Authoritarian State Research Articles

The politics of Africa’s urban–industrialisation: authoritarian centralisation and policy integration

A growing body of literature addresses the implications of the ongoing rapid state-led, export-oriented industrialisation in African cities for a range of development concerns – e.g. labour relations, value chain development, gender relations and China’s involvement in infrastructural development. This study focuses on another important implication of Africa’s rapid industrialisation that has not been sufficiently explored – urban–industrial integration. Recent scholarship that looks at the interaction of urban and industrial development in Africa identifies challenges emerging at the nexus caused by lack of policy integration (PI). However, this literature does not address why this disconnect between the policy spheres arises or why it continues to persist. Based on thematic analysis of over a hundred qualitative interviews with key policy actors in the urban–industrial sphere, I argue policy fragmentation in the African urban–industrial nexus is driven by processes of ‘authoritarian centralisation’ that foster adverse political conditions for PI – more specifically conceptual integration, policy coordination and infrastructural integration. The study illustrates the relationship between authoritarian centralisation and PI and discusses the ways in which authoritarianism has shaped urban policy, planning and development and its integration into industrial and economic development strategies. The paper contributes to the nascent literature on the politics of urban–industrialisation in a broader range of developmental authoritarian African states. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

NEIGHBOURHOODS AGAINST THE STATE: Reversing Territorial Stigma in Casablanca and Beyond

AbstractNeoliberal urban interventions are perceived as authoritarian by the people affected—regardless of whether they are implemented by an autocrat, a dynastic king or an elected government—because they are supported by narratives designed and imposed from outside which contrast with local perceptions of space and social life. Fieldwork reports from two displacement processes implemented by an authoritarian state—Morocco—are compared with similar observations in two allegedly ‘democratic’ countries—Italy and Spain. In all cases, the residents respond with counter‐narratives that highlight the importance of local social structures based on strong personal ties and the collective use of resources that enable them to survive neglect and stigmatization. A common trope is the idea of a ‘big family’ of neighbours struggling against a state that refuses to acknowledge the dignity and value of local social life, thus betraying and alienating its own citizens.

STATE‐LED GENTRIFICATION AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF URBAN AUTHORITARIAN PRACTICES

AbstractThis collection of interventions unites academics hailing from Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and the United States, reintroducing discussions on authoritarian state tactics and coercion into urban renewal dialogues within urban studies. During our discussions, it became apparent that urban authoritarian tactics are crucial in contemporary state‐led gentrification efforts. In this introduction to the series, we aim to merge research on authoritarian measures within neoliberalism with the literature concerning urban transformation and gentrification. By doing so, we bring urban studies into wider discussions regarding the overarching trend of authoritarianism on a global scale within sociology, political economy and international studies.

Authoritarian welfare and resilience: politics of child benefits in Russia

ABSTRACT Recent literature on authoritarian stability and legitimation has highlighted the role of propaganda and information control, national identity politics, participation technologies and other communication strategies autocrats use to shape public opinion. The authoritarian tool kit is, incomplete if we do not account for governance-related measures. Focusing on authoritarian social policy and contributing to the literature on the authoritarian welfare state, this study measures the political effects of unconditional and conditional cash transfers, specifically focusing on child subsidies, that the Russian government has increasingly integrated into its policy tools. Social policy and child support earn the government political dividends in terms of shoring up public support and have acquired added significance over the last few years. It is part of the current social pact that enables authoritarian resilience during Russia’s war against Ukraine and that is made possible by the actions at the federal, regional, and municipal levels of government.

Lekarze obozu w Berezie Kartuskiej w latach 1934-1939 – dylematy służby w aparacie represji państwa autorytarnego

. W artykule przedstawiono funkcjonowanie służby zdrowia obozu w Berezie Kartuskiej. Istniał on w latach 1934-1939 i był miejscem, w którym przetrzymywano przeciwników politycznych obozu sanacyjnego, który sprawował wówczas władzę w Polsce. Dopuszczano się tam w stosunku do osadzonych tortur psychicznych i fizycznych. Funkcję lekarza obozu pełniło dwóch lekarzy wojskowych, mjr dr. K. Dietl i kpt. dr S. Gutowski. Prowadzili oni Ambulatorium i Izbę Chorych, a w razie konieczności przekazywali pacjentów do Szpitala Powiatowego w Kobryniu. Każdy z nich na miarę swoich umiejętności zawodowych i doświadczenia starał się nieść pomoc osadzonym więźniom politycznym.

