Authoritarian Legacies Research Articles

The Blocked Road to Democracy: Culture Wars in the Arab World and the End of Politics (review article)

Islamism and Revolution across the Middle East: Transformations of Ideology and Strategy after the Arab Spring, edited by Khalil al-Anani. London: I. B. Tauris, 2021. 184 pages. £63 cloth, £26.09 paper, £15.65 e-book. Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt, by Hesham Sallam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 472 pages. $140 cloth, $35 paper, $34.99 e-book.

A measure of last resort: Pseudo-constitutionalism and the persistence of a self-restraint slogan in Argentina

AbstractThis article addresses the bastardization of constitutional law in Argentina and the corrosive power of legacies of authoritarianism. It offers a genealogy of the use by Argentina’s Supreme Court of self-restraint canons from the time when they were borrowed from the US Supreme Court in the late nineteenth century. Partly resulting from the country’s experiences with military rule, the court transformed or expanded these canons, which entailed a gradual depreciation of statutes as the (uneasy) cornerstone of constitutionalism. Based on a fresh dataset and employing narrative and network analysis, the article focuses on a slogan the court has invoked since the 1960s: invalidating a rule is a matter of extreme institutional gravity and hence a strategy of last resort. Under the 1976–83 dictatorship, the court applied the slogan to various rules, including those passed by the military. It thus invoked familiar canons outside its scope conditions, conveying an illusion of constitutional regularity by masking the abnormal in acceptable garb and contributing to the regime’s legitimation. While the democratic court abandoned the most blatant expressions of authoritarianism, connections persisted, manifesting in the frequent citations to the dictatorship court’s use of the slogan and its extension to any rule. Authoritarian legacies die hard.

5년단임 대통령제의 명암과 정부형태 개헌의 방향

The greatest achievement of the 5-year term presidency under the 1987 Constitution, which was the product of the June Democracy Movement, was breaking the cycle of dictatorship that had persisted since the enactment of the 1948 Constitution. The isolation from the era of dictatorship became an important foundation for abolishing the legacy of authoritarianism that had taken root throughout Korean society. The 1987 Constitution has had a profound impact on the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres. Since 1987, South Korea has experienced four regime changes, and democracy has matured. Transparency in society as a whole has improved through systems such as disclosure of public officials' assets, real-name financial transaction system, and confirmation hearings for public appointments. The elimination of authoritarianism has also had a positive impact on the economy and culture, leading to economic development and the growth of the cultural industry. As the era of state capitalism comes to an end, global companies are emerging in South Korea, and the era of censorship comes to an end, South Korea's cultural industry has begun to gain global influence.
 Despite the clear achievements of the 5-year term presidency under the 1987 Constitution, there are also significant issues that need to be addressed. These include corruption and malfeasance among the President's inner circle, the damage caused by excessive concentration of power in the hands of the President, the incompetence of the President, problems in the relationship between the President and the National Assembly due to issues in election cycles, and political polarization caused by factional leadership conflicts.
 I would like to propose a Korean-style presidentialism as a constitutional amendment to solve these problems. Specifically, the term of office of the president elected by a runoff vote shall be changed to a four-year mid-term system, but the election cycle shall be adjusted to elect members in half in the early general elections and mid-term elections, respectively. This would give citizens the opportunity to evaluate the President and the National Assembly through two parliamentary elections. Introducing a vice-presidential system could lead to new problems, so it is preferable to maintain the Prime Ministerial system, but if the National Assembly has the power to recommend the Prime Minister, they could play an active role in the appointment of the Prime Minister every two years, in the event of an opposition party victory in a parliamentary election. This could also enable the formation of a coalition government between the ruling and opposition parties. In addition, it is necessary to reduce the President's authority to appoint constitutional officials and to expand the influence of the National Assembly.

