Authoritarian Elites Research Articles

Corruption, Elite Contestation, and Parliaments: Why Do Legislatures Become Stronger in Authoritarian Regimes?

A growing body of literature studies the personalization of power in authoritarian regimes. Yet, how institutions can become a credible constraint to dictatorial rule is less widely studied. I theorize that corruption is a key factor associated with stronger legislatures in authoritarian regimes. By engaging in corruption, authoritarian elites in ruling coalitions can build up networks of support and influence and ultimately, use their elevated position to impel more legislative powers vis-à-vis the executive. Examining panel data on the strength of legislatures in authoritarian regimes between 1946 and 2010, I show empirically that authoritarian parliaments are stronger when levels of corruption in a given regime are high. The link between corruption and legislative strength is especially strong in the Middle East and Africa, and primarily applies to party-based and military dictatorships. More competitive electoral and legislative processes, however, do not uniformly affect parliaments’ strength. These findings contribute to our understanding of institutional changes in autocracies and highlight the centrality of elite contestations in determining institutional trajectories.

Autocratic Electoral Management: Lessons From Thailand

How can we ensure quality elections when the key institutions responsible for the organisation of polls are openly partisan and anti-democratic? In their 2017 paper, Birch and van Ham suggest that partisan electoral management bodies (EMBs) do not matter for the quality of polls so long as effective alternative oversight institutions exist, are active and independent. These institutions can make up for the EMBs’ shortcomings and ensure that a relatively high-quality election is still achieved. I argue that the notion of active and independent alternative oversight institutions leaves us guessing under which conditions it works. Adopting James’s network-based approach to electoral management, I show on the example of the 2019 Thai election that electoral governance networks that are characterised by high levels of political polarisation, the presence of entrenched authoritarian elites and formally independent EMBs that are too powerful make substitution untenable.

Tunisian democratisation: dashed hopes between 2010 and 2022

ABSTRACT Beyond the euphoria of the early revolutionary moments, in 2010-2011, muted counter-revolutionary setbacks followed elite-led ‘democratisation'. For those who construed the political developments in the aftermath of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, in the wake of Ben Ali's autocratic regime dismantlement, as a first step in the direction of a ‘democratic transition', disappointments were on the horizon. By the summer of 2021, the sudden re-emergence of a powerful presidency in the name of ‘returning sovereignty to the people', while the ghost of the oligarchic state and the spectre of the authoritarian elites still hung about, opened the door for the return of a bureaucratic police state. Meanwhile, the effects of lingering economic and health crises were compounded by politico-constitutional wrangling. These further clouded an already polarised social environment and created the political conditions for the ‘restoration' of the ‘presidentialist regime’.

Transition to Democracy in Deeply Divided Ethiopia: Mission Impossible?

The article explains the state of political transition in Ethiopia since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 based on the concept of political settlement in the context of divided societies. It is qualitative research based on in-depth interviews with fifteen key political party leaders and key experts. Relevant literature on democratization in Ethiopia has been reviewed and has rarely explored the issue of democratization in the context of divided societies. Ethiopia is a deeply divided society that hosts countless politically mobilized ethnonational liberation movements seeking more political autonomy and a fair share in central decision-making institutions. While Ethiopians and the international community hoped for Ethiopia's transition to democracy under Abiy, the findings show that the transition is stalled, and the process is hijacked by centralizing and increasingly authoritarian elite that has marginalized key political actors. Centralization and marginalization are currently two major challenges. Both are inimical to deeply divided Ethiopia that hosts a variety of territorially based cleavages. Cycles of marginalization have entrenched fragility in Ethiopia, as the fight continues between those who are in power and those who are excluded. Transition to democracy implies an inclusive political system, popular and elite support for democracy and democratic rules are accepted as norms, anti-system parties are weak or nonexistent, and, most importantly, authoritarianism is rejected wholeheartedly. This is a fundamental question for Ethiopia and is called the genetic question of democracy because it determines the gateway and the answer to the question: How does democracy come into being in the first place? One cannot have democracy when a country has a significant number of armed rebel groups in or outside the country who still think that power comes through the barrel of a gun. Nor is the transition to democracy possible when the elite in power adopts violence and the use of force as a means to stay in power. Transition to democracy can succeed only through an inclusive dialogue that produces political settlement addressing the deep cleavages.

