Authoritarian Research Articles

'Political Role in Journalism': Issues and Challenges in Nepal and Beyond

This paper examines the intricate connection between politics and journalism, highlighting the difficulties and effects of political influence on journalistic practices. The study shows, through a review of the, statement of problem, study of object and literature, that political beliefs have a major influence on media narratives, which frequently results in skewed reporting. The study is dependence of self-censorship, especially in authoritarian regimes. The crucial role that journalism plays in influencing public opinion and its consequences for democratic processes are also covered in this essay. It also draws attention to the difficulties that journalists encounter in politically delicate situations, such as censorship, physical threats, and legal constraints. The results highlight the necessity for journalistic independence and integrity to support democratic processes, as well as the dual role that media plays as a safeguard for democracy and a possible conduit for political influence. The study highlights the role that independent journalism plays in defending democratic norms in Nepal and notes the challenges that journalists confront in upholding impartiality and moral standards in the face of political polarization.

Status of Elderly People in Chandragiri Municipality of Kathmandu

This paper examines the intricate connection between politics and journalism, highlighting the difficulties and effects of political influence on journalistic practices. The study shows, through a review of the, statement of problem, study of object and literature, that political beliefs have a major influence on media narratives, which frequently results in skewed reporting. The study is dependence of self-censorship, especially in authoritarian regimes. The crucial role that journalism plays in influencing public opinion and its consequencesfor democratic processes are also covered in this essay. It also draws attention to the difficulties that journalists encounter in politically delicate situations, such as censorship, physical threats, and legal constraints. The results highlight the necessity for journalistic independence and integrity to support democratic processes, as well as the dual role that media plays as a safeguard for democracy and a possible conduit for political influence. The study highlights the role that independent journalism plays in defending democratic norms in Nepal and notes the challenges that journalists confront in upholding impartiality and moral standards in the face of political polarization.

People consistently view elections and civil liberties as key components of democracy.

How do people around the world define democracy? Answering this question is critical as countries face democratic backsliding and authoritarian governments promote alternative notions of democracy. Indeed, some scholars argue that people from different backgrounds understand democracy differently. By contrast, we discovered very consistent views about what constitutes a "democratic" country from conjoint survey experiments conducted in Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Across countries (N = 6150) and diverse subgroups within countries, people similarly emphasized free and fair elections and civil liberties as being the key determinants of democracy. Countries that produce desirable social and economic outcomes are also considered more democratic, but these and other factors exert a smaller and less consistent effect than elections and civil liberties.

The Military Turn in Comparative Constitutional Law: Constitutions and the Military in Authoritarian Regimes

The Military Turn in Comparative Constitutional Law: Constitutions and the Military in Authoritarian Regimes

Abortion Law Illiberalism and Feminist Politics in Comparative Perspective

Since the 1970s, a liberal politics has dominated comparative abortion law, one almost too ubiquitous to name. This article tracks departures from liberal abortion law in Europe and the Americas that have reshaped the field of comparative abortion law. Section 2 examines the repurposing of liberal abortion law for illiberal ends in a conservative moment of authoritarian governments and their anti-gender campaigns. Drawing on larger ideas of autocratic legalism, the article analyzes how governments and courts have used the features of liberal abortion law to revoke or defeat abortion rights. Section 3 examines the counter-emergence of a feminist protest politics that has abandoned liberal abortion law in a democratic remaking of society and state. Today, in abortion lawmaking through democratized institutions and in the unmaking of abortion law through direct action, feminist movements are reclaiming comparative abortion law and its politics.

Authoritarianism and civil society: Legal restrictions on Human Rights CSOs

New types of authoritarian regimes attempt to create the illusion of democracy. They therefore seek to restrict the establishment and activities of CSOs not through outright bans, but through the adoption of laws and regulations designed to systematically and methodically impede the operation of human rights CSOs. This paper, based on empirical research, classifies and analyses the registration and re-registration procedures that restrict the freedom of association of human rights CSOs, as well as the legislation that imposes registration or re-registration requirements on organisations designated as “foreign agents.” Additionally, it assesses the proportion in which democratic and authoritarian regimes use these restrictive mechanisms. The results show that the restrictions examined are predominantly used in authoritarian regimes.

Political stability in authoritarian regimes: the case of Central Asia

ABSTRACT Existing research indicates that political stability is a prerequisite for good governance and economic development in Central Asia. All five countries in the region are authoritarian regimes but it is unclear which factors impact on political stability. Using data for the period 2002–2022, this paper examines the variables which make a significant contribution to political stability and finds that the rule of law, personalist rule, a free media, freedom of assembly, political polarization and gross domestic product (GDP) growth, respectively have a positive effect on political stability while government accountability, exclusions by social group and civil society participation have a negative effect. Some of the findings are at odds with other studies on autocratic regimes, illustrating the importance of geo-political context.

