Authoritarian Research Articles

The 2020 #EndSARS Protests in Nigeria: Understanding How Perception Influences Government Approach to Civil Uprising in a Dictatorial State

Abstract Dictatorial regimes are known for their non-tolerance syndrome, including for peaceful protests. With manifest dictatorial tendencies, Nigeria, under the President Muhammadu Buhari, fiercely gagged the media and clamped on peaceful protests, believing them to be anti-government uprisings. Despite this repressive approach, the youths embarked on the #EndSARS protest to demand for police accountability. Although the movement could not achieve its desired objectives, it drew international attention to police brutality and unveiled how dictatorial perceptions deny even a democratic government an opportunity to retract its policy steps. This paper analyzes how the Nigerian state escalates its security problems through its perception of, and approach to, peaceful protests. Using data from field survey, acled and documentary media reports, this paper argues that Nigeria’s manifest dictatorial tendencies deny it the opportunity to take in protest demands to initiate pro-people policies that could address its security problems. The implication is that the security environment in the country continues to worsen.

Ferociously Cute

Indonesia’s 2024 presidential election campaign was shaped by an alliance struck between outgoing incumbent Joko (Jokowi) Widodo and a former rival, Prabowo Subianto, who chose Jokowi’s son as his running mate. The seeming affirmation of dynastic power drew criticism, as did Prabowo’s former associations with the authoritarian New Order regime and its human rights abuses. But Prabowo remade his image with his promises of free school lunches and a new “cute” persona while pledging continuity with his popular predecessor’s administration, demonstrating the ambiguities of Indonesian democracy a quarter-century after the end of the New Order era.

Nurturing Growth: Challenges and Strategies of Paternalistic Leadership in Facilitating Teacher Development in Qingdao, Shandong Province

This research explores paternalistic leadership in educational settings in Qingdao, Shandong Province, and its impact on teacher development. Paternalistic leadership, defined by authoritarian, benevolent, and moral elements, is firmly ingrained in Chinese cultural practices and has a substantial influence on organizational dynamics and individual behaviours in Chinese educational institutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the issues and techniques connected with paternalistic leadership from the perspectives of principals and teachers in Qingdao, with an emphasis on their implications on professional development and educational results. Using a qualitative case study technique, the research conducts in-depth interviews with a senior principal and twenty teachers from a chosen school, as well as purposive sampling, to better understand the intricacies of paternalistic leadership. As findings, the data show that authoritarian characteristics of paternalistic leadership have a detrimental impact on teacher creativity and work satisfaction, but benign practices may improve engagement and professional development. The discussions emphasize the need of a balanced leadership strategy that combines classic paternalistic attitudes with current educational objectives, providing an atmosphere that encourages teacher autonomy and creativity. As implications this study reveals that adopting more benevolent and supportive leadership styles may considerably enhance educational environments and results. This study indicates that, although paternalistic leadership has a solid cultural base, there is much room to improve these practices to better accord with modern educational philosophies and teacher demands.

The influence of transnational Pentecostal religious beliefs on women’s political participation in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Over recent decades, transnational Pentecostal religious movements have experienced rapid surges in authoritarian regimes which have reported high levels of women’s political participation in sub-Saharan Africa such as Rwanda and Zimbabwe. This article assesses whether transnational Pentecostal religious beliefs have been influential in enhancing women’s political participation in Zimbabwe? The article employs an intersectional and postcolonial feminist lens to demonstrate how religion impacts individual political behaviour. It further draws on ethnographic material gathered in Zimbabwe consisting of in-depth interviews with nine Pentecostal women in politics. The article finds that whilst Pentecostal religious beliefs do enhance women’s political participation, the quality of this participation differs considerably amongst women.

Why do autocracies enfranchise their citizens abroad? A large-N event history analysis, 1990–2010

ABSTRACT Autocratic ruling elites allow elections as a survival strategy. Many authoritarian regimes have taken this tactic one step further, also inviting their diaspora to vote from afar. This may seem puzzling given that elections abroad are difficult to control and provide a platform for exiled regime critics. So far, however, the reasons for autocracies to grant their diaspora voting rights have rarely been explored. In this article, we address this shortcoming. We employ a cross-national, autocratic regime dataset and a discrete-time event history model. We argue that autocracies use diaspora suffrage to repress and co-opt their citizens abroad while legitimizing their rule domestically and internationally. Autocrats are risk-averse and the decision to enfranchise hinges on the characteristics of the diaspora and the regime’s need for legitimacy, repression and co-optation after power transitions. We substantiate these claims by demonstrating that autocrats are less likely to enfranchise a diaspora that largely resides in democracies or consists of refugees in democracies. In turn, successful coups render diaspora suffrage adoption more probable. In sum, external voting rights present a critical case to better understand why authoritarian states adopt democratic institutions and wish to connect with their internationally mobile population.

