Authoritarian Politics Research Articles

A Fiscal Sociological Theory of Authoritarian Resilience

The “institutional turn” of comparative authoritarianism enriches our understanding of authoritarian politics, but its lack of institutional theory, tendency to focus on epiphenomena or exogenous force, and failure to address autocrats’ dilemmas constitute weaknesses. Focusing on the taxation institution, this article builds an endogenous institutional explanation of authoritarian resilience. The author argues that while the taxation infrastructural power matters, it causes autocrats two dilemmas: the representation dilemma and the growth dilemma. Taking China as an ideal case, the author argues that two mechanisms, under-institutionalized taxation system and a half-tax state, help in resolving two dilemmas so far, but in the long term, these two mechanisms may counteract each other and weaken the authoritarian regime.

Collective Memories, Propaganda and Authoritarian Political Support

To what extent does the degree of authoritarian political support depend on collective memories of a past experience with democracy? And how costly is it for a dictator to manipulate such memories with the help of propaganda? In this paper, we develop a political economy model with endogenous reference points, where a dictator strategically recalls traumatic collective memories of past political instability with the help of propaganda, to convince the population that an autocratic status quo is superior to a potential democratic alternative. In our model, both the optimal level of propaganda and collective memories are jointly determined. We show how the marginal benefit of propaganda is positively correlated both with the amount of rent distribution within the elite, and the intensity of a past traumatic experience with democracy. We illustrate our theoretical findings with case-studies of two authoritarian regimes that were preceded by periods of political instability -- the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin, and Chile under Augusto Pinochet. We then also provide cross-country empirical evidence in support of our argument.

Mirthful faces in The Name of the Rose

This paper explores the ‘mirthful face’ in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film adaptation. Debates over the political and moral significance of the mirthful face are at the center of both texts’ interpretations of laughter and humor in medieval culture; but the novel’s withholding of facial description sits in stark contrast to the film’s embrace of contemporary perceptions of what ‘medieval faces’ would have looked like and how they might be read. Comparing Annaud’s visual language of ‘historical physiognomy’ with those of filmmakers Werner Hertzog and Michael Haneke, the essay situates both film and book within a late-twentieth-century use of the Middle Ages to comment on contemporary authoritarian and radical politics.

Mexico, Revolution, and Indigenous Politics in D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent

Critical opinion is largely united in seeing D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent as a strange and troubling work, offering a puzzling synthesis of primitivism, idealized masculinity, and authoritarian politics. However, there has been little attempt to grapple with the book's Mexican setting beyond its function as site of cultural exoticism. This article argues that the cultural projects of Mexican revolutionary nationalism in the 1920s provided a key impetus for the utopian thought experiments of The Plumed Serpent. Specifically, the article contends that contemporary Mexican debates around indigenousness were absorbed by Lawrence as he prepared the novel.

Institutional Analysis of Collective Leadership in China: Authoritarian Politics, Institutions, and Time

Institutional Analysis of Collective Leadership in China: Authoritarian Politics, Institutions, and Time

Urban Politics, Planning, and Public Discourses on the City During the Greek Dictatorship (1967–1974): Continuities and Ruptures in Postwar Modernization

As far as urban studies, urban planning, and spatial politics are concerned, the military dictatorship of 1967–1974 remains one of the least examined and discussed periods in recent Greek history. In particular, the existing literature offers limited insights into the period, which is usually described as a "parenthesis" or a time of "frozen activity" for planning and technocratic work. Nevertheless, new research, drawing on archival materials and personal narratives by members of the planners' community at the time, reveals a much more complex reality. In this paper, I argue against parenthetical considerations of the junta and discuss spatial modernization under the military regime as a contradictory process characterized by both continuities and ruptures with regard to the early 1960s and the Metapolitefsi period that followed. Ultimately, the years in plaster, as they have been called, appear as a time of rapid transformation as well as a dense and contradictory moment in Greek postwar modernity, when the multiple dynamics of change intersect with political authoritarianism.