Authoritarian Legacies and Partisan Bias in Corruption Voting

AbstractWhat explains the lack of electoral consequences for corrupt politicians? Building on studies of motivated reasoning and asymmetric partisan bias, this article highlights the importance of partisan differences in how voters interpret corruption convictions and make voting decisions. I contend that in post-authoritarian democracies, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties (ALPs) are less likely to punish corrupt copartisan incumbents compared to supporters of other parties faced with equally corrupt copartisan incumbents. While voters of all kinds appear likely to ignore corruption among copartisan incumbents, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties are particularly likely to do so. Using original datasets from South Korea, this study shows empirical evidence of the lack of corruption voting for ALP partisans across three legislative elections. This article further finds partisan discrepancies and a striking lack of corruption voting among authoritarian legacy partisans.

Transformative Education: Disrupting Colonial and Authoritarian Legacies in Paraguay

ABSTRACT How can disproportionate elite political, economic, and social power – the essence of inequality – be challenged peacefully and democratically with empowerment from below through critical pedagogy? Paraguay presents a fascinating case study to address this question, especially considering how its history of colonization, authoritarianism, and oppression have implications for present-day society. Erroneously infamous as a South American Nazi haven, little-known Paraguay presents a uniquely resilient indigenous linguistic character and perhaps the deepest authoritarian tradition in Latin America. The current article argues that the disruption of colonial legacies and hegemonic political practices, which are oppressive to low-income, rural populations and particularly injurious to indigenous-descended Paraguayans, can and should come ”from below,” from the people, and not from the government. I argue that a way forward is through transformative education, drawing heavily on critical pedagogy theorists such as Paolo Freire and others to reflect on the propensity for education to change society.

Authoritarian Successor Parties, Supporters, and Protest: Lessons from Asian Democracies

AbstractAre authoritarian successor party (ASP) supporters more likely to protest? I propose that ASP supporters are less likely to protest in general. The post-democratization mobilization environment is shaped upon the pre-democratization mobilization basis. During the pre-democratization period, protest was organized around the democracy movement. Thus, protest tactics and networks were accumulated through it. As former authoritarian ruling party supporters, ASP supporters are less likely to have legacies of participating in the democracy movement, which prevents them from accessing the accumulated protest resources from the democracy movement. However, I argue that this negative association varies based on the ASP qualities and supporters’ age. Supporters of ASPs that maintain strong pre-democratization legacies are more likely to participate in protests than supporters of ASPs that do not strongly highlight their authoritarian legacies. Also, when the ASPs’ characteristics are considered, older ASP supporters are more likely to participate in protests than younger supporters. Using both single-level and multilevel statistical analyses, I examine four Asian countries with politically powerful ASPs and find evidence supporting my hypotheses. Lastly, I compare two South Korean mass movements, the Candlelight movement and theTaegeukgirallies to unpack the relationships between ASP supporters, protest resources, and mobilization. This study reveals authoritarian legacies among post-democratization citizens through ASP supporters’ protesting behavior.

Cybernationalist authoritarianism: Fangirls’ peer production of the virtual celebrity ‘Oppa China’

This study has two research objectives. The first is to analyse a case of Chinese ‘cybernationalist authoritarianism’, which I define as the ideological articulation and practical conjoining of cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. This intriguing case involves the peer production of a virtual celebrity called ‘Oppa China’ (阿中哥哥) by fangirls (饭圈女孩) in China. The empirical analysis contributes to ongoing debates on whether cybernationalists mainly serve or undermine authoritarianism in China. My second objective is to theoretically explore the rising phenomenon of cybernationalist authoritarianism. This exploration contributes to studies on the contemporary transformation of nationalism and authoritarianism. I approach the two objectives by analysing cybernationalist authoritarianism in terms of the interplay between cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. I find that peer production is the key novel characteristic of cybernationalism and that authoritarian legitimation is the main imperative of digital authoritarianism. My analysis illustrates how the peer production of new and multiple cybernationalisms serves as well as undermines authoritarian legitimation. This study’s data include in-depth interviews, informal interviews, various documentary sources, big data from Weibo, and online participant observation.