Blind Game: An Interactive Installation About How We Can Exorcise Memories of a Visual Disability

In this paper, we recover an interactive artwork developed by one of the authors to provide possible ways of inserting the playful and artistic perspective into augmented human studies. In this way, a perspective based on play and interactive digital fiction can inspire us to look at other ways of using digital technologies that focus on improving human capabilities. The interactive installation Blind Game brings us a personal, visual, and playful perspective of a person who, at the age of three years, was diagnosed with amblyopia, revealing the subjective world of the character P.. Created in 2001, this installation was an interactive conceptual artwork developed by a young artist who wanted to exorcise the memories of her diagnosis of amblyopia and the tensions caused by the political instability in her home country. Through interaction and playful strategies, the artist sought to abstract herself from the reality around her, reorganizing her subjective relationship with visual impairment and the political tensions of a transition period between a dictatorial government and a democratic one.

“Here” Versus “There”: Authoritarian Populism, Environment, and Scapegoat Ecology Among Loggers of Northwestern Russia

This case study contributes to the research on the environmental beliefs of extractive industry workers in an illiberal populist regime. This research is based on semi-structured interviews with logging sector workers of the Russian Northwest—a severely understudied population directly involved in resource extraction. The data shows that these workers understand forestland as two separate localities: the northwestern region of Russia, in which the loggers have expertise and knowledge, and the rest of the country, in which workers don’t have any work or travel experience. This division facilitates a process of hybridization of populist environmental narratives on one hand, and loggers’ science-supported knowledge and experiences on the other. This hybridization of the workers’ beliefs is anchored in, and perpetuated by, Russia’s state-controlled media and its modern authoritarian populist regime. This research offers policy implications and encourages future studies on the politicization of the environment and resources in authoritarian populist states.

Bhutan's Three-Pronged Strategy, Stifled Democracy and Human Rights Concerns

The assessment of human rights and social justice in Bhutan reveals numerous challenges. Developmental disparities are stark, with significant resources directed towards the western districts, home to the ruling elites. This exacerbates the development lag in the southern, eastern, and central districts. Tourism mainly benefits the western areas, concentrating the majority of tourists there and leaving limited opportunities for other regions. Gender inequality persists, with women underrepresented in political and leadership positions. Girls continue to face harassment in public, molestation in schools, and violence at home, without targeted political interventions. Ethnic minorities, religious groups, and residents of remote regions remain marginalized. Despite internal discontent and international pressure leading to a nominal political transition from an absolute monarchy to a democratic constitutional monarchy, the underlying power dynamics have not significantly shifted. There is a trend towards increased authoritarianism, surveillance, and opacity. Citizens advocating for democratic rights remain imprisoned for over three decades, despite the rulers' nominal embrace of democracy. While democratic institutions have been established, the monarchy wields more influence than before through the secret police (De-Suung), election interventions via the interim government, curtailing elected governments' autonomy, and preventing the introduction of ‘royal annuity bills’ in parliament to regulate the royal budget. This strategy has created a systematic authoritarian regime, cloaked as a constitutional monarchy for over sixteen years. Civil society organizations exist, but their leadership, often from the royal family, limits their effectiveness in addressing ordinary citizens' needs. These issues highlight profound governance, development, and gender equality challenges in Bhutan.

A large-scale field experiment on participatory decision-making in China.

Can local democratic decision-making in authoritarian environments increase or pacify civic engagement and government accountability? Here we conducted an intervention reaching over 20 million people in China. Communities were randomly assigned such that citizens in treatment communities were invited to deliberate and make collective decisions on how local community budgets were allocated through both in-person and online communication channels (participatory budgeting). We find that participatory decision-making in community budgeting increased a wide range of civic-engagement behaviours outside of the budgeting domain 6 months after the start of the intervention. Residents in treatment communities reported more need for improvement from the central government, providing a potential foundation for seeking accountability from the authoritarian regime. These changes were accompanied by a more positive societal outlook and increased satisfaction in the country's policies.

Resistance Across Borders: Belarusian Civic Activism in Exile under (Trans-)National Repression

The mass protests following the rigged 2020 presidential elections in Belarus led to unprecedented repression, resulting in the liquidation of over 1,600 NGOs, the imprisonment of hundreds of activists, and the displacement of thousands. After relocating, these activists continued to mobilize resources and use digital platforms to sustain and expand their support networks across borders. Urban activists played a pivotal role in this transformation, though they acutely felt the challenges of relocation due to their dependence on physical urban spaces and their ties to support networks and governmental bodies. This paper investigates the challenges faced by urban activists, post-relocation, as well as their resource mobilization strategies, utilizing surveys of 47 Belarusian NGOs and conducting 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with urban development experts. It contributes to the understanding of civic activism in exile, emphasizing the strategic use of resources to reorganize activity and resist transnational repression of authoritarian regimes.