THE SCOURGE OF ILLITERACY IN AUTHORITARIAN TIMES

The dark times that haunt current age are exemplified in monsters that have come to rule United States and who now dominate major political parties and other commanding political and economic institutions in United States. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is also evident in their dominance of a formative culture and its at- tendant cultural apparatuses that produce a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This is a social formation that extends from mainstream broadcast media and Internet to a print culture, all of which embrace spectacle of violence, legitimate opinions over facts, and revel in a celebrity and consumer culture of ignorance and theatrics. Under reign of this normalized ideological architecture of alleged commonsense, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science.Thinking is now regarded as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue. All traces of critical thought appear only at margins of culture as ignorance becomes primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two thirds of American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and a majority of Republicans in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making U.S. laughing stock of world.1 Politicians endlessly lie knowing that public is addicted to exhortation, emotional outbursts, and sensationalism, all of which mimics celebrity culture. Image selling now entails lying on principle making it all easier for politics to dissolve into entertainment, pathology, and a unique brand of criminality. The corruption of both truth and politics is made all easer since American public have become habituated to overstimulation and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has time to crystallize into mature and informed thought. Opinion now trumps reasoned and evidence based arguments. News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. Popular culture revels in spectacles of shock and violence.2 Universities have become McDonalized and knowledge is now subject to practice of a fast education resulting curricula that resemble a fast-food menu.3 Unsurprisingly, education in larger culture has become a disimagination machine, a tool for legitimating ignorance, and it is central to formation of an authoritarian politics that has gutted any vestige of democracy from ideology, policies, and institutions that now control American society.I am not talking simply about kind of anti-intellectualism that theorists such a Richard Hofstadter, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, and more recently Susan Jacoby, have documented, however insightful their analyses might be. I am pointing to a more lethal form of illiteracy that is often ignored. Illiteracy is now a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and capacity for critical thought. Chris Hedges is right in stating that the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and corporations that saturate landscape with manipulated images and idiom of mass culture.4 Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility, and choice have been deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a relationship to a commodity or a reductive notion of self-interest. We don't love each other, we love our new car. We don't love each other, we love our new car. Instead of loving with courage, compassion, and desiring a more just society, we love a society in saturated in commodities. Freedom now means removing one's self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence. George Monbiot points to way in which freedom has been transformed under neoliberalism. He writes:The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for pike, not for minnows. …

Regimes and Randomization: Authoritarianism and Field Research in Contemporary Kenya*

ObjectivesLittle is known about how the legacy of authoritarian politics shapes research in countries that have recently transitioned to democracy. How do previous periods of authoritarian rule shape field research that takes place after a regime transition? To what extent are authoritarian tendencies present in the practice of quantitative field research in a democracy?MethodsI engage in a reflexive and historical analysis of a number of episodes of field research in Kenya. I describe and categorize the two authoritarian political regimes that have governed Kenya: the colonial regime that governed the country from the early 20th century to independence in 1963 and the bureaucratic executive authoritarian regime that governed the country from 1963 until the 2002 election. I then analyze how the historical legacy of each of these regimes shapes the practice of research in contemporary Kenya, using both my own experiences and historical examples.ResultsMy results indicate that although the liberalization of the Kenyan regime over the past 20 years has permitted the expansion of social science research in the country, authoritarian institutions and practices continue to shape field research in the country in two ways. First, the institutional legacies of Kenya's previous authoritarian regimes continue to shape field research by informally shaping the behavior of both public officials and ordinary citizens. Second, the practice of randomized field research can lead to the reinforcement of authoritarian cultural practices and social norms by emphasizing centralization, control, and compliance rather than democratic norms of deliberation, participation, and collective ownership.ConclusionsBoth types of authoritarian influences on field research pose both methodological and ethical problems for field researchers in Kenya and other countries that have recently experienced regime change. I summarize the methodological and normative implications of these findings and provide a set of recommendations for field researchers.

Public Goods and Regime Support in Urban China

AbstractWhy do authoritarian regimes try to improve the quality of their governance? In the absence of democratic institutions to monitor, reward and punish their performance, authoritarian politicians are normally expected to seek their self-interest through corruption and rewards to cronies, rather than providing for the public welfare. However, the Chinese state has actively promoted improved governance in recent years, with greater attention to quality of life issues to balance the primary focus on sustaining rapid economic growth. This paper analyses intra-national variation in the provision of public goods in urban China and the impact of public goods on regime support. Does better governance lead to higher levels of public support for the regime, even in the absence of democratic elections? Our evidence suggests that it does, with a greater impact for the local level than for the centre.

