Autocratic States Research Articles

“Some of Distinction Here Are Warm for the Part of America”: Knowledge of and Sympathy for the American Cause in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1763–1783

Abstract In 1774 the British ambassador in Vienna complained that “every idle fellow talks of America.” By analyzing the quantifiable levels of knowledge about and reception of the American Revolution within Central Europe, this article examines the reasons behind this observation, not just in Vienna but across the Habsburg monarchy. Books, newspapers, diaries, personal correspondence, and theater works are used to demonstrate the fact that subjects in the Habsburg monarchy were not at all ignorant about events in late eighteenth-century North America. Moreover, this article reveals how this knowledge found a sympathetic audience in one of the most autocratic states in Europe.

English

For over two decades now, Sub-Saharan Africa has been superimposed in a coercive and contradictory neo-liberal development economism agenda. According to this paradigm, markets and not states are the fundamental determinants of distributive justice and human flourishing through the promotion of economic growth that is believed to trickle down to the poor in due time. Despite the global intellectual criticism of this neo-liberal development economics orthodox of measuring development and wellbeing in terms of market induced economic growth, autocratic states in Sub-Saharan Africa that have accumulated un-dimensional growth continue to be applauded as role models on poverty reduction, wellbeing and social justice by donors and global development institutions such as the World Bank and international monetary fund (IMF). This is basically because they have wholly embraced the implementation of the anti-pro-poor neo-liberal structural adjustment tool kit. This study uses a critical hermeneutics  methodology to expose the distortions embedded in neo-liberal gross domestic product (GDP) growth cartographies and how these disguise the social injustices against the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa with particular reference to Uganda. The study contends that in measuring development and wellbeing, human rights and social justice must take precedence over economic efficiency and GDP growth for that matter. Key words: Cartographies, Neo-liberal development, social injustices, Sub-Saharan Africa.

Digital media and political opposition in authoritarian systems: Russia’s 2011 and 2016 Duma elections

ABSTRACTThe ability of authoritarian regimes to maintain power hinges, in part, on how well they are able to manipulate the flow of information to the masses. While authoritarian states have had success controlling traditional media, the growth of social media over the last decade has created new challenges for such regimes. The Russian experience offers an example of how an authoritarian regime responds to this potential threat. Because of the massive demonstrations surrounding the 2011–2012 Duma elections, the ruling Russian government suspected that social media provided a significant impetus for the demonstrations. Social media, through its dissemination of opposition blogs, could have helped drive negative attitudes about the governing party. As such, the government responded by employing strategies to tighten their grip on the digital flow of information. We use survey data to demonstrate that exposure to blogs via social media at the time of the demonstrations led many to believe that the elections were fraudulent. Ultimately, we contend that Russian fears concerning the importance of social media for the fomenting of opposition movements is well grounded. Social media can drive support for opposition in an autocratic state.

Active resistance to democratic diffusion

Recent research on the international diffusion of democracy has focused on demonstrating how diffusion can change regime outcomes. Although there is still debate within the field of democratization over how important democratic diffusion is relative to domestic factors, autocratic leaders believe that democratic diffusion can be a threat to their rule. It is clear that some countries, such as North Korea, prevent diffusion by severely restricting interactions with foreigners and forbidding access to external sources of information. The more intriguing question is how the states that have economic, diplomatic, and social linkages with democratic states prevent democratic diffusion. In other words, what methods do globally-engaged, autocratic governments use to limit exposure to and reduce receptivity to democratic diffusion?In addition to using coercion and economic patronage, autocratic states utilize two non-material mechanisms to prevent democratic diffusion: 1) restricting exposure to democratic ideas and 2) developing alternative narratives about democracy to reduce local receptivity to democratic diffusion. Sophisticated autocratic leaders can limit receptivity to democratic diffusion if they convince citizens that those ideas are “foreign,” will cause “chaos,” or if they believe they already have their own form of democracy. I explore these methods of establishing firewalls to prevent diffusion by examining the cases of China and Kazakhstan, two countries where a high level of economic linkage coincides with a successful continuation of autocratic rule, despite the global spread of democratic norms. China has developed extensive methods to restrict access to foreign ideas about democracy while Kazakhstan has mainly focused on developing an alternative narrative about democracy. This article contributes to the literature on authoritarian persistence and democratic diffusion by investigating the internal methods autocratic leaders adopt to ensure that democratic diffusion does not threaten their rule.