Critical social media and political engagement in authoritarian regimes: the role of state media fairness perceptions

ABSTRACT This study investigates how exposure to critical social media content influences political engagement in authoritarian regimes, focusing on Kazakhstan. Addressing a gap in existing research, this paper examines the moderating role of state media fairness perceptions. Using representative survey data (N = 6,800), the analyses confirm that critical social media exposure is positively linked with political engagement, including state-sanctioned activities like party contact and legislative engagement. However, this effect varies significantly based on individuals’ perceptions of state media fairness. These results suggest that critical content can foster broader political participation and highlight the nuanced role of state media in shaping political behavior in closed states.

Tribal Politics: Political Orientation Predicts Authoritarian Traits, Cross-Cultural Interactions, and Adherence to Common Identity Factors

Abstract Cultural interactions have been at the forefront of political strife in recent years as authoritarian regimes have come to power across the globe. This warrants investigation by social science researchers in the fields of social psychology, political psychology, and cognitive psychology. This study drew upon those three fields to explore the relationships between political orientation and (1) authoritarian traits, (2) attitudes towards intergroup relations and cross-cultural interactions (CCI), and (3) identity factors, largely through the lens of Social Identity Theory. Participants comprised 2,582 undergraduates at a public university in the U.S. The Diverse Learning Environments survey assessed views on social identity, intergroup relations, political and religious ideology, and social and political issues. Correlational analysis and ANOVA were conducted to determine relationships between variables and differences between groups. Results indicated that the more strongly respondents rated their political orientation as conservative, the more authoritarian traits they tended to report, the less likely they were to engage in CCI, and the more likely they were to hold negative views of those from different backgrounds than themselves. The more respondents rated their political orientation as liberal, the more open they were to diversity and more likely they were to engage in CCI. Identity factors appeared to be more important to conservatives than to liberals in that strength of political ideology was related to common identity characteristics for conservatives but not for liberals.

A lightweight anonymity protocol at terabit speeds on programmable switches

Anonymous communication protocols are integral tools for people to exercise the right to privacy in their online activities. Such tools are urged to offer maximum protection against various classes of adversaries, including rogue criminals, exploitative companies, and authoritarian or paternalistic regimes, while respecting the diversity of users’ activities, from e-mail and web browsing to file transfer and video streaming. In such a context, lightweight anonymity protocols are a promising solution to provide well-balanced anonymity and performance for daily use against a class of adversaries with a relaxed but realistic assumption of their capability. However, as the existing instantiations of these protocols solely target software implementation, they did not fully exhibit their advantages in performance by the relaxation of the adversarial model. This paper presents P5HI, a novel instantiation and implementation of a lightweight anonymity protocol on hardware programmable switches. Its realization requires a rethinking of all aspects of the system, beginning with the realization of bit-rotation on the switch, through the construction of a cryptographic scheme and attack prevention, to hardware-friendly procedures during path setup and data transmission. We deploy the full-fledged design of the lightweight anonymity protocol on an actual programmable switch, and our prototype demonstrates its operation at a speed of over 3.0 Tbps.

Understanding the failure of government debunking communication: insights from China

ABSTRACT This study uses qualitative methods to examine the challenges faced by authoritarian regimes in managing rumors during public crises, focusing on the Urumqi government’s (the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China) response to COVID-19 lockdown rumors. The analysis identifies four factors contributing to the failure of government debunking communication: Rejection due to Negative Past Experiences, Discourse Reinterpretation by Mismatched Criteria, Disregard Toward Inflexible Statements, and Opposition Arising from Perceived Superficial Efforts. These factors culminate in a core mechanism termed ‘Emotional Resistance Anchored in Distrust,’ highlighting how negative past experiences shape public distrust and foster resistance to government communication. The findings challenge the assumption of automatic public trust in authoritarian contexts and underscore the importance of aligning government actions with public needs and expectations, particularly during crises.

O feminino em disputa: a aliança neoliberal-conservadora nos discursos do Ministério da Mulher, Família e dos Direitos Humanos no governo Bolsonaro

This paper analyzes how the former Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, under Jair Bolsonaro's government (2019-2022), constructed discourses around the social roles reserved for women and naturalized by patriarchy, especially about care, space private sector, education and reproductive work. Starting from a discussion that considers the neoliberal-conservative alliance, in which the ministry's representative, Damares Alves, appears as one of the greatest representatives of Bolsonarism, we seek to explore the effects of meaning produced by the discourses linked to the ministry's public policies. Based on feminist theory and studies of the rise of the extreme right, we analyzed the former minister Damares Alves’ discourses between the years 2019-2021, her performance in order to understand the impact of such an alliance on women during what It has been called Bolsonarism. As one of the main results, we realize that the paving of authoritarian governments is totally intertwined with the place that women occupy in this model of society, therefore, anti-feminism becomes evident.