Repression, Redistribution and the Problem of Authoritarian Control

Theories of authoritarianism assert that autocratic governments follow repressive and redistributive policies which impede mass mobilization, mitigate economic grievances and prevent regime instability. However, policy formulation and implementation remain opaque and under-theorized elements of authoritarian politics. I argue that the mix of repressive and redistributive policies chosen by a regime is a function of intra-elite conflict between hard-liners and soft-liners. The power of the two factions and their influence on policy evolve as members of the elite learn to judge the comparative advantages of the regime in repression and redistribution. Hard-liners will be ascendant in regimes with a comparative advantage in repression, while soft-liners will be ascendant in regimes with a comparative advantage in redistribution. I illustrate these arguments with an account of the East German regime’s response to the 17 June uprising in 1953, including analysis of an original data set on secret police informants and food supplies after the unrest.

ISIS and al-Qaeda—What Are They Thinking? Understanding the Adversary

The ideologies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are rooted in larger historical trends that have to do with the rise of Islamism in the Arab world and its authoritarian politics. This article provides the basic history and ideological composition of these two militant movements, how they differ from each other, and what accounts for their initial political success and more recent failure. It also offers policy recommendations for how to more effectively counter these groups.

Sannikov, Andrei Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (review)

SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 776 achieved in consolidating their power and their system, there were always challenges. Gel´man demonstrates the centrality of Vladimir Putin to this system, and he notes no one besides Putin has been able to manage that system. As Gel´man reveals, the experience of one-time-president Dmitri Medvedev is telling, as are the realities of the complicated manoeuvrings and rivalries of the elements comprising the Putin team. Given the thrust of the arguments set out by Gel´man, the reader struggles to understand the continuing power of the Putin system and team minus its hegemonic leader. There is a large cottage industry of observers offering thoughts about the current state of the Russian polity and its future, but relatively few of them provide creative insights. Vladimir Gel´man, in contrast, does, and this intellectually satisfying volume can serve as a sort of lodestone as one attempts to understand an evolving Russia that continues to be too prone to simplistic analysis and judgment. School of Government and Public Policy John P. Willerton University of Arizona Sannikov, Andrei. My Story: Belarusian Amerikanka or Elections under Dictatorship. Translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. East View Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2015. 347 pp. Illustrations. Index. $32.95. Belarus has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, generally concentrated on the political authoritarianism that has existed there since 1994. Brian Bennett wrote entirely and Andrew Wilson partially on the Leader in their groundbreaking books (SEER, 2012, 90, 4, pp. 782–84), and there have also been several books about political imprisonment, including the harrowing prisoner’s diary by anarchist Ihar Alinievič, Jedu ŭ Mahadan (On the Way to Magadan, 2014). The book under review, however, is worthy of notice as the first in English to describe vividly and in detail the reality of imprisonment by the Belarusian KGB, including physical and mental torture as well as threats to family and friends. Andrei Sannikov (in Belarusian Andrej Sannikaŭ) was already part of the government, as Deputy Foreign Minister, when Alieksandr Lukašenka came to power in 1994, but left his post two years later to join the opposition after a disastrous ‘referendum’ which abolished the nascent parliamentary democracy, making the presidency renewable and potentially permanent, as well as effectively reducing the status of the already beleaguered Belarusian language. Protests against electoral fraud had taken place in 2001, 2006 and 2008, but the events that unfolded on 19 December 2010, widely known in Belarus simply REVIEWS 777 as ‘Plošča’ (The Square), exceeded in numbers and height of expectation, or at least hope, that change might finally come. On the contrary, however, it was met by the most vicious crackdown of all, with not only brutality but also cynical attempts to create the impression that this peaceful process was in fact violent and destructive. The celebrated poet Uladzimir Niakliajeŭ who had presented himself as one of the presidential candidates, was severely beaten and hospitalized, almost before the demonstration had begun. Andrej Sannikaŭ was certainly the most politically astute and widely supported of the candidates, and his outspokenness before election day and his refusal to make a ‘confession’ while under extreme pressure in jail is the main focus of this book. At the centre of My Life is a detailed account of the life of Belarusian political prisoners and the cunning and ruthless behaviour of those into whose hands they were delivered by the police. At that level this book should open many eyes, especially of those who see cruel dictatorship with its torture and Stalinstyle kangaroo courts as a distant abstraction rather than an existential nightmare experienced by people like us. Sannikaŭ’s account of the notorious Amierikanka and Valadarka prisons in Miensk are at the centre of his posttrial experiences which included two other jails and three labour colonies as well as eight transports in so-called Stolypin cars. Each had its own particular brand of capricious viciousness, but Viciebsk, Babruisk and Mahilioŭ excelled in tormenting their captives without, in Sannikaŭ’s case at least, actually killing them and attracting unwanted publicity. It may be mentioned that a very talented member of his campaign team, Alieh Biabienin, died in mysterious circumstances on...