Associations and the Development of Civil Society in Tsarist Russia

This article examines the growth of civil society in imperial Russia by focusing on voluntary associations, especially learned societies, closely watched by tsarist officialdom but neglected by historians. Although scholars often emphasize the peculiarities of Russian development, Russia's societies were part of a broader European phenomenon. A study of associations highlights the relationship between state and society in authoritarian regimes where civil society is most vigorously contested. Because authoritarian regimes close the channels of representative politics and make it difficult for their subjects to act freely in concert, associations demonstrate the potential for the self-organization of society. They cultivate the microspaces of initiative and autonomy not completely under state control where the capacity of citizenship can appear. This study conceptualizes the development of Russian civil society and the way in which the disenfranchised could enter public life by using the examples of six Russian learned societies. Owing to the mission of the learned societies, Russian civil society became inextricably linked to patriotism and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Associations raised consciousness, accorded an opportunity for special-interest constituencies of men to enter the public arena, framed policy issues, and mobilized a public in the language of representation. Although civil society and the autocratic state are often described as bitter rivals, cooperation, not confrontation, in the project of national prestige and prosperity was more often the rule. However, an increasing public assertiveness challenged autocratic authority, as Russian officialdom was unwilling to relinquish its tutelary supervision of civil society. Thus, associations became a focal point of a contradictory political culture.

Empire, Spectacle and the Patriot King: British Responses to the Eighteenth-Century Russian Empire

The author uses examples of British travellers’ responses to Russian tsars’ spectacles to argue that the British view of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century fosters a contradiction. Traditionally Russia was depicted as an imperial Other in which British liberty and its attachment to reason is contrasted with Russian servility within the autocratic state and Russian citizens’ irrational attachment to tradition. Yet British writers complicate this depiction with Peter the Great, and later tsars, who are depicted frequently as enlightened reformers. Indeed, British travellers’ depictions of tsars’ spectacles at once foreground the tsar’s enlightened reforms and the tsar’s person, but also are characterized as limiting the spectators’ capacity to reason and to pursue liberty. The author maintains that this contradiction is accommodated in the British thought by Bolingbroke’s notion of a reform-minded patriot king and Russia’s often-portrayed middle position between East and West.

THE INSTITUTIONAL RESILIENCE OF RUSSIAN LAW THROUGH 1905–1917 REVOLUTIONS

The article aims to describe the dynamics and characteristics of Russian law throughout 1905–1917 Revolutions. It considers how Russian law survived through the gradual breakdown of the autocratic state. The resilience studies’ approach is introduced to the study of the continuity of the Russian legal tradition. A fresh outlook of the resilience framework allows to answer the main research questions: how did the legal system of the Russian empire lose its equilibrium in the beginning of the 20th century and what resources were exploited in order to make Russian law work for the Soviet state and people?

Navalny’s Gamesters: Protest, Opposition Innovation, and Authoritarian Stability in Russia

This paper explores the legacy of the For Fair Elections (ffe) protest movement in 2011–2012 for electoral competition in Russia. We argue that through strategic innovation, oppositions in authoritarian countries can challenge the autocratic state on multiple fronts by transferring resources from street protests to the electoral arena. Our empirical focus is on Alexei Navalny’s campaign for Moscow mayor in late summer 2013. The successful mass mobilization in the movement enabled the campaign to implement a model of electoral innovation based on ideational frames, resources, and tactics drawn from the protest movement. Voter response was stronger than expected, demonstrating the persistence of voter opposition in the face of genuine electoral choice. Relying on press reports, blogs, campaign materials and interviews with activists, we investigate the campaign’s strategy and show why it presented a particular challenge to the regime. Our conclusion underscores the state’s advantage in countering elite opposition innovation, but also highlights how effective opposition innovation can lead to significant changes in strategies to maintain regime stability.