Financialisation and the authoritarian state: the case of Russia

Abstract Using the example of Russia, we argue that financialisation in an authoritarian state can take place primarily through formation in financial sector monopoly-like state-related structures controlled by a limited circle of the irreplaceable elite. It occurs because financialisation and new financial technologies in an authoritarian state increase both the opportunities and incentives for dominance of large state-dependent institutions in the financial sector. The authoritarian state and its elite are using financial and information technology developments in accordance with their goals, adopting and enhancing some financial practices and innovations from the experience of developed countries while rejecting, distorting or slowing down others. As a result, on the one hand, within the framework of the formation of such monopoly-like institutions, financialisation is proceeding actively, the role of finance and financial relations in society is increasing everywhere and the use of new financial technologies, digitalisation and financial inclusion are expanding. On the other hand, some financial markets remain underdeveloped because either they imply a certain degree of competition, diversity, institutional quality and independence from state voluntarism, or the state and authoritarian elite have not yet fully elaborated a strategy of integrating these financial markets into the orbit of their interests. Thus financialisation in DEEs with an authoritarian political regime can strengthen and facilitate the dominance of authoritarian elites. We draw these conclusions considering the example of financialisation in Russia in the last two decades, where the banking sector is at the core of the financial system.

“Reconstituted authoritarianism: Islam, service provision and the state in al-Sisi’s Egypt”

ABSTRACT Social service provision by non-state actors is cited as an important factor in maintaining authoritarian regime stability in the Middle East. By facilitating their growth regimes ease the burden on their own shrinking resources and avoid resultant social unrest. But these arrangements are not politically risk free, with Islamic opposition groups able to develop substantial social capital. After the Arab Spring, in which regimes faced mass mobilization, and in some cases, nascent democratization, authoritarian elites adapted and transformed their tactics of control to contain newly mobilized societies. Focusing on the crackdown on Islamic service providers in Egypt since 2013, this article shows when a process of democratic transition is reversed, reviving previous arrangements of non-state service provision is deemed unsustainable due to continued political threat. In response, a model of reconstituted authoritarianism is developed that sees the utilization of the state apparatus to extend “direct” controls over non-state service provision, through four strategies: nationalization, corporatization, extraction, and state building. However, the sustainability of this strategy is tempered by state capacity. The article offers a path to increased understanding of authoritarian adaptation after the Arab Spring, and the role of service provision in maintaining regime stability.

Targeted Sanctions Against Authoritarian Elites

Targeted Sanctions Against Authoritarian Elites

The Danish Cartoons, Charlie Hebdo and the culture wars: satiric limits in comparative national and transnational perspectives

A considerable body of academic literature has lauded political satirists as rebellious defenders of democracy and free speech against an establishment. Although satire is not always rebellious, this reputation of satirists and of satire may itself be the object of partisan capture. In this article, it is the object of capture by right-wing populists. In that respect, satire and the meta-discourse about satire can be used like any political rhetoric in gathering like-minded allies, claiming standards, and fighting opponents. With the Danish cartoons crisis of 2005-2006 and the Charlie Hebdo massacre of 2015, proponents of culture wars rhetoric added satire to their list of Western cultural legacies that needed defence against Islamic terrorism as well as left authoritarian elites who suppressed free speech through political correctness. They constructed simplistic global political dichotomies about satire, free speech, and civilisation and lifted events out of local contexts in a process of global framing. The culture war rhetoric was absolutist in support of free speech and satire on the international level. But the national level reveals the hortatory and partisan side to this rhetoric and the complexities that belie the absolutist stand. Nations are the arenas where struggles over free speech and political humour are played out.

Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy

AbstractThis research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and middle ranks are coups “from below,” where military personnel outside of the political elite challenge sitting incumbents, their loyalists, and the regime itself. Disaggregating coup types offers leverage to revise important questions about the causes and consequences of military intervention in politics. This research note illustrates that coup attempts from the top of the military hierarchy are much more likely to be successful than coups from the lower and middle ranks of the military hierarchy. Moreover, coups from the top recalibrate authoritarian elite coalitions and serve to sustain autocratic rule; they rarely produce an opening for a democratic transition. Successful coups from below, by contrast, can result in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and generate an opening for democratic transitions.

Introducing authoritarian diasporas: causes and consequences of authoritarian elite dispersion

ABSTRACT Scholarship on democratization has made significant progress in theorizing the trajectories of former authoritarian elites, with considerable attention given to authoritarian successor parties in particular. However, the literature has largely failed to contend with cases in which the cohort of former authoritarian officials scatters widely across the political system. We identify these patterns of dispersion as authoritarian diasporas and investigate their potential causes and consequences. In launching a new research agenda on this understudied phenomenon, we review not only contending causes for elite defection from authoritarian ruling parties, but also various options for political reincarnation of these officials (e.g. new party creation, colonization of existing parties, and independent candidacies). We hypothesize that the initial decision to defect is contingent upon a number of intervening regime- and individual-level variables. The destinations of former authoritarian incumbents are shaped by regime legacies, personal political resources, and institutional rules. We conclude by reflecting on the ways in which authoritarian diasporas are likely to be more harmful to democracy than the continued presence of an authoritarian successor party.

Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil by John D. French

Reviewed by: Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil by John D. French Jamie L. Worms John D. French Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. Place of Publication: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. DXX + 508 pp. Maps, diagrams, tables, ills., notes, appendices, references, index. $28.94 paper (ISBN); $00.00 cloth (ISBN); $00.00 electronic (ISBN). This book tells the story of luiz Inácio da Silva and how his humble beginnings and family structure were the un likely reasons he rose through the ranks in his unique political career. John D. French, professor of history at Duke University, advances [End Page 193] the claim that Lula was part of a "working class intelligentsia" (p. 4) or vanguard during the 1970s in São Paulo which successfully unified the metalworking industry and charismatically navigated their confrontations with the educated, authoritarian elite. Relying heavily on several sources, French carves out space in the cannon for his own version of Lula's life as explained through the interpersonal relationships Lula maintained with others. French divides the book into three parts I) Origins and Roots, II) From Luiz Inácio into Lula, and III) Lula, the Peons of ABC, and the Pursuit of the Presidency. This book is incredibly well researched but is lengthy, and at times, uses inaccessible vocabulary in English, and at the strangest of times without translation in Portuguese, to detail the life and career trajectory of Luiz Inácio da Silva, the former, and still very well loved, President of Brazil. By using several books, films, and biopics, French fills Part I with dichotomies to explain Lula's unlikely circumstances. French retells the rich personal histories of Lula and his family and their somewhat unexpected migration from the rural Northeast of Brazil to São Paulo. Despite Lula's tumultuous and violent childhood, his familial structure and position as the youngest child allowed him the opportunity to study while his older family members worked. After completing the fourth grade, Lula also began working in the metal factories in São Paulo's ABC district, akin to the manufacturing belt in the United States. French explains that Lula's situation of being a "poor and working-class youth" (p. 67) amid a rapidly industrializing, heterogenous city is what set him on a path to the presidency and beyond. One of the strongest dichotomies that French repeats across chapters is the comparison between Lula "the good boy" and his brother Frei Chico "the rebel". French brilliantly uses the differences between these brothers to explain the divergent political beliefs held by Brazilians of different social classes during this period of rapid industrialization. After defying several odds, Lula graduated from a multi-year trade-school apprenticeship program in 1963, SENAI (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial) to become a skilled machinist thus advancing his earning power and social status. While Lula initially shied away from politics, his "rebel" brother Frei Chico, who was an unskilled, rank-and-file worker, already understood the need for union representation and defense. It was only after Frei Chico was kidnapped and tortured by the military dictatorship that Lula decided to run, unopposed, for union President. Despite the risks and dangers that came with organizing an opposition of workers against the Brazilian military regime, French explains that it was Lula's personal experiences that made his reluctant political presence necessary and surprisingly effective. In Part II, French uses the relationships between Lula, his wives, and his brother, to provide testament to his redefining character. French begins by shedding "new light on how in 1971 the twenty-six-year-old expectant father became a grieving widow" (p. 163). French interprets and explains that Lula's "subsequent womanizing" after the death of his pregnant wife, was a product of the "the masculine sphere of working-class sociability" [End Page 194] (p. 163). In a way, this traumatic experience, and Lula's typical gender and class reaction to it, reminds us that he is just like everyone else. Lula had seen his "unfair share of pain, shame, and humiliation, feelings accompanied mostly by resignation, demobilizing anger, and...