Faith and experience

How does a history of participation in secular authoritarian regimes shape the trajectory of religious political parties after transitions to democracy? This article examines the contrasting experiences of Catholic political parties in Latin America in order to assess whether and under what conditions pre-transition participation has a positive effect on post-transition electoral performance. It develops a theoretical account that emphasizes the relative costs and benefits of participation in secular authoritarian politics for religious parties. Empirically, it uses an original data set covering 22 Catholic parties that participated in 104 elections across Latin America as well as in-depth case studies of Mexico and Peru. It finds that Catholic parties that participated in authoritarian politics were more likely to emerge as significant players after transition, but that this effect is contingent on the competitiveness of the authoritarian regime.

Nationalism in Settled Times

Due to a preoccupation with periods of large-scale social change, nationalism research had long neglected everyday nationhood in contemporary democracies. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to shift the focus of this scholarly field toward the study of nationalism not only as a political project but also as a cognitive, affective, and discursive category deployed in daily practice. Integrating insights from work on banal and everyday nationalism, collective rituals, national identity, and commemorative struggles with survey-based findings from political psychology, I demonstrate that meanings attached to the nation vary within and across populations as well as over time, with important implications for microinteraction and for political beliefs and behavior, including support for exclusionary policies and authoritarian politics. I conclude by suggesting how new developments in methods of data collection and analysis can inform future research on this topic.

Forced money: legal development of a criminal economic rule

In 1793, Revolutionary France forced its inflated paper money on all sellers. Revived by Napoleon, this law was transplanted all over the world, crossed legal families and still survives, because it has catered to more needs than the specific problem it was meant to address. As it forces sellers to accept the government’s money, it appealed to other nearly collapsing governments, with inflation or not. Since it forces everyone to respect a symbol of the state, it appealed to legislators favouring political authoritarianism. Since it is a component in management of the economy, it appealed to legislators favouring economic authoritarianism. The article traces one branch in the law’s family tree, going through various phases of the French Revolution to Napoleon, the Ottoman Empire, British Cyprus, British Palestine and Israel. It shows how this law survived and adapted again and again in vastly diverse, easily identifiable political and economic circumstances.

Authoritarian Leadership in the Post-Communist World

A quarter-century after the collapse of the USSR, authoritarian politics dominates seven of the fifteen successor states. Placing the post-communist authoritarian experience in the broader frame of nondemocratic governance, this essay explores the origins and operation of personalist rule in the region; the relationship between time and power; and the role of Soviet legacies in shaping the agenda and tools of leadership. It also examines the efforts of post-communist authoritarians to enhance personal and regime legitimacy by claiming to rule beyond politics. Within the post-communist world, the essay finds significant variation among authoritarian leaders in their approaches to personnel policy and to the use of policies, symbols, and narratives to address the ethnic and religious awakening spawned by the collapse of Soviet rule. The essay concludes with a brief assessment of the trajectories of post-communist authoritarian leadership.

Media, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience

Do authoritarian governments always censor news about protests to prevent unrest from spreading? Existing research on authoritarian politics stresses the danger that information spread within the society poses for a regime. In particular, media and Internet reports of social unrest are deemed to threaten authoritarian rule, as such reports may incite more protests and thus spread instability. We show that such reasoning is incomplete if social protests are targeted at local officials. Allowing media the freedom to report local protests may indeed lead to protest diffusion, but the increased probability of citizen protest also has two potential benefits for the regime: (1) identifying and addressing more social grievances, thus releasing potential revolutionary pressure on the regime; (2) forcing local officials to reduce misbehavior, thus reducing underlying social grievances. For authoritarian governments whose survival is vulnerable to citizen grievances, allowing the media to report social protests aimed at local governments can therefore enhance regime stability and protect its interests under many circumstances. We construct a game-theoretic model to analyze the problem and illustrate the argument with examples from China.