Democratic centre, autocratic isolates: the changing field of international visa policies

ABSTRACTIn the international field of visa policies, states observe how other states act in terms of global mobility control or the facilitation of wanted cross-border mobility. But towards whom do they orient themselves? And what drives nation states to cooperate with others and grant their citizens visa-free travel or not? To tackle these questions, we conceptualise visa waiver agreements as positive relations between two states. A new data collection ‘Visa Network Data’ (1969/2010) provides information on all visa waiver agreements worldwide. By means of social network analysis (blockmodelling), we analyse the global structure of the network of nations in this policy field as well as its change over time. In the centre of the network we find evidence for the existence of a global model at which many others orient themselves. However, a second distinct position in the network shows a high degree of stability: Autocratic states that do not want to be involved in the exchange of these bilateral relations.

The Politics of Financial Development: A Review of Calomiris and Haber's Fragile by Design

Fragile by Design by Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber introduces a framework for understanding financial crises and credit abundance with politics at its center. Using the historical experiences of five nations to illustrate, the authors propose that democracies such as the United States and Canada can have stable banks and ample credit so long as populist forces do not dominate the policy agenda, and that strong autocratic states such as Mexico can also achieve stability at the cost of restricting credit. Weak autocracies, such as Brazil over much of its history, often require inflationary finance and suffer from the banking fragility that comes with it. The authors identify populist ideologies and related policy decisions (such as unit banking, deposit insurance, and the Community Reinvestment Act) as underlying causes of banking instability in the United States as typified by the recent subprime crisis. Canada, in contrast, by holding populist forces in check through calculated political choices, remains crisis-free. (JEL D72, E44, G01, G21, N20, O16, O17)

Non-State Actors in the Russo-Ukrainian War

IntroductionNon-state actors have played a significant role in creating and influencing the current war in Ukraine. From competing narratives broadcasted by media outlets to misinformation campaigns designed to confuse and cause fear, the media strive to gain the advantage of discourse. Likewise, think tanks and academia influence not only public discourse, but political agendas and, ultimately, policy. Religious groups also take sides either by supporting Ukrainian citizens adversely affected by the conflict or actively participating in promoting a nationalistic narrative with religious and historical themes.1 The Russo-Ukrainian War and illegal occupation of Crimea have created opportunities for organized crime to flourish in the vacuum left by the Ukrainian government's inability to control its sovereign territory. On both sides of the war militias have quickly organized and are often more effective than government forces. Non-governmental and government organized non-governmental organizations (NGOs and GONGOs) play a variety of roles within Ukraine, while also bearing transnational influence. The Ukrainian diaspora continues to provide varied levels of support for their native country. The extent to which non-state actors will have an impact on the outcome of the conflict is yet to be determined; however, non-state actors have and will continue to play a significant role from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to the halls of the US Congress.MediaRussian mass media is controlled by the Kremlin. This is a characteristic of autocratic states that fear counter-narratives to the government's approved messaging. As President Vladimir Putin observed the waves of social unrest over the last decade, from color revolutions to the Arab Spring, he became aware of the power of social media and messaging in the new domain of war - information space. Russia Today (RT) and Channel One are two of the largest stateowned television networks that broadcast pro-Russian multilingual programming worldwide. Russia has transformed a traditional non-state actor into an instrument of the state to shape domestic and foreign opinion and silence the opposition.The use of media to demoralize, confuse and delay opponents was most notably seen after the downing of flight MH17. Western media networks asserted, based on initial evidence, that Russian troops or Russian-backed separatists were responsible. Russian mass media quickly put into question initial claims by accusing Ukrainian troops or NATO forces of the act. This use of disinformation created conspiracy theories that diminished the truth.2RT was established in 2005 to familiarize the world with the Russian viewpoint. In 2015, the network enjoyed a budget of $275 million provided by the Russian government. Notwithstanding its massive budget, RT has not been as effective as Russia had hoped, and is now considered a laughable source of information.3 In fact, in March 2014 news anchor Liz Whal resigned on air in opposition to the whitewashing of events by the Russian government, stating that it was against her morals and ethics as a journalist to continue working at RT.4 The network continues to provide extensive coverage of the situation in Ukraine and greatly influences opinions of Russians and Ukrainians, especially in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, where Russia censors any pro-Western media.Ukraine, along with the West, is struggling to find an appropriate response to Russia's advantage in the information space. However, despite spending billions of dollars on propaganda campaigns, Russian media are losing credibility, and the international community has a lower perception of Russia than before Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. Unified Western action in Ukraine has been slow much to the delight of Russian authorities, but any good will toward Russia that existed prior to 2013 has been lost. A Pew research poll conducted in April and May 2015 found that of the eight NATO counties surveyed, only 26 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Russia. …

