclusion is striking: in three out of four instances where a one-party leader loses power, the regime remains intact while the individual falls.

The article, under the title "No One Knows How to Topple a Dictatorship," is part of Hayes's column "It's Not the Economy." It examines 716 instances of autocratic leaders exiting power globally from 1950 through 2025, casting doubt on the Cuban political debate, both among exiles and the opposition, for assuming a simple solution exists for achieving change.

"No one knows how to topple a dictatorship. Primarily because there's no clear, universal method to do so," Hayes asserts. He highlights a "paralysis of the future" within the Cuban debate: "For 50 years, that point B has been stuck on the liberation highway, I-95. Plenty of words, scant action."

Dissecting Regime Transitions

Hayes presents compelling data: 60% of autocratic exits from 1950 to 2025 occurred through internal regime rules, essentially transitions negotiated from within. Another 18% resulted from the natural death of the leader, around 13% were due to coups or military uprisings, and a mere 2.4% stemmed from popular uprisings.

Using this data, Hayes dismantles three dominant narratives in the Cuban debate that lack strategic foundation, according to him.

Challenging Prevailing Narratives

The first narrative is the fantasy of a U.S. military intervention. Hayes's analysis underscores that foreign invasions account for only 2.5% of autocratic falls over 75 years, with none occurring since 2016.

The second narrative involves economic sanctions and pressure tactics. Hayes bluntly describes this approach: "It's not strategy but identity and culture. Miami's combatant marches call for the shutdown of money transfer agencies to Cuba."

He portrays the exile community as ensnared in its own founding myth, holding onto the belief that Washington will eventually overthrow the Castro regime.

The third narrative is the call for an internal military coup in Cuba. Hayes sums this up with irony: "It's reduced to a couch call for Cuban military uprisings."

Hayes's implicit conclusion is that, without understanding the historical evidence of how dictatorships truly collapse, the Cuban debate will remain, in his own words, "plenty of words, scant action."

Continuing the Dialogue

Hayes has consistently followed this line of analysis throughout 2026. In June, he warned that dismantling GAESA wouldn't suffice in disassembling regime power, as it can easily recreate equivalent structures within 24 hours, as evidenced when Orbit S.A. was created following U.S. sanctions on FINCIMEX.

"As a Cuban, even as an economist, I'm not interested in dismantling GAESA. I'm interested in dismantling the regime," he stated then.

That same month, after the National Assembly approved a package of 176 economic measures, Hayes described them as a political survival maneuver: "The regime seeks to rebuild the social and political contract that sustains Castroism, opening economic opportunities designed to buy complicity in exchange for political loyalty."

This Friday's article expands on that framework into the realm of comparative politics and comes at a time of intense debate over Cuba's transition.

The opposition in exile has formulated the Liberation Agreement, signed in Miami in March and ratified in Madrid in June, bringing together over 30 organizations that propose a three-phase roadmap towards democratization.