Vision Documents, Nation Branding and the Legitimation of Non-democratic Regimes

ABSTRACT Documents play a vital role in constructing political regimes and their geopolitical relations. In this article, we analyse a particular type of document – the 21st century national vision – and examine its political work. Often glossy (digital) documents featuring simple slogans, fantastic plans, and claims to global relevance and prestige, national visions make specific futures present and close off room for alternative interpretations. Combining work in critical geopolitics with research on nation branding and authoritarian legitimation, we argue that national vision documents are productive – rather than merely reflective – of geopolitical scripts and the future they make possible. Analysing this practice in three image-savvy non-democratic regimes – Kazakhstan, Qatar and Thailand – we show how such scripts are simplified in national vision documents and displace the complexity of the spaces they claim to represent. The oversimplified abstractions they present then resonate widely in national and public discourse, where they obscure struggles over national identity, directions of economic development, and the nature of political orders. Rather than superficial branding documents, national visions are key documents for the making of authoritarian regime legitimation claims today.

Kim Chae-gyu syndrome: South Korean politics and divergent filmic portrayals of the assassination of Park Chung Hee

AbstractThe assassination of the dictator Park Chung Hee by his intelligence chief Kim Chae-gyu was a momentous events in South Korean history, which garnered two feature-length filmic depictions released fifteen years apart in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The President's Last Bang, released in 2005, was an irreverent black comedy in which all those involved that fateful evening were villains in their own right. The Man Standing Next, from 2020, took a much different tack. Kim gained a righteousness and revolutionary motivation that had been absent in the portrayal in the earlier film, in which Kim's intentions remained open to interpretation. This article analyzes the changes in Kim's depiction in the context of shifting respective political contexts, particularly the impeachment of Park's daughter Park Geun-hye in 2016, and the shadow cast by the legacies of authoritarianism, the specter of which seemed to loom over Korea again during the younger Park's administration. Consequently, the outpouring of public fervor in the ensuing candlelight vigils reaffirmed societal support for democracy and consequently elevated Kim Chae-gyu, Park's bane, to the role of champion of Korean democracy when it seemed under threat once again.

Royal, colonial and authoritarian legacies in Myanmar prisons of today

This article traces inconsistencies and consistencies of penal practices in Myanmar from dynastic times until today. With inspiration from Foucault's history of the present and Holland and Lave's history in practice, the article demonstrates how penal practices are shaped by legacies of the past. Additionally, the study shows how the continued use of practices from authoritarian times revealed the weakness of the democratic transition in Myanmar. To do so, three practices are studied through interviews with former prisoners conducted during long-term ethnographic fieldwork. These are the use of convict officers, amnesties and torture. These practices are described in first-hand accounts by former prisoners and traced back through time by comparison with existing research on penal histories in Myanmar. This tracing reveals that some practices have been used continuously across dynastic rule, colonial times and independence, while others have been discontinued only to reappear. The penal practices in Myanmar today continue to be deeply influenced by their history and reveal the continued presence of authoritarian ideas.

Colonial Origins of Postcolonial Authoritarianism in Tanzania: The Reflection on Democracy

The authoritarian style of rule and democratization in Tanzania after independence cannot be understood without analyzing the colonial state and the nature of its administration. The colonial state was alien, illegitimate, and established to facilitate the exploitation of Tanzanians and their resources. It was also compounded with highly centralized power, suppression and coercion, and imprisonment of anyone threatening the authority of the state. These features were against democratic principles thus, facilitated resistance to colonial rule. Political opposition was forbidden. Civil liberties were not respected. Coercion was the order of the day, and the colonial state did not hesitate to deport or imprison anyone threatening its authority. Independence was cheered by the masses as a new chapter in the road towards democracy and development. But to their disappointment, the postcolonial state was of similar caliber to the colonial state. As such, colonial legacies of authoritarianism continued to dominate. This has not changed to date, posing a threat to building a developmental and democratic state. This paper discusses the colonial heritage of authoritarianism and its reflection to “democratic” Tanzania. It argues that the administrative structure of post-colonial government in Tanzania, imitated the colonial administrative styles of rule, which works against contemporary democratic ideals.