Selectorate theory and the democratic peacekeeping hypothesis: evidence from Fiji and Bangladesh

ABSTRACTUN peacekeeping has undergone two major shifts since the end of the cold war. The first is a move away from limited efforts to maintain peace in post-conflict environments towards more robust efforts at peace enforcement. Second, the composition of peacekeepers has changed. In 1990, the leading contributors of personnel to UN peacekeeping missions were notable supporters of multilateral cooperation and other liberal-democratic norms with extensive peacekeeping experience. As of 2012, however, the top contributors to UN peacekeeping missions had changed dramatically: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Nigeria have replaced traditional peacekeepers Canada, Finland, Austria and Norway. While liberal-democratic nations continue to bear most of the costs, they have all but disappeared on the ground, leading to a precipitous decline in the quality of peacekeeping. The consequences of the latter shift are the subject of considerable debate. Some argue that peacekeeping facilitates the transmission of democratic norms and institutions to sending states. Others increasingly argue that the so-called ‘democratic peacekeeping’ hypothesis is a ‘myth’. We go further, suggesting that autocratic states may take on peacekeeping duties as a way of maintaining costly security apparatuses for the purposes of domestic repression. Peacekeeping – a feature of liberal post-cold war global governance – risks becoming a means to facilitate illiberal domestic governance in the developing world. We demonstrate this in two tentative but cautionary cases: Fiji and Bangladesh.

An ‘Authoritarian Nexus’? China’s Alleged Special Relationship with Autocratic States in Latin America

China’s rise is often interpreted as a harbinger of a new era in world politics and raises the question if such a power transition may impact upon patterns of democratic rule across the globe. There is growing interest in whether China acts as an outside stabilizer for other authoritarian regimes. This paper contributes to the emerging literature on the international dimension of autocratic rule by focusing on Chinese Latin American policy. Using the method of structured focused comparisons, we want to assess whether China’s relations towards the Latin American autocracies Cuba and Venezuela differ from those with structurally similar, but democratic cooperation partners in the region, namely Costa Rica and Chile. The guiding question is whether we can detect such a pattern of specific bilateral relationships between China and other autocracies, leading to an ‘authoritarian nexus’ in Chinese foreign policy. Resumen: ?Un ‘nexo autoritario’? Supuesta relacion especial de China con Estados autocraticos de America Latina El ascenso de China se suele interpretar como un presagio de una nueva era en la politica mundial y plantea la cuestion de si dicha transicion de poder podria repercutir en los patrones de la democracia en el mundo entero. La cuestion de si China actua como estabilizador externo para otros regimenes autoritarios suscita cada vez mas interes. Este articulo es una contribucion a la bibliografia emergente sobre la dimension internacional de los sistemas autocraticos enfocandose en la politica chino-latinoamericana. Mediante el metodo de las comparaciones estructuradas y focalizadas, queremos evaluar si las relaciones de China con las autocracias latinoamericanas de Cuba y Venezuela difieren de las relaciones con otros aliados estructuralmente similares, pero democraticos en la region, como Costa Rica y Chile. La pregunta clave es si podemos detectar este patron de relaciones bilaterales especificas entre China y otras autocracias, un patron que desemboque en un ‘nexo autoritario’ en la politica exterior china.