Unpacking the Political Resource Curse: How Oil Fuels Personalism and Undermines Democratization

Oil wealth is often associated with prolonged authoritarian rule, poor governance and other institutional pathologies. These unusual effects of petroleum have been variously described as the 'Paradox of Plenty' (Karl 1997), 'Natural Resource Trap' (Collier 2007), and the 'Oil Curse' (Ross 2012), and an increasing number of studies have examined the causes and effects of the oil curse (Humphreys et al. 2007). However, the prevailing assumption in most studies has been that oil will have an equally strong anti-democratic effect across authoritarian regime types (Ross 2001; 2012; Jensen and Wantchekon 2004; Haber and Menaldo 2011). Theoretical and empirical studies on the resource curse have ignored institutional differences in authoritarian rule emphasized by scholars of authoritarian politics (Linz and Stepan 1996; Geddes 1999; Schedler 2009; Geddes, Wright and Frantz 2014). In this study, I combine these two strands of literature and show that oil has a particularly dire effect on the democratization prospects of a particular subtype of authoritarianism, namely, personalist autocracies. The analysis of regime development patterns across oil and non-oil producing states presented in this study shows that oil wealth particularly strongly harmed democratization prospects in the personalist sub-set of authoritarianism. Using three country-case studies of Azerbaijan, Cameroon, and Venezuela, I illustrate the ways in which oil can reinforce personalism and undermine the democratization processes and suggest that the causal channels linking oil and regime outcomes (authoritarian durability and democratic transitions) depend on the composition of authoritarian rule in place, and may not be uniform across regime types. The case of Venezuela under Chavez also indicates that in democratic regimes with a long history of oil-induced elite corruption, oil wealth may contribute to the personalization of power in a failing democracy.

KEEPING YOUR HEAD DOWN: PUBLIC PROFILES AND PROMOTION UNDER AUTOCRACY

AbstractDuring recent party congresses in China and Vietnam, two highly anticipated candidates for promotion were sidelined. In China, Bo Xilai was arrested for corruption and stripped of his party membership. In Vietnam, Nguyen Ba Thanh remained a provincial leader with little opportunity for promotion to the Politburo. Existing arguments about promotions under authoritarian rule are unable to explain these outcomes. In particular, both candidates were competent and well connected. This cuts contrary to the expectations of both performance-based promotion and factional promotion theories. We argue that these candidates were sidelined due to a previously under-theorized factor in promotion contests—their ability to mobilize personal followings. Amidst a literature that has focused almost exclusively on intra-elite conflict, we argue that elite–mass linkages are critical. In particular, the public profile of top leaders is important for regime legitimacy and mobilization. However, when individuals become exceptionally well known they become threats to the single-party system. We test this argument on promotions in China's 18th Party Congress in 2012 and Vietnam's 11th Party Congress in 2011, using original data on Internet search queries and media coverage among contenders for promotion. Our approach offers new insights into the strategies authoritarian politicians use to stay afloat as well as the mistakes that sink them when competing for power under one-party rule.

TERM LIMITS AND AUTHORITARIAN POWER SHARING: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

AbstractTerm limits that effectively govern leadership transition play an important role in authoritarian power sharing. A fixed term and a pre-appointed successor – two crucial components of term limits – credibly commit the incumbent ruler to share power with other elites, and also allow the elites to monitor and coordinate against the ruler's transgression of the power-sharing agreement. While the successful adoption of term limits often requires an even balance of power among the ruling elites in the first place, once adopted it initiates an evolving bargain over allocation of political power among multiple generations of leaders that further keeps any one faction from dominating the others. I corroborate this argument using a biographical dataset of elite members of the Chinese Communist Party from 1982 to 2012. The findings suggest that the Party's incumbent leaders and their rivals (i.e., predecessor and heir-apparent) shared equal chances in promoting their associates—which proxy their political influence—and this pattern has become more salient since the 16th party congress, when the term limits that currently govern China's leadership transition became fully fledged. This result also sheds light on the role of informal, patronage-based promotion in the institutionalization of authoritarian politics.