A contextual analysis of the evolution of transitional justice: the story of Taiwan

ABSTRACT Taiwan confronted the challenge of transitional justice when it underwent democratic transitions in the late 1980s. This article examines Taiwan’s undertaking of transitional justice, the impacts of contextual dynamics on such undertaking, and the extent to which civic engagement and the incorporation of international human rights norms have facilitated transitional justice initiatives. The article argues that Taiwan’s negotiation-based transition and authoritarian legacy have substantially shaped the limited development of transitional justice at the early stage of democratisation. Influenced by civic engagement and the domestic implementation of international human rights instruments, new transitional justice mechanisms have been initiated in recent years. These bottom-up mechanisms are examined and highlighted to offer insights for advancing transitional justice and democratic consolidation.

Social Media and Authoritarian Legacies: the Impact of Military Aligned Social Media Activists (SMAs) on Politics

Social Media and Authoritarian Legacies: the Impact of Military Aligned Social Media Activists (SMAs) on Politics

Argentinian peacekeepers and moral becoming in Cyprus

ABSTRACT The chronic absence of combat is central to deployment experience for Argentinian Army personnel, and serves as a lens to explore ethical life from a military perspective, not as a fixed set of military virtues, yet as an evolving moral project grounded in everyday ambiguities around humanitarian militarism. Combining a historical analysis of state repression and institutional reform with ethnographic fieldwork with Argentinian members of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, this article shows how present-day Argentinian military ideals and aspirations change, overlap, and awkwardly sit together while being a ‘beachkeeper’. Due to far-reaching military curtailment and precarious working conditions that are both related to legacies of authoritarianism, even the potential of combat is no longer a possibility for the Argentinian Army. Through the analysis of both ethnographic observations and interviews with mid-career Argentinian officers, this article suggests that because of a chronic inaccessibility to military virtues (such as thrill, manliness, and toughness), participating in humanitarian assistance does not provoke military boredom nor a moral failure to become a competent and virtuous warrior. Being involved in light peacekeeping is rather a form of survival from a social death in a society that has largely turned its back to its armed forces, while at the same time it is an expression of their institutional limitations. This article concludes by suggesting how the ethical turn in anthropology can critically address the absence of combat as a productive force for a non-violent ethic without fixing military virtue in stone.

Delegative democratic attitude and public opinion on human rights: empirical evidence from the Philippines

ABSTRACT Why do citizens in post-authoritarian democracies perceive that there is high respect for individual human rights in their country when objective indicators suggest differently? Drawing on multiple individual-level opinion data and using Philippines as an illustrative case, this study hypothesizes that delegative democratic attitude (DDA) (i.e. operationalized as support for strong executive with minimal legislative intervention) shape citizen’s perception of human rights respect. Despite reports of higher levels of human rights violations in the country which should have led to more negative appreciation of human rights protection, citizens with DDA are more likely to regard that individual human rights are respected and protected. We theorize that citizens form dissimilar perception of human rights protection based on their desire for quick fixes and decisive action which could have made citizens less rigid and more tolerant with their evaluation of government actions. This would then make them paint a less than horrible image of the human rights protection in their country although it may not be reflective of the true state of affairs objectively. Given the Philippines’ longstanding authoritarian legacies and struggles with democratic consolidation, our study sheds light to the enduring appeal for personalist rule in the contemporary political world.

Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine. Dana El Kurd (London: Hurst, 2019). Pp. 240. £45.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781787382138

Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine. Dana El Kurd (London: Hurst, 2019). Pp. 240. £45.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781787382138

In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

AbstractThis study explores how authoritarian distributive policies may not only generate political support for the autocrat but may also help sustain powerful and lasting authoritarian legacies. We use microlevel data from South Korea's New Village Movement, a 1970s rural development program implemented under dictator Park Chung‐hee and widely touted as contributing to the country's rapid economic development. Our analysis shows that townships in receipt of larger cash transfers cast more votes for Park's incumbent party in the subsequent election. More importantly, we show that the effects of the subsidies still appeared almost four decades later in 2012, when the dictator's daughter was democratically elected as the president of South Korea. We show that these effects were not driven by villagers’ long‐term income gains or enhanced social capital due to the program but by the unwavering support of the beneficiary villagers for the dictator, whose legacy remained strong long after democratization.

Authoritarian Institutions and Democratic Lessons

Does the experiential legacy of participating in autocratic legislatures influence how autocratic-era opposition parties and politicians want to use legislatures in a subsequent democracy? Do they learn to use legislatures to strengthen or undermine democracy? Given the frequency of institutionalized autocracies, of opposition party led post-transition governments, and importance of legislatures in democracies these are important questions. This paper addresses them by first drawing on research on authoritarian legacies, and on organizational and individual learning to identify three potential institutional lessons opposition parties and politicians could learn from their autocratic legislative experience about how to use legislatures in a subsequent democracy. It then uses data from a survey of almost 200 Egyptian politicians conducted during the 2011 elections to test which lessons parties and politicians learned by focusing on their support for protecting judicial independence from legislative interference in the future democratic regime. We find that (i) experienced opposition parties learn a democracy-strengthening institutional lesson, (ii) experienced opposition politicians learn a democracy-weakening institutional lesson, and (iii) membership in an experienced opposition party curbed the undemocratic institutional preferences of experienced politicians. Thus, authoritarian institutions leave diverse legacies among ruling and opposition parties and politicians with very different consequences for subsequent democracy.

Authoritarianism and Constitutional Politics in Post-Authoritarian Indonesian Society: Reemergence or Legacy

This paper discusses how the legacy of authoritarianism in Indonesia has influenced the country’s post-authoritarian constitutional politics. Because of some degree of ideological continuity from the authoritarian period, post-authoritarian Indonesia shows a unique situation of constitutional politics. Specifically, the positioning of Pancasila as an incontestable state ideology exposes the freedom of expression and association to severe risks, even in post-authoritarian Indonesia. In the discussion of post-authoritarian Indonesian society and constitutional politics, I review how the violation of Pancasila has been defined in Indonesia both during and after the authoritarian period. To explore this issue, I examine the court judgments concerning the anti-subversion law in which anti-Pancasila activities were defined to restrict opinions. I then review the social organization law amended in 2017 to argue how the law links Pancasila with the discourse of Asian values. In conclusion, this paper argues that both during and after the authoritarian period, the interpretation of Pancasila was restricted, thus subjecting Indonesia’s political freedom to risk.

Alternative legacies of authoritarianism: Pro-dictator bias in ideology

How does an authoritarian past shape voters’ left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate “anti-dictator bias” in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a “pro-dictator bias” where citizens hold ideological positions close to those of the dictator, depending on their experiences prior to transition. In countries with high economic growth under dictatorship and without violent ruling party ouster, authoritarian successors could continue mobilizing the popular base and invoke positive sentiment on the past in democratic elections. Such positive sentiment can facilitate individual ideological orientation close to the ideological label of the former dictatorship. I test this hypothesis by combining individual- and country-level data covering 1985 to 2018 from 48 countries. I demonstrate that voters in countries with high economic growth during dictatorship and without violent party exit are more likely to have pro-dictator bias in ideology. I further show that voters in former developmental states show pro-dictator bias from the history of economic growth and more peaceful transition. The findings emphasize the role of pre-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in post-authoritarian societies.