The conditioning effect of protest history on the emulation of nonviolent conflict

Violent domestic conflicts spread between countries via spillover effects and the desire to emulate events abroad. Herein, we extend this emulation logic to the potential for the contagion of nonviolent conflicts. The spread of predominantly nonviolent pro-democracy mobilizations across the globe in the mid-to-late 1980s, the wave of protests in former Soviet states during the Color revolutions in the 2000s, and the eruption of nonviolent movements across the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s each suggest that the observation of collective action abroad encourages a desire to emulate among potential challengers to domestic autocrats. However, the need to emulate varies. Potential challengers with a recent history of protest at home are less dependent (than are those without similar experience) upon foreign exemplars to mobilize the participants and generate the resources required to make emulation practicable. By contrast, where the domestic experience of protest is absent, opposition movements are more reliant upon emulation of foreign exemplars. We test the implications of this logic using a series of multivariate logistic regression analyses. Our tests employ data on nonviolent civil resistance mobilizations that occurred across the global population of autocratic states between 1946 and 2006. These tests, along with post-estimation analysis, provide evidence consistent with our conditional logic of emulation.

Authoritarianism Goes Global: Election Monitoring Vs. Disinformation

Abstract: This article confronts the battle for control of the electoral narrative in autocratic states. Autocrats subvert popular will by denying political rights and covering up their transgressions by negating transparency and sowing confusion with disinformation from state media, governmentsponsored groups, and favorable international voices. Credible citizen election monitors and international observers are organizing around ethical principles and effective methodologies to ensure they accurately characterize elections and counter disinformation with impartial analysis. Advancing democratic norms for open electoral data, exercise of political rights and solidarity for these human rights defenders will help tip the scales in favor of credible elections.

The Authoritarian Resurgence: Saudi Arabia’s Anxious Autocrats

Abstract: Since the 2011 Arab uprisings, Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been nonideological, realist, and defensive in intent, but negative in its implications for democracy. To contain Iran, quarantine the Muslim Brotherhood, and combat jihadism, Riyadh has backed local actors that are mostly authoritarian and antiliberal—and the net effect has been damaging for political pluralism and civil society. While the succession to King Salman has produced a more temperate approach to the Brotherhood, such shifts are ultimately tactical. At its core the Kingdom remains an autocratic state wedded to monarchical privilege at home and bent on enforcing political quietism abroad.

Conventional Wisdom and the Next Unknown

Conventional Wisdom and the Next Unknown

Regime type and international commercial agreements

AbstractPreferential trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties limit member‐states’ policy discretion; consequently policy uncertainty is mitigated. Reductions in policy uncertainty stemming from accession to an international agreement improve the resource allocation decisions of voters and reduce deadweight losses from the need to self‐insure against policy uncertainty. If electoral accountability makes expropriation of assets or discriminatory treatment of firms more costly to leaders (whereas electoral accountability has little effect on rent creation via tariff revenues) then among developing countries, democratic states sign preferential trade agreements relatively more frequently than autocratic states; however, autocratic states are more likely to sign bilateral investment treaties than are democratic states. We offer a simple model, and present some empirical regularities consistent with the theory.

Unpacking Territorial Disputes

What distinguishes the militarized territorial disputes that escalate to war from those that do not? Although research has clearly established that territorial conflicts are especially war-prone, the understanding as to why this is the case is less developed when compared to domestic factors such as joint democracy. We explain that territorial conflicts are especially war-prone when democratic and autocratic states are engaged in conflict against one another. Because of domestic concerns, democracies and autocracies value territory differently, generating a smaller bargaining space. Democracies will tend to be more resistant to settlement when territory is of a “public,” symbolic, or intangible value. Autocracies, on the other hand, are more likely to value the tangible qualities of territory, such as its resource value. This disparity in territorial goals makes mixed regime dyads more war-prone when territory is disputed. We further believe that the smaller the winning coalition in autocracies, the more war-prone they are against democracies. We test these propositions among all dyads as well as interstate rivals and find support for our theoretical framework.

External Influence and Democratization: The Revenge of Geopolitics

Abstract: Discussion of democracy promotion is usually isolated from that of geopolitics. It is seen as an affair between democratic countries on the one hand and governments or civil societies of autocratic and semi-autocratic states on the other. The recent crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated the inseparability of democracy promotion and power politics, especially in faultline regions where democratic and autocratic states and political cultures compete for influence. While a political choice in favor of democratic world and organizations like the European Union does not guarantee democratic consolidation, it positively correlates with the level of political freedom within a given country.