Local Meanings of Peace: The Politics of Words and Emotional Labor among Civil Society Practitioners in Armenia and Turkey

Abstract Despite their long-lasting work in Armenia and Turkey, peacebuilding practitioners of civil society have an ambivalent relationship with the term peace and refrain from defining their role as peacebuilders. Informed by the anthropological research adopting the local turn in peace and conflict studies, we explore how civil society practitioners in Armenia and Turkey perceive the concept of “peace” (խաղաղություն or khaghaghutyun in Armenian and barış in Turkish) and how they position themselves regarding the meanings they attach to this term. In this paper, we present data collected through semi-structured interviews with civil society practitioners from both countries, investigating the perceptions and practices in the aftermath of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. We found that the flexibility of the term normalization in comparison to peacebuilding is preferred among civil society practitioners working for the Armenia-Turkey dialogue. We also show that the political context shapes local meanings of the word peace. While in Turkey, the authoritarian regime, restrictions on NGOs, and rise of ultranationalism make open advocacy for peace with Armenia difficult and risky, the war with Azerbaijan firmly structures where and how the word peace can be used in Armenia – even though it is not clear what is meant by it in either case. Finally, our research points out a neglected aspect of professionalism in this context and shows how it requires emotional labor to suppress enthusiasm and hope for peace. We close our paper with a call for further research among the youth and exploration of effective communication, alternative approaches, and terminologies that can foster meaningful dialogue and reconciliation without provoking divisive sentiments.

Aktivisme, Budaya Populer, dan Media: Paradigma Protes terhadap Three Finger Salute dalam Berita Reuters

This study investigates the framing and presences of the protest paradigm in Reuters' coverage of activism events in Southeast Asia involving The Hunger Games' Three Finger Salute. In recent years, several protests in the region have adopted this salute as a means of expressing dissent against their respective governments. These diverse activisms not only attract media attention as political events but also signify interconnected political phenomena through a gesture inspired by popular narratives such The Hunger Games. Reuters, an international news agency, has shown a heightened interest in this phenomenon compared to other news agencies that focusing solely on political activities. While it is common for news reports to embody the protest paradigm when covering activism, Reuters' coverage specific focus on events involving the Three Finger Salute sets it apart. The protest paradigm highlights the media's tendency to depict social protests with a negative sentiment. Through text and framing analysis, this research delves into how Reuters selectively emphasizes certain aspects of these fan activisms. The findings reveal that Reuters framed the coverage of fan activisms around authoritarian government, youth and student, and royalist. Reuters also has negative sentiment and continues to perpetuate the protest paradigm.

Social work students’ perspectives on the future of human rights

ABSTRACT This study explores social work students’ perspectives on human rights in their practice, drawing on focus group interviews from universities in Germany, Poland, and the Philippines. Focus group discussions were coded using thematic content analysis based on an inductive approach in which themes emerge from the conversations between participants and the researchers and among themselves. It examines emergent themes on envisioning human rights’ future in social work, highlighting novel application approaches. The research underscores the necessity of incorporating human rights education, emphasizing respect, equality, and dignity, into social work curricula. Students discuss the evolving nature of societal norms and human rights, advocating for adaptive, culturally sensitive approaches to meet demographic and societal changes. The findings suggest a paradigm shift toward a more inclusive perspective that integrates environmental and collective rights, marking a significant move from traditional social work practices. Additionally, the research highlights the international political context, including the rise of authoritarian nationalism, which poses significant challenges to the advancement of human rights globally. This underscores the urgency for social work to act as a counter-movement in defense of human rights and democratic principles.

Queering Authoritarianism in Uganda: Dissident Sexualities and Tropical African [anti]-Aesthetics in Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses from my Mouth

In this article, I argue that queering female sexualities as ‘dissident sexualities’ Stella Nyanzi in her collection of prison poems, No Roses from My Mouth (2020), harnesses the aesthetics of radical rudeness (insults) through expressions of humor, innuendo, and anecdote grounded in the Baganda cultural repertoire, to critique President Yoweri Museveni’s authoritarian regime in Uganda. Her poetry draws attention to queer sexualities grounded in stylistics of dissent. Humor in the prison poems allows Nyanzi to develop an audacity that alludes to the authenticity of her queer consciousness. To this end, the article teases out how radical rude poetics, a corollary of tropical [anti]-aesthetics, affords Nyanzi a literary platform to manipulate pejorative imagery, libidinous metaphors, subversive phrases, and lewd expressions entrenched in humor as political protest. More evocatively, the article asserts that within the context of tropicality, radical rudeness as pan-Africa’s anti-aesthetic response to the Western (English) culture of politeness is focused upon in No Roses from My Mouth as a literary fuse that expands tropical aesthetic’s critique of colonialism/postcolonialism in Africa to poetically confront authoritarianism in Uganda.

