… but new research shows that assassinating tyrants can be a good thing:

Their findings are striking: A country whose autocrat is assassinated is 13 percentage points more likely to move toward democracy in the following year than a country where the assassination attempt on the autocrat failed, the authors calculate. Also, the successful assassination of an autocrat is 19 percentage points more likely than a failed attempt to lead to subsequent leadership changes being made through regular, institutional means. These effects are not just short-term changes. They’re still seen a decade or more later.