Cross-national civilian reporting of the everydayness of war: Emerging citizen journalism practices in Palestine and Kashmir

This article explores how Palestinian and Kashmiri civilians engage with the everyday reality of war. The focus is on understanding how citizens temporarily adopt the roles of war correspondents, contributing to the broader conflict narrative. Employing an inductive approach, the study integrates ethnography, phenomenology, and reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) to gain insights into how citizen journalists shape war narratives. Analysing the interview data through RTA reveals six key themes: “Emerging citizen journalism practices,” “Community Consciousness,” “Challenges in media perception,” “Self-expression and Social cohesion,” Responding to Authoritarian Falsehoods”, “Teen journalism”, and “Self-protection and safety”. The findings suggest that the citizen journalism practices in Palestine and Kashmir strategically report the war narratives, representing a progressive journalism practice. The results underline that citizen journalism practices in these regions purposefully present war narratives and represent a form of constructive journalism, which responds to authoritarian regimes’ extensive control over mainstream media and facilitates reconciliation and peace. Such citizen journalism practices act as an equipoise to data imbalances in information architecture for the consumers. The research underscores how conflict citizen journalism embodies activist and collaborative models with robust potential for replication in other conflict-ridden areas.

The Fossil-Fueled Roots of Climate Inaction in Authoritarian Regimes

Why do some authoritarian regimes contribute more to climate change than others? I suggest that climate inaction in nondemocracies is shaped by a combination of fossil fuel wealth and executive constraints. Fossil fuel wealth undermines climate action by giving leaders of authoritarian regimes incentives to capture oil and gas rents that help them maintain power. Executive constraints, however, can restrict carbon-intensive rent-seeking and therefore moderate the role of fossil fuel wealth in undermining climate action. This argument provides a novel explanation for variation in efforts to address climate change among nondemocracies: the lack of institutional constraints on autocratic leaders’ use of fossil fuel wealth for political gain. I evaluate this argument using panel data on greenhouse gas emissions, oil and gas income, and executive constraints in 108 countries governed by authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2021, finding that oil and gas income leads to higher emissions, but that these effects decline significantly with executive constraints.

The Authoritarian Nature of Common Good Constitutionalism

Abstract How are we to evaluate the project of common good constitutionalism? This new movement, which dismisses positivism and liberalism, progressivism and originalism, aims to overturn the entire canon of modern political and constitutional theory. In its place, it aims to restore a classical tradition of natural law jurisprudence, which is said to have been lost over the last century of constitutional law and practice. In so doing it uses one of liberalism’s own juristic heroes, Ronald Dworkin, in order to free conservatism from the tethers of fidelity to constitutional text and the principle of popular sovereignty underwriting it. Common good constitutionalism’s intervention in the constitutional culture wars of the present is authoritarian not because of its opposition to liberalism, but because of its steadfast refusal of any link between constitutional authority and democracy.

(Un)familiar familialism: the recent shift in family politics in Iran

This contribution addresses the strategic significance of family politics for the Islamic Republic of Iran, facing multifaceted crises. It identifies Iran’s recent family and gender policies, which are characterised by the fusion of neoliberal principles with moral politics and can be found in other authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Drawing on a historical analysis of familialism in Iran, spanning pre- and post-revolutionary periods, we contend that the recent shift towards a gendered-moral politics emphasising harsh pronatalism and family-oriented governance, termed ‘neoliberal familialism’, reflects a profound shift in the political rationality of the Islamic Republic towards neoliberal governance to manage its socio-economic crises. In other words, not only have neoliberal principles affected the family politics of the last decade in Iran, but a specific form of masculine nationalist neoliberalisation in Iran has also been possible and advanced partly through neoliberal familialism.

Never Again! Fandom and the Culture of Remembrance in German Football

Sport and politics have historically nurtured intrinsic connections. This article examines the role of a left-wing-oriented German football fan movement in confronting the Nazi past of football clubs. Focusing on FC St. Pauli, Werder Bremen, and SV Babelsberg 03, it explores the development of a nationwide culture of remembrance to avoid the resurgence of authoritarian regimes. We theorize that Germany’s Holocaust cultural trauma that developed new notions of time has influenced fans’ remembrance work, which includes the change of institutional official narratives of the clubs’ Nazi pasts. While acknowledging Germany’s sociocultural, political and temporal factors to explain this phenomenon, we call for action within sports organizations and fan bases of other Western countries to revisit their difficult heritage.