Non-democratic Regimes Research Articles

Importance of reasoning in the financing of churches from public funds or the case of the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship with the legislator (2011-2019)

The following analysis is about a unique, out-dragged, henceforth unsolved legal bargaining between small churches and the parliament in Hungary. Is the majority principle based on firm enough grounds so that to differentiate among religions? Why should the ruling majority be required to take into consideration religious groups that are marginal, or that they dislike, on an equality basis while distributing public funds? This paper suggests that the conceptual critique of the new deliberately differentiating, illiberal Church law of 2011 is that it allows unhinged exclusive and arbitrary decision-making for the legislation. Although majority principle should be the essence of democracy, its unconstrained version creates such anomalies in the democratic institutions which could well be survived but would alter the system into a non-democratic regime. First generation fundamental rights are therefore to be protected not by the democratic institutions even in a democracy but by the rule of law (liberalism).

Leader Turnover, Regime Type, and Growth Volatility

AbstractHow do leaders influence national-level economic outcomes? We address this question by considering how leadership turnover influences volatility in economic growth. In doing so, we theorize that leaders from mixed regimes will reduce economic volatility due to domestic political incentives to create stable economic outcomes. Furthermore, we decompose the influence of leaders in non-democratic regimes and argue that leaders in party-based authoritarian regimes will also reduce economic volatility. To test our hypotheses, we focus on the effect of leadership turnover due to natural leader death to control for issues of endogeneity. We find that leaders in mixed regimes reduce volatility more than leaders in autocratic and democratic regimes and that leaders in party-based authoritarian regimes reduce volatility more than those in military or monarchy-based regimes. We conclude by explaining the implications of our findings for the study of leaders in international politics and their impact on economic growth and development.

The nonlinear relationship between political trust and nonelectoral political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes

AbstractObjectiveCitizens use nonelectoral means of political participation along with electoral ones. However, we expect that engaging in nonelectoral political participation (NEPP) is quite dependent on the legitimacy of the state and its institutions, as well as the regime type. This article explores the relationship between NEPP and political trust (PT), which can indicate the legitimacy of such institutions.MethodWe utilize the seventh wave of World Values Survey to test such relationships in countries classified as democratic and nondemocratic following the Freedom in the World Index. We hypothesize that in democratic countries there is an inverted U‐shaped curvilinear relationship between PT and NEPP. We also hypothesize that there would be a negative relationship between PT and NEPP in nondemocratic countries.ResultThe analysis of the data confirms the first hypothesis, which is our main contribution. We also found that the negative relationship in the second hypothesis exists and is linear.ConclusionsThe findings indicate that respondents in each set of countries interpret trust and participation differently. In democracies, citizens engage in NEPP when they have a medium level of trust in political institutions, and in other regimes, citizens take that risk only when their mistrust of the institutions of the regime falls below a certain level.

#MahsaAmini: Iranian Twitter Activism in Times of Computational Propaganda

ABSTRACT This paper discusses 1) how #MahsaAmini has become a significant hybrid movement in Iran and 2) how it is taking Twitter activism into the post-fake news era. I will begin by reviewing the existing literature on Twitter and democracy. Then, I will discuss the roots of the #MahsaAmini, which make it a hybrid movement. Further, I will show how Iranians have circumvented the regime’s fake news campaigns and cyber army. This paper argues that while non-democratic regimes have developed more complex methods of suppressing digital protests, these efforts are ineffective in large-scale protests.

Vision Documents, Nation Branding and the Legitimation of Non-democratic Regimes

ABSTRACT Documents play a vital role in constructing political regimes and their geopolitical relations. In this article, we analyse a particular type of document – the 21st century national vision – and examine its political work. Often glossy (digital) documents featuring simple slogans, fantastic plans, and claims to global relevance and prestige, national visions make specific futures present and close off room for alternative interpretations. Combining work in critical geopolitics with research on nation branding and authoritarian legitimation, we argue that national vision documents are productive – rather than merely reflective – of geopolitical scripts and the future they make possible. Analysing this practice in three image-savvy non-democratic regimes – Kazakhstan, Qatar and Thailand – we show how such scripts are simplified in national vision documents and displace the complexity of the spaces they claim to represent. The oversimplified abstractions they present then resonate widely in national and public discourse, where they obscure struggles over national identity, directions of economic development, and the nature of political orders. Rather than superficial branding documents, national visions are key documents for the making of authoritarian regime legitimation claims today.