Branching out: Consequences of the dispersion of authoritarian elites across state and government in Latin America

ABSTRACT Authoritarian-era elites often do not quietly withdraw from political life after democratic transitions. Recent scholarship shows how elites can often perpetuate their influence under democracy through authoritarian successor parties. But what are the implications for the quality of democracy when former authoritarian elites lack visible formal organization under democracy yet manage to obtain a wide range of influential positions across government? We begin to answer this question using original data on authoritarian-era elites and their official positions under Latin American democracy from 1900 to 2010. We find that former authoritarian elites’ access to influential posts across state and government institutions per se matters for the overall quality of democracy, regardless of whether elites are organized in an authoritarian successor party or democracy operates under holdover authoritarian institutions. This finding is an important corrective to the prevailing notion that the survival of authoritarian-era elite individuals after democratic transition hinges on the survival of authoritarian-era parties. Elites may be broadly dispersed across parties under democracy, but their influence is undiluted when they are also broadly dispersed across state and government.

Who Is Open to Authoritarian Governance within Western Democracies?

Recent events have raised concern about potential threats to democracy within Western countries. If Western citizens who are open to authoritarian governance share a common set of political preferences, then authoritarian elites can attract mass coalitions that are willing to subvert democracy to achieve shared ideological goals. With this in mind, we explored which ideological groups are most open to authoritarian governance within Western general publics using World Values Survey data from fourteen Western democracies and three recent Latin American Public Opinion Project samples from Canada and the United States. Two key findings emerged. First, cultural conservatism was consistently associated with openness to authoritarian governance. Second, within half of the democracies studied, including all of the English-speaking ones, Western citizens holding a protection-based attitude package—combining cultural conservatism with left economic attitudes—were the most open to authoritarian governance. Within other countries, protection-based and consistently right-wing attitude packages were associated with similarly high levels of openness to authoritarian governance. We discuss implications for radical right populism and the possibility of splitting potentially undemocratic mass coalitions along economic lines.

Right-wing authoritarian innovations in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT The decline of the quality of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was facilitated by intellectual, ideological, and organizational innovations of a new authoritarian elite. I this article I discuss five such innovations: a particular combination of victim mentality, self-confidence and resentment against the West, the transformation of neighbor-hating nationalisms into a civilizationist anti-immigrant platform, the delegitimization of civil society and the return to the belief in a strong state, the resurrection of the Christian political identity, and the transformation of populist discourse into a language and organizational strategy that is compatible with governmental roles (“populist establishment”). These factors together point to an overarching ideological fame that I call paternalist populism.

The failures of horizontal accountability at the subnational level: a perspective from the Global South

ABSTRACT In new democracies, horizontal accountability tends to be more fragile than vertical since authoritarian institutional legacies are more difficult to transform than organising free and fair elections. These barriers to full democratisation are stronger at subnational levels, where local old authoritarian elites are better able to hold institutional power and block transformations. This viewpoint presents data from Brazil, one of the strongest democracies of the Global South. After three decades of free elections, the design of oversight institutions of Brazilian subnational governments has hardly changed from dictatorial periods, leading to administrative practices and routines that undermine the transparency of monitoring and assessing public policy. Using institutional and behavioural measures of transparency, it shows that there are important bottlenecks to adequate accountability in Brazil.

