Authoritarian Legacies Research Articles

Don't Call It a Comeback: Autocratic Ruling Parties After Democratization

AbstractWhen autocratic ruling parties accede to democratization, they do not always fade away into history. Following forty-one transitions since 1940, including those in Mexico, Taiwan, Bulgaria and Ghana, the ruling party survived and won power after democratization. Why do some former autocratic parties prosper under democracy while others quickly dissolve? What effect does this have on democratic survival? This article uses original data to predict the post-transition fates of eighty-four autocratic ruling parties through 2015. Whereas extant theories emphasize radical reinvention and outsider struggle, the author argues that success is instead about maintaining ruling-party advantages into the democratic period. Parties succeed when they have authoritarian legacies that easily translate to democratic competition, such as broad programmatic experience, strong organization and policy success. In addition, democratic institutions that disadvantage new parties and actors benefit autocratic parties. Lastly, an instrumental variables design shows that autocratic party success negatively impacts democratic survival and quality.

After competitive authoritarianism hybrid regime legacies and the quality of democracy in Croatia

ABSTRACTThe impact of ‘authoritarian legacies’ on successor democracies has been widely researched with reference to every type of non-democratic regime. However, scant attention has been devoted to hybrid regimes legacies, despite the growing relevance acquired by these regimes in the last decades. This paper deals with the legacies of Levitsky and Way’s Competitive Authoritarian model, evaluating their impact on successor democracies through an analysis of the Croatian case. The research shows that the legacies of the Tuđman’s regime significantly affected the Quality of Democracy in Croatia. The innovative capacity of the former regime and the continuous nature of the transition explain this relevant impact, only partially moderated by the influence of important international actors (EU).

Reproducing Academic Insularity in a Time of Neo-liberal Markets: The Case of Social Science Research in Indonesian State Universities

ABSTRACT This article reflects on neo-liberal reform of Indonesia’s state universities, using Michael Burawoy’s approach to the division of sociological labour in particular and social science in general. It examines the relationship between neo-liberal market imperatives and authoritarian bureaucratic legacies that not only curtail the development of theoretically engaged and socially relevant scholarship but also shape knowledge production through the marketisation of technocratic research. This article shows how, counter-intuitively, the rise of managerial power linked with neo-liberal policies has prolonged the mechanics of bureaucratic administration that Indonesian state universities inherited from the authoritarian New Order regime. This has resulted in a condition where insular academic practices perpetuate technocratic social science research driven by market mechanisms. The article argues that acknowledging the unequal status accorded to instrumental as opposed to reflexive knowledge production is crucial to understand the failures of neo-liberal reform in post-authoritarian Indonesia state universities. It concludes that a thorough reconsideration of the institutional settings that have systematically constrained critical and professional social science in Indonesia is necessary before any attempts at structural changes that enable the sort of deep engagement with the public that Burawoy envisages for a critical social science.

The Ideological Shadow of Authoritarianism

How do the labels left and right take on meaning in new democracies? Existing explanations point to the universality of the left–right scheme or, reversely, emphasize regionally dominant social cleavages. We propose an alternative legacy-focused theory based on two observations: Dictatorships are not ideologically neutral and are negatively evaluated by most citizens and elites after democratization. These premises lead us to expect that when the authoritarian regime is associated with the left (right), the citizens of a new democracy will display an antileft (antiright) bias in their left–right self-identification. We test this hypothesis across Latin American and European new democracies. We find significant bias, which in the case of new democracies following left-wing regimes is concealed due to intercohort heterogeneity. Although older cohorts denote a positive bias, cohorts born after Stalin’s era denote negative bias against the left. Consistent with our expectations, repression exacerbates this bias whereas indoctrination mitigates it. Finally, we look at how these biases apply to party preferences. The findings have important implications for understanding authoritarian legacies and party system development in new democracies.