Conjuring Sovereignty: How the “Constitution” of Medina became an Oracle of Modern Statehood

Although the legal institutions of postcolonial Egypt and much of the Arab world had been reconstituted along the lines of Napoleonic civil code in the 1940s, Islamic political discourse remained encumbered by claims in which the nation, the umma, was defined by faith rather than territorial boundaries, and lacked a notion of secular citizenship and sovereignty. South Asian scholar Hamidullah’s apologetic recasting of the Ṣaḥīfat al-Madīnā in the 1930s as the "world’s first written constitution" may have handed Egyptian Islamic reformists like the Islamic reformist and lawyer Salim El-Awa the solution to this problem. Wildly successful, El-Awa’s strategically ahistorical reading in Sadat’s Egypt pitted the purportedly liberal Prophetic politics against a constrictive juristic tradition. The resulting discourse made the Ṣaḥīfa available to anyone who wished to get past the structural incompatibility between Islamic politico-legal tradition and the territorially constituted nation-state. Besides disarticulating the relationship between Islamic law and politics, the Ṣaḥīfa may have performed another unintended function. As a treaty that placed no limits on a sovereign’s power, now elevated as the true Islamic constitution that had been obscured by later tradition, it became something of a modern oracle, providing the perfect instrument of legitimation to the modern Arab authoritarian states looking to deploy Islam but to bypass the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence.

Values Education, the Family, and Youth in Tajikistan: Building Docile Subjects

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between youth, the family, and the authoritarian state in Tajikistan. We argue that the state works through both young people and the family in its attempts to produce loyal citizens through values education that focuses on patriotism, national identity, and allegiance to the state. We examine how the government frames this relationship through discourse analysis of 13 speeches by President Emomali Rahmon, an analysis of the content of laws on education and youth, a close reading of the official training program of the course “Family Education,” and an ethnographic study of a “Girls’ Competition.”

Online Harassment in Authoritarian and Semi-democratic States

Online Harassment in Authoritarian and Semi-democratic States

The Latin American crisis and the new authoritarian state

The Latin American crisis and the new authoritarian state, by Manuel Larrabure, Routledge, 2023

Militant Democracy Unmoored? The Limits of Constitutional Analogy in International Law

Abstract As constitutional democracies are faced with authoritarianism and other anti-constitutionalist threats, international law is seeing its own challenge from the increasing influence of authoritarian states. Yet, departing from the recent tendency to model the international legal order after constitutional governance, international lawyers seem to show little interest in the concept of militant democracy, while the latter lies at the centre of current debates surrounding constitutional self-defence. This article aims to bring to light the current limits of constitutional analogy in international law through an investigation into the discrepancy between constitutional and international lawyers in responding to authoritarian co-optation. A three-pronged argument is submitted. First, in contrast to other appeals for constitutional self-defence, the concept of militant democracy is contentious where it stands in tension with the constitutional ethos. Second, while militant democracy as a constitutional concept presupposes a democratic and normative version of constitutional ordering, the absence of militant democracy on the international plane betrays the non-democratic, albeit representative, character of the international legal order. Third, attempts to internationalize the concept of militant democracy should be rejected as an international version of militant democracy would only portend an (un)holy alliance of militant democracies and exacerbate the political division in international society. It is suggested that, from out of a realignment of international law with the constitutional project of progress, a new constitutional analogy may emerge, giving fresh impetus to the realization of international law’s universal liberating promise.

Contentious Origins of Authoritarian Social Protection: China’s “Threat-Driven” Strategy in Redistribution

AbstractDespite the lack of electoral accountability, China has built an expanding welfare system that is set to include most citizens. Why does China defy the conventional prediction of an exclusive authoritarian welfare state? This paper looks at the critical time when China first established its social security system in the 1990s and argues that the state adopts a “threat-driven strategy” where the redistribution effort varies with the expected collective action of economic losers. Analyzing an original granular county-level dataset of China’s laid-off workers and social security taxation, the paper finds that a group of newly emerged economic losers, precipitated by state policy, drives the local states’ efforts to redistribute. In particular, the number of laid-off state-owned enterprise workers explains 46% of the variations in social security collection among non-state-owned enterprises. Instrumental variable estimation, with legacy state-owned enterprises established in historical contingencies as the instrument for laid-off workers, shows consistent results. Further analysis on mechanisms demonstrates that layoffs lead to an increase in SOE protests, which in turn foster greater redistribution.