Authoritarian survival strategies and elite churn: The case of North Korea

How do autocrats interact with authoritarian elites? This is a question that has gained increasing scholarly attention over the past decade. In this article, using the case of North Korea we develop a set of theoretical expectations for “elite churn” or changes in the composition of the elite (either in terms of promotions, demotions, or new entrants) resulting from moving around elites from office to office (or “elite shuffle”) and bringing in new elites. We test a number of theoretical expectations derived from the existing literature on elite management in autocracies and then examine these expectations using a panel data set of 351 members of the North Korean elite from 1948–2017. Taking into account leadership characteristics, threats to the regime (both internal and external), external opportunities, and structural factors, we find that the explanation for elite churn in North Korea is very leader specific, and is much more pronounced under Kim Jong Un than his predecessors. This suggests that Kim Jong Un’s position was much more tenuous than his father’s and grandfather’s and likely continues to be so.

Civil Society Trajectories in CEE: Post-Communist ‘Weakness’ or Differences in Difficult Times?

The article links previous debates on the qualities of civil society in CEE countries and its contemporary challenges with the aim to demonstrate the debate’s inner differentiation but also its persevering incapacity to identify and articulate current political risks. The article critically reflects on discussions over the presumed weakness of civil society and connects them to the major contemporary challenges for post-socialist civil society in the last decade – profound political transformations driven by authoritarian elites, the 2015 European refugee crisis, and the current coronavirus pandemic. Examining the trajectories and characteristics of CEE civil societies in relation to these developments, we claim that instead of a single, homogenous CEE civil society shaped by a shared communist past, civil societies in the region are largely determined by different national political contexts. One of the few common characteristics which makes them different from their old democratic counterparts is their depoliticization, mostly in terms of their selective approach to political issues and risks.

Dynamics of the Inner Elite in Dictatorships: Evidence from North Korea

How does the circle of inner elites evolve over time in dictatorships? We draw on theories of authoritarian power-sharing to shed light on the evolution of politics in North Korea. Given challenges in collecting individual-level data in this context, we employ web-scraping techniques that capture inspection visits by the dictator as reported by state-run media to assemble network data on elite public co-occurrences. We test the durability of this network since Kim Jong-un's rise to power in December 2011 to find suggestive evidence of elite purging. Our findings contribute to the broader literature on authoritarian elite dynamics and to subnational studies on power-sharing in communist states. Importantly, our approach helps bring the study of North Korean politics more firmly in the mainstream of political science inquiry.

How Former Authoritarian Elite Spread Across Government Impacts the Quality of Democracy

When authoritarian-era elites return to positions of power under democracy, what are the implications for the quality of democracy? We investigate this question in this paper using an original dataset that tracks former authoritarian elites’ capture of high-level posts under democracy across Latin America from 1900 to 2015. We find that when authoritarian-era elites capture a wide range of posts across disparate government branches, such “elite dispersion” undercuts not only the overall quality of democracy but also specific dimensions of democracy such as accountability, openness of competition, breadth of inclusion, and egalitarianism. These results are robust to prominent alternative explanations of the quality of democracy – in particular, explanations that underscore the importance of formal organizations and institutions such as autonomous militaries, dominant political parties, and holdover autocratic constitutions. Elite dispersion matters for the quality of democracy even after controlling for these more visible channels of former authoritarian elite influence.

Can Transitional Justice Improve the Quality of Representation in New Democracies?

AbstractCan transitional justice enhance democratic representation in countries recovering from authoritarian rule? The authors argue that lustration, a policy that reveals secret collaboration with the authoritarian regime, can prevent former authoritarian elites from extorting policy concessions from past collaborators who have been elected as politicians in the new regime. Absent lustration, former elites can threaten to reveal information about past collaboration unless the politicians implement policies these elites desire. In this way, lustration policies enable politicians to avoid blackmail and to be responsive to their constituents, improving the quality of representation. The authors show that whether lustration enhances representation depends on its severity and the extent to which dissidents-turned-politicians would suffer if the skeletons in their closets were revealed. The authors also find that the potential to blackmail politicians increases as the ideological distance between authoritarian elites and politicians decreases. They test this theory with original data from the Global Transitional Justice Dataset, which spans eighty-four countries that transitioned to democracy since 1946.