Analysis of Power Interventions into Public Space as a Tool for Research into Cities in Non-Democratic Regimes (Sociological-Historical Approach)

According to the prominent sociologist Henri Lefebvre, space is an instrument of power. Every state regime strives to use space for social control through various interventions. While in democratic regimes the use of public space is the result of by majority-accepted interventions, in non-democratic regimes these are power interventions usually based on ideological starting points, not generally accepted by society. On the contrary, interventions into public space are becoming one of the tools for implementing state ideology into the consciousness of society. In their research on public space, German sociologists Walter Siebel and Jan Wehrheim defi ned its four basic dimensions – legal, functional, social and material-symbolic. Interdisciplinary sociological-historical research of interventions into each of these dimensions seems to be a suitable analytical tool in understanding the relationship between public space and the state regime, the conclusions of which allow a detailed understanding of the nature of individual non-democratic (authoritarian or totalitarian) regimes typical for twentiethcentury Europe, as well as transnational ideological connections. In the article we introduce our interdisciplinary socio-historical approach on the example of the authoritarian para-fascist regime of the Slovak state (1939–1945).

MILITARY-TECHNICAL COOPERATION AS A TOOL OF CHINA'S FOREIGN POLICY

Background. From the moment of its proclamation, the People's Republic of China sought to modernize the armed forces – the People's Liberation Army. The lack of a military-industrial complex was a significant problem, which the Chinese communist leadership has been trying to solve through active military-technical cooperation with international actors. Indeed, the active procurement of weapons allowed the PRC to reach parity or even surpass the US in a number of aspects. Meanwhile, the MTC has turned into not only a mechanism for strengthening national security, but also a tool of foreign policy. Methods. The following methods were used: analytical, historical, statistical, generalization. In the course of the research, the author relied on the principle of objectivism. Results. Solving the problem of the weakness of the technical and technological level of the PLA, China used the geopolitical conjuncture to obtain arms supplies. A key role was played by cooperation first with the USSR, and then with the russian federation. This partnership was associated with the introduction of an embargo by Western countries due to the events in Tiananmen Square. An important factor was also the supply of military equipment from Ukraine. At the same time, in the conditions of a full-scale russian-Ukrainian war, Beijing became an exporter of dual purpose products to russia. Overall, using the factors of unauthorized copying, low price policies and arms sales to sanctioned regimes, Beijing has become one of the world's top five arms exporters. China mainly exports weapons to Asian countries, and has also significantly strengthened its position in the African market. However, quality and service issues are causing more and more questions from buyers. Conclusions. Among the consequences of China's MTC: 1. creation of its own autonomous military industry; 2. obtaining an additional source for financing the modernization of the PLA; 3. significant strengthening of military capabilities in the context of global rivalry with the USA; 4. increased aggressiveness in foreign policy and worsening of relations with neighboring countries and the USA; 5. course on militarization of neighboring Asian countries and strengthening of their cooperation with the USA; 6. creating additional opportunities for strengthening authoritarian regimes through military and technical support and even promoting its aggressiveness towards other countries; 7. fueling bloody wars by non-democratic regimes; 8. obtaining greater access to the minerals of the countries of the Global South and increasing the level of dependence on cooperation with Beijing; 9. strengthening of new arms exporters (such as Pakistan) and weakening of others (russia, USA, Germany).

Factions in Nondemocracies: Theory and Evidence From the Chinese Communist Party

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates factional arrangements within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the governing political party of the People's Republic of China. Using detailed biographical information of political elites in the Central Committee and provincial governments, we present a set of new empirical regularities within the CCP, including systematic patterns of cross‐factional balancing at different levels of the political hierarchy and substantial faction premia in promotions. We propose and estimate an organizational economic model to characterize factional politics within single‐party nondemocratic regimes and its economic implications.

Non-Democratic Regimes and Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations

ABSTRACT Do democratic or non-democratic countries contribute more personnel to UN peacekeeping operations? While earlier studies found that democracies make larger contributions than non-democracies, recent research has challenged these findings. Scholarship in this area, however, has largely conceived of ‘non-democracy’ as a monolithic category, despite a growing body of research delineating distinct types of illiberal regimes and identifying their divergent behaviours in a range of domestic and international contexts. In this article, I argue that non-democracies’ personnel contributions to peacekeeping operations vary based on different ‘type’ of illiberal regime, and that this variation is contingent on two main factors: the influence of the military within the regime, and the extent to which a regime values the prestige associated with large-scale peacekeeping contributions. I test this proposition by statistically analyzing data from UN peacekeeping operations between 1991–2018. The findings indicate that single-party regimes are likely to make significantly smaller contributions than democracies; the contribution behaviour of other types of non-democracies is less discernible from their democratic counterparts.

Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict

Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict

Protesting is Not Everything: Analyzing Twitter Use During Electoral Events in Non-democratic Contexts

Despite the fact that during political protests, Twitter usage has been substantially studied in various contexts, there are still some significant gaps in our understanding of the ways that this microblogging network is employed in regular political happenings, e.g., elections, particularly in authoritarian countries. As a result, it remains unclear if citizens in non-democratic countries use Twitter to protest at the time of regular political events as the time of uprisings or not. This investigation tries to address this gap by providing some empirical evidence from the Iranian Twittersphere during the 2017 presidential election. Having employed networked framing theory, we combined textual and network analytic approaches to investigate a sample of 10,416 tweets of the most influential users in the retweet (RT) network. Findings demonstrate that Iranian users did not significantly challenge the regime and power relations in Iran. They framed the election in a non-critical way dealing with routine political and election frays and debates. They also preferred to attack politicians rather than discuss contentious and deliberate politics. Thus, this research reveals that Twitter is not always a tool for protesting against non-democratic regimes. At the time of electoral events, it could be used as an ordinary communication platform.

Do gains in political representation sweeten tax reform in China? It depends on who you ask

AbstractGovernments can grant political concessions to induce quasi-voluntary compliance with taxation, yet empirical evidence probing the taxation–representation connection remains inconclusive. We contend that this association remains valid but it is primarily confined to business elites in nondemocratic regimes because the same wealth that exposes them to state predation also incentivizes them to endorse tax policies that offer greater political representation. We test our argument by evaluating preferences for hypothetical tax reforms in separate samples of business elites and ordinary citizens in China. We find that business elites show stronger preference than nonelites for tax policies that include advances in political representation. We explore various mechanisms for our results and find support for government credibility, tax ownership, and tax salience considerations.

Legitimacy Without Democracy? Sources of Diffuse Regime Support in Post-Colonial Hong Kong

The resilience of non-democratic regimes in the past decades demonstrates that some authoritarian regimes have figured out ways to consolidate regime support without democratic elections. Hong Kong is a remarkable case of “legitimacy without democracy” as the system of government enjoyed a certain level of legitimacy since colonial days without being democratically elected. Using Hong Kong as a case and based on data from several waves of Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), this study analyzes the impact of citizens’ evaluation of the economic conditions, perception of freedoms, perceived procedural justice and institutional trust, and stability concerns on diffuse regime support in Hong Kong. There are three key findings of this study. First, economic performance is not a significant predictor of diffuse regime support in the case of Hong Kong, whereas, second, institutional trust and perceived civil liberties are. Finally, we found indirect evidence for the role of stability in shaping regime support, although its importance seems far less important than institutional trust and civil liberties.

Party Systems, Inequality, and Redistribution

Political parties have long been theorized as a key political institution that links society with the formal political system, and thus have often featured prominently in theories of political economy and redistribution. Curiously, however, until recently party systems have received substantially less attention in theories seeking to explain redistribution among both democratic and non-democratic regimes. I build on this nascent literature by conceptualizing the relationship between party systems, inequality, and redistribution, advancing the argument that at least a portion of inequality and income redistribution in any given country is attributable to dynamics within its party system—particularly their structure and institutionalization. Hegemonic party systems can initiate large waves of social reform and redistribution in their formative years but their redistributive prospects significantly wane the longer a hegemonic party remains in power, while two-party systems are unlikely to provide much, if any, alleviation of inequality. Multi-party systems provide the greatest potential to redistribute, but the relationship is conditional on their relative institutionalization. Stable multi-party systems with institutionalized parties are more likely to exhibit both lower levels of inequality and redistribute more income, whereas inchoate counterparts are unlikely to be more redistributive than either hegemonic or two-party systems.