Security sector reform in transitions from military rule: Legacies of authoritarianism in Brazil

According to the international legal system, countries in transition from authoritarian rule have the duty to provide truth, justice and reparations, and to prevent the recurrence of systematic human rights violations. Security sector reforms are a key preventive mechanism, and this article analyzes the impact of these reforms on the recurrence of torture, killings, and disappearances. As there are many types of reforms in the security sector, the main research question is: which reforms, or combination of reforms, are effective in preventing the recurrence of human rights violations? Brazil experienced a brutal military regime between 1964 and 1985, when security forces were involved in systematic human rights violations. A case study of the Brazilian transition from military authoritarian rule was conducted and the findings suggest that the involvement of armed forces in domestic issues, weak civilian authority, overlapping jurisdiction, and blurred lines of command within the security forces have a negative impact on the outcome of interest. Finally, contributions were made to scholarly debates concerning transitional justice, human rights, and institutional change

Saving face in diplomacy: A political sociology of face-to-face interactions in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Face-saving is a ubiquitous yet under-theorized phenomenon in International Relations. Prevailing accounts refer to face-saving as a shorthand for status and reputation, as a “cultural” trait found outside Euro-American societies, and as a technique for defusing militarized inter-state crisis, without, however, an explanation of its source and repertoire. In this article, I argue that it is possible to recover face-saving from cultural essentialism, and that face-saving practices geared to avoid embarrassment are micro-level mechanisms that produce international institutions like diplomacy. Drawing on the work of sociologists Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieu, I propose a theory of face-saving that accounts for its source, effects, and variation. I evaluate this theory with a study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a diplomacy that has long espoused a discourse of “saving face” couched in Asian cultural exceptionalism. I combine a political sociology of ASEAN’s ruling regimes with an ethnography of its diplomats based on 13 consecutive months of fieldwork in Jakarta, Indonesia, to substantiate this wider theoretical argument. I demonstrate that, first, ASEAN’s face-saving practices are rooted in the legacies of authoritarianism rather than essentialist “culture,” and, second, that face-saving practices enable performances of sovereign equality, diplomatic kinship, and conflict avoidance among ASEAN’s diplomats. This article grants a distinct conceptual space to face-saving in International Relations, contributes to international practice theory by situating practices in the context of state–society relations, and offers a novel interpretation of what the “ASEAN Way” of doing diplomacy looks like in practice.

A ditadura e os rastros da repressão no sudeste paraense: desvelando memórias sobre a Casa Azul

Entre 1972 e 1974, o sudeste do Pará, assim como parte do Maranhão e do norte do atual Tocantins, foi palco da Guerrilha do Araguaia, conflito que marcou não somente a história recente do Brasil, como deixou diversas heranças para a região onde ocorrera, incluindo-se um legado autoritário marcado pela repressão a movimentos sociais voltados para a luta pela terra no contexto da redemocratização. Em Marabá, maior município da mesorregião, fora montado durante a Guerrilha estrutura que visava combater os militantes do PCdoB em atuação na região, consistindo na formação de quartéis, bem como no uso de outros órgãos públicos no suporte as ações do Centro de Inteligência do Exército (CIE). Um desses órgãos fora o então denominado Departamento Nacional de Estradas de Rodagem (DNER), cuja sede fora apontada por camponeses e ex-soldados que por ali passaram como um centro de prisão clandestino, onde teriam ocorridos graves violações dos direitos humanos, que teriam atingido guerrilheiros e camponeses da região. Há relatos que apontam que alguns dos desaparecidos políticos no contexto da Guerrilha foram aprisionados, torturados, mortos ou vistos pela última vez no local, chamado à época de Casa Azul. Após o fim dos conflitos, o local teria sido envolvido na Operação Limpeza, como é descrita a ação onde se efetivou o apagamento dos rastros sobre as violações perpetradas durante a Guerrilha por parte de agentes das Forças Armadas. O artigo se propõe a contextualizar o processo de desvelamento de memórias sobre o local, à revelia das estratégias de silenciamento que foram criadas pelos agentes da Ditadura em relação às violações ocorridas na Guerrilha do Araguaia; objetiva, através dos rastros deixados sobre a Casa Azul, colaborar para maior compreensão sobre um dos espaços mais marcantes no que concerne as estratégias repressivas adotadas durante o regime militar no Brasil.