Inhibiting or Contributing? How Global Liberal Forces Impact Climate Change Skepticism

Although climate change remains a top environmental threat, significant portions of the global population continue to exhibit climate change skepticism. Currently, an extensive literature identifies the micro-level determinants of climate skepticism, often manifesting as a form of populist “backlash” to the adverse effects of globalization. However, the potential of macro-level global cultural forces—particularly embeddedness in liberal world society—to counter such pushback is unclear. Using multilevel modeling to analyze International Social Survey Program data spanning 37 countries from 2000 to 2020, we find that in general, increased embeddedness is linked to reduced climate skepticism. However, when global liberal forces encounter anti-liberal undercurrents within nation-states, a situation we refer to as cultural dissonance, the impact of liberal world society on tempering skepticism varies. Embeddedness mitigates skepticism at the national level, particularly within authoritarian regimes, but not at the individual level, especially among right-wing individuals. Paradoxically, world society also heightens ideological polarization of individual worldviews on climate change. By illuminating the contradictory role of liberal world society, which simultaneously exacerbates and inhibits anti-liberal, populist attitudes about climate change, we advance existing work examining the post-liberal turn and holds promise for making sense of other issue domains where liberal perspectives are contested.

The conflict within: the politics of parliamentary election management in Iran

ABSTRACT Scholars of comparative politics have long been interested in understanding conflicts that arise among elites within authoritarian contexts. Such conflicts are particularly puzzling when they occur in the context of authoritarian elections and within state administrative institutions like the electoral management body (EMB). Using previously unanalysed primary sources provided by Iran’s Ministry of Interior, which document the inner workings of Iran’s 2000 parliamentary election management, this study investigates intra-elite conflict associated with this important election. I found that within the dual EMB structure, where elected and unelected members coexist, elected administrative members can access information on irregular activities by unelected members more than those outside of this body. These information resources encourage elected members to take the risk of accusing more powerful elites – the unelected members of the regime – of electoral fraud. This is particularly evident during the reformist (moderate opposition) Presidency. My findings suggest the importance of examining intra-elite conflict within administrative institutions – EMBs – for a better understanding of political contestation within otherwise opaque authoritarian regimes.

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children examines three Holocaust-themed works, Golden Eels (Zlatí úhoři, 1979), Death of a Beautiful Deer (Smrt krásných srnců, 1986) and The Last Butterfly (Poslední motýl, 1991), by Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyňa during the normalisation period of the Czechoslovak communist era. This work seeks to challenge the critical reception of Kachyňa’s normalisation era (1970-1989) works, where a focus on his use of children’s narratives and crude humour during the period has had a diminishing effect. Engaging with legitimate concerns over Kachyňa’s ability to continue to work following the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 in Czechoslovakia when many of his New Wave contemporaries like Jiří Menzel and Věra Chytilová were banned and some like Miloš Forman felt compelled to emigrate, this work explores how Kachyňa’s Holocaust-themed works address the filmmaker’s attempts to produce a humanist poetics in the face of a dehumanising authoritarian regime, despite essentially working for the communist regime he was attempting to criticise. In generating analogies between the Nazi regime and his contemporaneous experience under communism, Kachyňa provides a powerfully subversive body of work which this article argues is deserving of greater attention in scholarship.

Fact-Checkers on the Fringe: Investigating Methods and Practices Associated With Contested Areas of Fact-Checking

This study investigates the methods and practices used by self-identified fact-checkers situated on the fringe of the field of fact-checking to support their agenda for public recognition and legitimacy. Using a case study approach and selecting nine cases across five countries (Russia, Brazil, India, China, and Singapore), we identify the most common distinguishable attributes and tactics associated with this ambiguous collection of actors. In addition to identifying how fringe fact-checkers weaponize fact-checking practices and exploit or mimic the social standing of accredited fact-checkers, we critique examples where state-supported fact-checkers associated with authoritarian governance structures fact-check for national interests. We propose a spectrum of fact-checkers including those where public or general interest fact-checkers follow journalistic ideals and align with accredited communities of practice or non-accredited peer recognition, and a collection of fringe fact-checkers ranging from “special interest” actors promoting specific political agendas to hostile actors with disruptive, destructive, and openly propagandistic interests and aims to destabilize the global public sphere. The article contributes to current research and debates about the institutionalization of fact-checking and the understudied area of fact-checking impersonation, a problematic activity associated with misinformation and propaganda on platforms and the internet.