Interview with Nicos Poulantzas (April 1979)

Nicos Poulantzas talks to Stuart Hall and Alan Hunt New introduction by Dave Featherstone and Lazaros Karaliotas Nicos Poulantzas was one of the most influential figures in the renewal in European Marxism in the 1970s, and this interview shows some of the ways in which left political discourse in Europe in the 1970s was shaped by widely shared trajectories and contexts. Poulantzas was a member of the Greek Communist Party of the Interior, which, like other parties moving towards a Eurocommunist position, had sought to articulate an alternative political strategy, a different democratic imaginary, and a different road to power. Poulantzas makes a crucial distinction between right and left variants of Eurocommunism. The discussion of Poulantzas’s ideas on ‘authoritarian statism’ situate the interview within wider discussions and debates during the 1970s about how to theorise and make sense of the relations between authoritarianism and the state; it is also part of a broader engagement with Poulantzas’s work that was central to Stuart Hall’s articulation of the concept of ‘authoritarian populism’, which he used to signi ficant effect in his critical analysis of Thatcherism. In the concluding discussion Poulantzas is clearly straining against some of the limits of left organising ‐ in relation to discussions of feminism, the ‘ecological movement’ and other social movements. But he also is clear that there will be no return to the certainties of a Leninist party model: ‘these are the problems which we must tackle; they will not go away, nor can we simply retreat to the old orthodoxy’. This effort to re-imagine the role of the centralising party while also embracing a plurality of ‘autonomous social movements’ was an important unifying concern within some variants of Eurocommunism.

Schlock Value and the Politics of Fiasco

This article tracks the ways citizens in the People's Republic of China have come to manage the banality of state violence and impunity by turning common political failures into a distinctive politics of fiasco. As a mode of civilian engagement with officialdom in contemporary China, this kind of politics is a departure from the usual straightforward forms of popular resistance, as typified by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. Fiasco is not just any kind of failure. It is a kind of flop with performative flair, where repeated malfunctions and blunders escalate in often ludicrous and humiliating fashion to turn once earnest and serious projects in feel‐bad dramas of inescapable failure. As such, this form of politics casts a renewed light on the aesthetic and affective dimensions of citizen–state struggles, especially among those that persist in confronting failures of justice under authoritarian conditions of political non‐crisis.

Churches in the 2020 elections and political protests in Belarus: raising voices at the time of uncertainties and turmoil

ABSTRACT In 2020, the religious factor turned out to gain importance to both protest mobilizations and to government repression in Belarus, where the initiatives of religious groups had fostered collective action in the state system that was punitive against any dissent. This happened for the first time in the country, which had been affected by the legacies of Soviet anti-religious policies. The forms of protest that churches could suggest fitted neatly into the non-democratic settings of Belarus, providing a necessary opportunity structure for otherwise forbidden mobilizations. Analyzing the attitudes of the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Churches toward the events of 2020 in Belarus, this research note discusses why their social contract with the authoritarian regime was broken. We argue that the churches’ stance and the role they played at a time of political turmoil confirmed their status as influential non-state actors who are capable of having their say in the rough circumstances of an authoritarian and repressive political regime. At the same time, it has also confirmed the limits of the authoritarian state to influence religious institutions and the growing opportunities for clergy and laypeople from these institutions to have a common say on important issues of moral and ethical dimensions, inspired by Christian principles and values.

Opening the black box of student government in authoritarian contexts: institutional work and intra-organisational conflicts in the Students’ Guild at Makerere University, Uganda

AbstractStudent governments are important actors in higher education governance and also in more general political processes, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the research on student governments has thus far focused on the relations with higher education authorities and political parties, often without investigating their internal dynamics, thus risking of conceiving them as more homogeneous than they are likely to be. Analysing the internal dynamics of student governments is necessary to understand why student leaders, on behalf of their representative organisations, act and position themselves the way they do externally. This case study of the Students’ Guild at Makerere University addresses this knowledge gap by uncovering and analysing internal conflicts of student governments, contributing with new empirical and theoretical insights on students’ institutional behaviour and institutional ambiguity, in the context of authoritarian African states. While internal conflict is expected in any student government, this is anticipated to be even more the case in a conflictual context where there are strong links between students and national authorities. The approach is, in theoretical terms, based on the institutional work perspective and relies on extensive fieldwork at Makerere University. I find that the student government is far more conflictual and heterogenous than previous literature suggests. Rather than comprising representatives who act unitarily, it is characterised by intra-organisational conflicts due to competing institutional work, which reflects representatives’ multiple, diverse and divergent interests and institutional goals.