The Making of Democratic Citizens: How Regime‐Specific Socialization Shapes Europeans’ Expectations of Democracy

AbstractWhen analysing support for democracy, researchers tend to assume that ‘democracy’ is a concept that travels across countries. This paper argues that democracy is not the same thing for every citizen, because collective and individual socialization experiences strongly shape the criteria citizens expect a democracy to fulfil. Based on the literature on varieties of democracy, I suppose that individual expectations of democracy are influenced by regime‐specific socialization, and depend on the democratic history, authoritarian legacies, and the prevalent democratic model. Due to socialization and democratic learning, individuals acquire democratic preferences and value those dimensions more which they experience in their own democracy. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Democracy Barometer, I test how the national democratic context in 26 European democracies influences these individual democratic ideals. I find evidence for both socialization and participation effects of the democratic context on citizens’ democratic expectations.

Recente ditadura brasileira e a verdade histórica

Adotando como eixo estrutural a filosofia política contemporânea e as disputas políticas por memória, verdade e justiça acerca da recente ditadura brasileira, propomo-nos pensar as ações da atual democracia em meio ao legado autoritário e aos processos de subjetivação do presente. Iniciamos discorrendo acerca do conceito de justiça de transição. No decorrer da argumentação, sem desconsiderar as ações de resistência ao instituído e os modos de agir da coletividade, mas com foco no aparelho de Estado, pretendemos demonstrar que seus sistemas de representação jurídico-institucionais fazem parte de tecnologias governamentais móveis de poder do contemporâneo e têm modelado, ao menos em parte, a subjetividade dos múltiplos sujeitos sociais, seus modos de ser e agir. Pensamos as Comissões da Verdade brasileiras como significantes que, embora não nos libertem das amarras da representação, reverberam nos atuais processos de subjetivação, trazendo a possibilidade de alterarmos os mecanismos de dominação da atualidade, dentre os quais se situa a democracia representativa. 

Incumbent bureaucrats: Why elections undermine civil service reform in Indonesia

SummaryThis article develops an explanation for why democratisation processes sometimes fail to foster effective civil service reform. Using ethnographic fieldwork on the evolving relationship between civil servants and politicians in Lampung, a rural backwater in the southern tip in Sumatra, this paper attributes the ineffectiveness of bureaucratic reform measures in Indonesia to the way in which elections trigger competition over control over state resources. I argue that a merit‐based bureaucracy is particularly difficult to institute when a local bureaucracy enjoys strong discretionary control over the distribution of state resources. During Suharto's authoritarian regime, this control rested largely in the hands of bureaucrats. This authoritarian legacy generates strong incentives for politicians to prefer loyal bureaucrats over capable ones. Politicians need to use bureaucratic appointments as a means to obtain campaign support and to develop control over state resources. In developing these arguments, this paper offers an approach to incorporate informal and clientelistic dimensions of politics more explicitly into analyses of processes of bureaucratic reform.

Populism in Power: Between Inclusion and Autocracy

Abstract The Latin American historical experience with populist regimes as well as the theoretical reflections produced by Latin Americanists are particularly relevant not just for determining the nature of a very contested political concept but also for understanding the logic of populism in government and the threats it poses to liberal democratic regimes. Populism in government or the attempt at stabilizing a populist regime is no novelty for Latin America, a continent where populism has been a constant presence in politics since the 1930s. Along with their inclusionary impulse, those experiences left a long-lasting troublesome institutional and cultural legacy of political polarization, weak institutions, and recurrent authoritarianism. Populism made a comeback in several countries during the novel democratic period, largely due to the severe crisis that many of the democratic regimes encountered. Inspired by radical democratic ideals, contemporary populism actively engaged in a politics of regime transformation.

Marielle, Presente!

Marielle, Presente!

Authoritarian Legacies and Higher Education in Uruguay

Authoritarian Legacies and Higher Education in Uruguay

Low‐trust bureaucracy: Understanding the Mexican bureaucratic experience

SummaryLatin American bureaucracies are notorious for their inefficiency and opacity, yet there is very little empirical research done on what exactly constitutes the “bureaucratic experience” for citizens and what the costs of bureaucratic dysfunction are. To improve our understanding of this topic, 5 cases of Mexican citizens' encounters with public bureaucracies are used to develop the notion of “low‐trust bureaucracy”: public organisations in which access to services is unreliable and the levels of control towards both citizens and bureaucrats are excessive. This bottom‐up analysis of administrative practices contributes to our understanding of the ineffectiveness of government programmes and services, but also of how bureaucracies in developing countries amplify social inequality rather than function as a social equaliser. Furthermore, this article adds new insights to the existing understanding of administrative burdens as a result of either political tactics or mere benign neglect. The data presented here suggest that structural and intractable characteristics of the broader administrative context, such as authoritarian legacies, can produce behavioural patterns that shift bureaucratic attention away from a fair and efficient service provision.