Contentious Politics in a Digital World: Studies on Social Activism, Protest, and Polarization

In a world of polarized societies and radical voices hogging the public digital sphere, this thematic issue aims at identifying the different strategies of old and new social movements in the extremes of the political debates by focusing on the interplay between polarization, uses of the internet, and social activism. In order to disentangle these interactions, this thematic issue covers a wide range of political settings across the globe. It does so by studying: (a) how opposing activists discuss politics online and its implications for democratic theory; (b) how social media uses and online discussions foster offline protests; (c) how the media and state-led-propaganda frame disruptive and anti-government offline protests and how this situation contributes to polarization in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and finally (d) how civil society uses digital tools to organize and mobilize around sensitive issues in non-democratic regimes.

Contentious Politics in a Digital World: Studies on Social Activism, Protest, and Polarization

In a world of polarized societies and radical voices hogging the public digital sphere, this thematic issue aims at identifying the different strategies of old and new social movements in the extremes of the political debates by focusing on the interplay between polarization, uses of the internet, and social activism. In order to disentangle these interactions, this thematic issue covers a wide range of political settings across the globe. It does so by studying: (a) how opposing activists discuss politics online and its implications for democratic theory; (b) how social media uses and online discussions foster offline protests; (c) how the media and state-led-propaganda frame disruptive and anti-government offline protests and how this situation contributes to polarization in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and finally (d) how civil society uses digital tools to organize and mobilize around sensitive issues in non-democratic regimes.

Assessing centralization: on Turkey’s rising personalist regime

ABSTRACT Research on non-democratic regimes has accelerated in the post-Cold War world, but inordinate attention paid to procedural definitions of regime type and democratization has reduced the study of utilitarian components in assessing cases of political transition. We utilize two frameworks oft-cited within the comparative authoritarianism literature to evaluate our claim that Turkey has moved from a dominant-party system to one resembling a personalist regime while arguing that elite defection and institutional degradation may catalyse political centralization. In doing so, we refocus evaluative attention on the substantive content of the regime rather than mere modes of perpetuation while reasserting the value of the literature’s diagnostic frameworks to empirically place Turkey’s subtype of authoritarianism.

Why Women Became the Enemy of Democracy in Poland? The Illiberal Regime’s Response to the Women’ Rights Movement

After the political transformation in Poland, abortion was first regulated by the Law of 7 January 1993, Protection of the Human Fetus and Conditions Permitting Pregnancy Termination. Since then, attempts have been made to change the existing regulation. However, it was in 2016 that there were nationwide protests against changes to abortion provisions, and then in 2020, when the constitutional court ruling limited the possibility of termination of pregnancy in Poland. These protests can be seen in the context of the process of neo-militant democracy rule implementation, that is, the taking over the characteristics of non-democratic regimes by existing democracies under the cover of the regime self-preservation. The aim of this article is to identify and explain the government’s attitude towards women as an enemy of democracy at the institutional level during the two waves of protests. The study shows that during the period considered, restrictions specific to neo-militant democracies in the area of assembly and association, speech and press and restrictions on religious freedom were imposed in order to limit the activity of protesters viewed as enemies of the democratic system.

Hashtag feminism in a blocked context: The mechanisms of unfolding and disrupting #rape on Persian Twitter

Despite the growing body of literature on hashtag feminism in Western contexts, there is still a significant gap in our knowledge of the ways that feminist hashtag movements are developed in authoritarian societies. Moreover, we do not know much about the mechanisms by which a feminist hashtag movement is disrupted, particularly in non-democratic regimes. Drawing on and contributing to the hashtag feminism literature, we undertook a discursive approach to examine #rape on Persian Twitter to address these gaps. Findings showed that #rape was a space for Iranian users to share abusive experiences, but they went further to discuss barriers of disclosing sexual assault as well. Developing resistive strategies and raising awareness about other muted groups such as LGBTQIA+ were other discursive practices in articulating #rape. This article also pushes forward the existing literature on hashtag feminism by providing empirical analyses of the ways that a feminist movement is disrupted.

If there is nothing else to say: the local content of interpellations

ABSTRACT Parliamentary questions have several functions in modern democracies. Academic literature also presents that this tool also exists in non-democratic regimes, even though with limited functions. In this paper, we investigate the more than 14,000 interpellations posed in the Hungarian parliament between 1867 and 2018 through various regimes, asking the question how does the regime and its institutional settings influence local content of interpellations. We investigated three hypotheses regarding them. We have found that (1) lower level of democracy increases the probability of local content’s occurrence in interpellations; (2) MPs elected in local level pose interpellations concerning local issues with a higher probability; and finally (3) MPs pose interpellations with local content with a higher probability if the local governments are more powerful.