Disaster, Societal Responses, and State Legitimacy in Crisis in Vietnam

This article examines the role of celebrity activism in post-disaster politics in the context of state authoritarianism in Vietnam. In late 2020, a chain of violent tropical storms hit Vietnam’s central highland region – host to hundreds of hydropower dams – triggering severe landslides and floods that devastated human lives and local livelihoods. Drawing on data gathered through social media, online platforms, and interviews with non-governmental organisations and private sector actors, this article shows how the rupture of these disaster events facilitated socio-political openings in state–society relations that might otherwise have remained closed. It explores these political contestations, attributions of blame, and the competing recovery efforts that emerged between government actors, celebrities, and citizens. Public debates over the natural and political catalysts of the disaster revealed major structural and governance problems for the state, which allowed voluntary charity work by a celebrity to supplement state functions during the disaster. Considered illegal under state law, the article shows how support from the public and lower tiers of government for private charity work challenged state legitimacy. Under pressure from within and from citizens, the central government had to amend its policies to accommodate voluntary disaster relief – to restore its flagging legitimacy.

Endeavor for Self-Realization

This paper focuses on the reactions of three professors and architects (Jan E. Koula, Vladimír Karfík, and Alfred Piffl) to how the totalitarian political regime restricted and interfered with creative and academic freedoms in the period starting with the introduction of architectural education at the Slovak University of Technology and ending with the so-called “normalization” period in the former Czechoslovakia. All three of them were already active in interwar Czechoslovakia and thus had rich experience with working under democratic conditions, and their early work was influenced by the interwar avant-garde movements. After World War II, in part thanks to their pioneering work at the Slovak University of Technology, they got caught up in the system of the authoritarian socialist state. The central question that this study asks is how the trio dealt with the totalitarian regime, which stood in contrast with the democratic period of interwar Czechoslovakia that formed them as architects, and brought further limits to their work. Based mostly on material from their personal estates and period publications, we reveal how each of them found his own way to deal with the totalitarian regime, and we argue that even its limitations did not make Koula, Karfík, and Piffl abandon their beliefs and creative credos completely.

Grey Zone Healers and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chechnya, Russia

The Chechen authorities’ focus upon population health is enacted both through the principles of Islamic medicine and approved biomedical practices. Any healing practices beyond these domains are met with deep suspicion. Practitioners of unofficial complementary and alternative medicine healers may abruptly find themselves regarded as enemies of the state. In light of this precarious circumstance, it becomes pertinent to inquire: How do these healers employ their daily tactics to negotiate the intricate power dynamics between the formidable state apparatus and the established biomedical order? Drawing from our meticulous fieldwork conducted in the year 2021, we investigated the intricate tactics employed by unofficial healers in the Chechen medical landscape during COVID-19. Our research centred on discerning the nuanced tactics aimed at mitigating potential risks. We conclude that healers, having embodied tactics to creatively manoeuvre within the confines of the authoritarian state, perceived the challenges posed by COVID-19 as merely another, often inconsequential, obstacle in their enduring struggle.

Public fear or public sphere? A content analysis of user comments on Egyptian newspaper Facebook pages

This content analysis examined posts and user comments on four of the most followed Egyptian newspaper Facebook pages: Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al-Youm Al-Saba’, Al-Shorouk and Al-Ahram. The purpose of the analysis was to assess the extent to which Egyptians are able to navigate ongoing government authoritarianism to self-express online. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate that Facebook page size appears to be a much more important factor in dictating the conditions of Egyptian news spheres than editorial policies and ownership structures. Overall, this suggests that current authoritarian conditions in Egypt have rendered editorial lines relatively unimportant.

The Use of Data Analytics in Public Administration for Corruption Prevention During Hybrid Warfare

The relevance of the selected theme is stipulated by the destructive effect of corruption on the social structure of society and the weakening of the rule of law. Corruption schemes as an instrument of geopolitics are used as a part of the foreign policy arsenal of authoritarian states such as Russia. Under such circumstances, data analytics provides researchers and public society with a large volume of analytical instruments, enabling comprehensive monitoring of governments. Such monitoring enhances the efficiency of corruption prevention in public administration. The article aims to determine the data analytics method for corruption prevention in public administration during hybrid warfare. Using the methods of content analysis, historical, abstract-logical methods, we found how data analytics can contribute to effective corruption prevention in public administration. Perspective and appropriate methods of data analytics used for corruption prevention in public administration were found. Based on the results of the conducted study, recommendations for improvement of the use of data analytics in public administration for corruption prevention during hybrid warfare were offered. The perspective of further studies includes research on introducing data analytics in the everyday work of particular state institutions.