Candlelight Protests in South Korea:The Legacies of Authoritarianism and Democratization

The recent candlelight protests in the fall and winter of 2016 and 2017 marked a critical moment in the maturation of South Korean democracy. Through complex connections between contributing actors involving the protesting public, the National Assembly, and the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea, President Park Geun-hye became the first South Korea president to be impeached through democratic procedures. While acknowledging the significant differences that distinguish this most recent protest wave with contentious politics of the past, this article highlights the foundational legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian history. In addition, I reflect on how the contemporary candlelight protest industry draws on organizational and cultural resources first established in past democracy movements. In short, the political contest that brought down Park Geun-hye in 2016-2017 was in some tangible and intangible ways a reenactment of the authoritarian and democratization legacies that dominated much of South Korea’s modern history.

Abandoned at Sea: The Tribunal Ruling and Indonesia's Missing Archipelagic Foreign Policy

Indonesia's response to the 2016 UNCLOS tribunal ruling was underwhelming, even as a nonclaimant in the South China Sea disputes. Given its maritime geography and interests, the response is symptomatic of the country's underdevelopment of an “archipelagic foreign policy”—one where the entire foreign policy system, from its bureaucracy, doctrine, and strategy, should be geared to secure and defend its external maritime interests. This article further argues that the authoritarian New Order regime (1966–1998) repressed the development of an archipelagic foreign policy in two ways: (1) the army‐dominated foreign policy establishment deprioritized external maritime interests and (2) the infusion of the National Resilience (Ketahanan Nasional) concept into the “Archipelagic Outlook” (Wawasan Nusantara) doctrine as a regime maintenance tool further “domesticated” what could have been a geopolitical outlook. These authoritarian legacies put Indonesia's foreign policy on a path‐dependent trajectory that even President Joko Widodo's Global Maritime Fulcrum could not break.

Socialization and Political Regimes: the Impact of Generation on Support for Democracy in Latin America

Studies on democratic attitudes in Latin America indicate that older citizens are more likely to express a preference for democracy. This contradicts part of the literature, which suggests that the greatest support should come from younger generations, who were socialized under democratic regimes. One possible explanation for the greater support for democracy among the older generation is that they experienced the repression of political and civil rights under authoritarian rule, thus creating an aversion to such regimes. In this article, we replicate tests conducted by other studies in evaluating the effect of generation on support for democracy, using data from the 2012 Americas Barometer. In addition, we add a new factor to the analysis: the country's authoritarian legacy, measured as to the duration and intensity with which individual and political rights were curtailed in the past. The results show a complex picture. First, they confirm that the generations that have lived under authoritarian regimes are more likely to support democracy. However, we find no evidence of an increase in the difference in support between generations in countries where the authoritarian legacy is stronger. Finally, the data indicate that countries with stronger authoritarian legacies exhibit less support for democracy, while stronger democratic legacies have the opposite effect.

"Legitimacy, Performance, and China's Democratic Future—Navigating between Prudential Pragmatism and Moral Idealism"