Factors affecting Russian elites’ perceptions of civil protests: evidence from the survey of Russian elites, 2016 and 2020

ABSTRACT Which elites support civil protests, and which ones oppose them? Existing studies of civil protests in authoritarian regimes have mainly examined their triggers, effectiveness and the responses they provoke from authoritarian states. While these studies offer implications regarding the durability of authoritarian states, they have not examined elite perceptions of civil protests, which may contribute to the authoritarian reactions to such protests. Using the Survey of Russian Elites from 2016 and 2020, this paper analyses the factors that affect Russian elites’ perceptions of protests. I argue that elites’ perceptions of protests depend on their democratic value orientation, social position and media use. The findings reveal that elites who value civil liberties approve of protests, while those closely linked to the Kremlin, those who frequently use traditional media and members of the United Russia Party oppose protests. However, the effects of the independent variables differ slightly depending on the protest method’s intensity and the survey’s wave. This study sheds light on the causal relationship between Russian elites’ individual characteristics and their perceptions of protests.

Dua Dekade Kebebasan Akademik di Indonesia: Tantangan di Tengah Menguatnya Otoritarianisme dalam Model Barunya

This research focuses on analyzing the debates and roles of the academic freedom movement in Indonesia’s authoritarian politics. Numbers of scholars argued on the democracy decline and its current situation of authoritarian turn (Mietzner 2016, 2020; Hadiz 2017; Wiratraman 2018; Waburton and Aspinal 2019; and Winters 2021). Authoritarianism governance in recent politics has been worsening situation of free expression, including academic freedom. Recently, one of attacks is connected to cyber-attacks, which has been targeting journalists, academics, activists or students who defend human rights and environment, indigenous leaders, anti-corruption activists, and women's groups. This article discusses first, how has academic freedom at campuses been shaped by Indonesia's the rise of authoritarian politics; and second how academic freedom has been influenced and easily attacked in the rise of digital authoritarianism. By using an interdisciplinary approach, this article argues that there is a strong relation between the threat of academic freedom and the strengthening of authoritarianism in Indonesia, especially by disciplining campuses through a more systematic bureaucratization. While at the same time, academic freedom has been affected by stronger control of authoritarianism regime by deplying cyber troops in digital spheres. Hence, this article also discusses how human rights instruments and its institutions could promote and defend academic freedom in general.

The Weakness of Authoritarian Regimes: Rwanda as a Difficult But Convincing Case

Abstract The lack of academic attention to the functioning of authoritarian regimes has allowed an erroneous impression that dictatorships are inherently strong and stable. Marie-Eve Desrosiers uses the difficult case of Rwanda, whose 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has widely been seen as a sign of state strength, to demonstrate the fragility of authoritarian rule. Looking at the First and Second Republics, which governed Rwanda from 1962 until 1994, Desrosiers explores both the vulnerability of the regimes and how they adjusted over time in attempts to strengthen control. Desrosiers argues for greater awareness of shifting strategies and changes in governance across time, what she calls “authoritarian trajectories,” to better understand how authoritarian regimes actually work and how the public responds to them. Although not focused on the 1994 genocide, Desrosiers' analysis helps explain why genocide emerged as a strategy to shore up Rwanda's failing regime.

COVID-19 pandemic and competitive authoritarian regimes: Human rights and democracy in the Philippines and Nicaragua

How do competitive authoritarian regimes in the Global South respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? How do these policy responses facilitate human rights deterioration in societies that are already facing democratic regression during the pre-pandemic period? Examining evidence from the Philippines and Nicaragua during the COVID-19 pandemic, this article demonstrates that competitive authoritarian regimes have reinforced the deterioration of democratic processes and disregard for their human rights commitments amidst the global pandemic. First, such regimes weaponize the legal system to consolidate the powers of the chief executive and their allies. Second, such regimes systematically disregard transparency and accountability when executing state leaders’ public actions and responsibilities. Third, such regimes increasingly empower military personnel and intensify state violence at the expense of science-based approaches to crisis policies, thereby embracing militarism as an overarching orientation.

Do Fiscal Rules Tame the Political Taxation Cycles under Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from China’s New Budget Law

Political budget cycles (PBCs) in Western democracies have been extensively examined. Yet, few studies have explored whether there exists a local political budget cycle under authoritarian regimes. Moreover, the question of whether fiscal rules effectively tame the political taxation cycles remains. Unlike previous studies, we bring the “business” back into the study of political “business” cycles. Using firm tax payments data in China, we confirm the presence of political cycles in local tax collection behaviors under the authoritarian system. However, in contrast to the fiscal manipulation behaviors during and before political elections in Western democracies, Chinese local leaders engage in opportunistic taxation behaviors in the early years after the Provincial Congress of the Communist Party (PCCP) when there are local leaders’ elections. The political taxation cycles disappeared following the implementation of China’s new budget law in 2015, demonstrating the effectiveness of fiscal rules in taming local political budget cycles in authoritarian regimes. This research extends the existing PBC theory to the context of non-Western democracies based on micro-level evidence.