Public policies are expected to vary across regime types. However, the association between regime type and policy remains inconclusive. Efforts to solve this inconclusiveness by further differentiating across types of authoritarian regimes have been insufficient. Focusing on the theoretical mechanisms behind the expected associations between regime type and policy, I propose a novel framework to analyse policymaking and outcomes across regimes. I claim that policymaking in any regime will depend on the characteristics of the policy under consideration and the space for contestation over policy. I support this claim by an in-depth historical comparative analysis of policymaking and outputs in three Latin American military-led regimes. I show that, despite these regimes sharing a type, facing similar policy challenges and having comparable explicit goals, they exhibit differences in their policymaking process and resulting urban leases policies that can be explained by differences in their space for contestation.