"Legitimacy, Performance, and China's Democratic Future—Navigating between Prudential Pragmatism and Moral Idealism" Gang Lin (bio) Jiwei Ci, Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2019. x, 420 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 978-0674-23818-3. During the third wave of democratization, liberal democracy gained popularity in the world. In the past decade, however, it lost momentum, leading to an arguable view of worldwide democracy decline.1 In the case of China, the quest for democracy started well before the third wave, when the first republic in Asia appeared in 1911, although the early rehearsals of representative democracy in that country were unsuccessful. What China has practiced since 1949 is socialist democracy informed by Karl Marx's communist thought but constrained by social and economic underdevelopment and an inexorable legacy of authoritarianism cohabitated uncomfortably with partial and periodical egalitarianism. The Chinese Formula (zhongguo fang'an, in the words of Xi Jinping) of democracy featured by Leninist democratic centralism and one-party leadership is at odds with universally accepted definition of democracy contributed unilaterally by Western democratic societies, where the mainstream views disregard China as a democracy, simply relegating to lip service that country's official upgrading of democracy, freedom, equality, justice, and the rule according to law as part of socialist Core Value (hexin jiazhi). The subject of Jiwei Ci's book—democracy in China—is explored with such arguable conventional wisdom. The coming crisis as the subtitle actually refers to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), rather than democratic fortune in China. Actually, the main theme of the book is why China needs a democratic change and how China can overcome the related challenges with appropriate responses. This volume demonstrates its strength in theoretic/philosophical discourse and logical reasoning, free from empirical hypothesis and verification relying on quantitative analysis. From a prudential perspective, Ci makes a strong argument in the Introduction that China is in an urgency to bring about a democratic regime complementary to its democratic society. While people may disagree on such asynchronism in China's political and social developments, Ci believes China [End Page 177] has developed a substantial degree of democracy in society based on "equality of condition," a concept used by Tocqueville in his pathbreaking book Democracy in America.2 From this viewpoint, political democratization in China is justified not so much by moral desirability as by prudential necessity for reason of institutional fittingness and governability on the part of regime. This does not suggest that the author has no normative inclination on this value-laden subject. As Ci contends at the very beginning, one extraordinary challenge to liberal democracy is its "oligarchic capture" manifested by growing "polarizing effects of globalization and digital technology" in the United States and, to a lesser degree, other advanced European countries (p. 2). However, liberal democracy, despite its drawbacks, is still better than other choices for China. This does not suggest China can easily approach such a desirable—however modest—and necessary goal. Four daunting challenges to China's democratization are presented thereafter: (1) the inexorable role of the ruling CCP, (2) the absence of a basic level of individual and societal moral maturity, (3) the weakening of the party's centripetal capacity of holding a vast country full with ethnic diversity but lacking democratic tradition, and (4) a lack of preexisted institutions to balance democracy against capitalism as well as neoliberalism. According to Ci, these daunting challenges require prudent responses. This book is divided into three parts. The first part (chapters 1 and 2) argues that a looming legitimation crisis calls for an urgent and prudent response. Legitimation crisis is a hot issue in the field of China studies after Mao, as by-products of reform and openness, economic inequality, social polarization, and official corruption have agitated a new legitimation crisis in China. In response to the wave of global democratization, the CCP has tried to "keep pace with the times" and perpetuate its lifespan by transforming itself from a revolutionary ruling party into a "developmental ruling party"—regaining its ruling legitimacy by building a relatively prosperous society and rejuvenating the Chinese nation. In other words, the ruling...

Authoritarian Legacies in Guatemala's Democracy Environmental rights defenders: the new threat to national security?

Authoritarian Legacies in Guatemala's Democracy Environmental rights defenders: the new threat to national security?

Explaining right‐wing terrorism and violence in Western Europe: Grievances, opportunities and polarisation

AbstractWhat explains cross‐national variation of right‐wing terrorism and violence (RTV)? This question remains largely unanswered in existing research on the extreme right because (1) events data suitable for cross‐national comparisons have been lacking, and (2) existing analyses fail to capture RTV's causal complexity, which involve multiple causal paths (equifinality) comprising causal conditions that become sufficient for the outcome only in combination (conjunctural causation). To help fill these gaps, this article uses new events data in a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) research design, aiming to explain variation in the extent of RTV in 18 West European countries between 1990 and 2015. In doing so, the article identifies two ‘causal recipes’ that consistently distinguish countries with extensive RTV experience from those with low or moderate RTV experience. The first (North European) recipe involves the combination of high immigration, low electoral support for anti‐immigration (radical right) parties, and extensive public repression of radical right actors and opinions. The second (South European) recipe involves the combination of socioeconomic hardship, authoritarian legacies, and extensive left‐wing terrorism and militancy. Notably, both recipes contain elements of ‘grievances’ and ‘opportunities’, suggesting that these two theories, which are conventionally seen as contrasting, may be more fruitfully seen as complementary. Furthermore, a highly polarised conflict between far right activists and their enemies represents a third necessary condition for extensive RTV to occur. The article concludes by highlighting the paradox that countermeasures intended to constrain radical right politics appear to fuel extreme right violence, while countermeasures that may constrain extreme right violence would imply an advancement of radical right politics.