Regime Trajectories Research Articles

The Dark Side of Legalism: Abuse of the Law and Democratic Erosion in Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela

Why do some elected leaders use legalistic strategies to undermine democracy from within? And under what conditions do they succeed in the use of these strategies? In this article, we argue that the abuse of law is at the center of the toolkit of emerging autocrats. Executives use an ample menu of legal tools and mechanisms (laws, constitutional amendments, executive decrees, administrative resolutions, and regulations by federal agencies) to gradually dismantle each of the components of liberal democracy. We show how the co-optation of the judiciary by the executive helps create an appearance of institutional normalcy that enhances regime legitimacy. In an era of democratic backsliding, executives capture or coerce judiciaries to neutralize opposition threats, carry out their policy agenda, secure and distribute benefits among allies, and dismantle various components that make up liberal democracies. To understand how executives have different levels of success in using multiple legal tools and mechanisms to undermine democracy, we compare three Latin American countries with disparate regime trajectories: Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Our paper situates judicial actors at the center of the legal toolkit of emerging autocrats by studying how (and in what ways) courts become illiberal tools for legal reform and implementation to dismantle liberal democracy gradually. We show how, in these cases, “legal narratives” are used to legitimize the slow undermining of democratic rule.

Green Retail Development for Plastic Waste Prevention – Regime Trajectories and Levers for Change in Thailand’s Socio-technical System of Single-use Plastics

Thailand faces significant plastic waste management challenges. Around 2018-2019, a growing number of green retail shops started emerging in Thailand, offering products and services that eliminate or reduce the consumption of single-use plastics (SUPs). This paper intends to explore green retail as a niche in the Thai socio-technical system of SUPs. It aims to understand the socio-technical system’s current state, identify niche dynamics and momentum, illustrate key regime trajectories, and highlight policy levers. The study uses secondary data from academic articles and policy documentation, along with primary data from interviews with 20 Thai green retail founders conducted between 2020 and 2022, for thematic and content analysis. Findings suggest that the green retail niche has started establishing network, institutional and technological anchoring within the regime despite the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Green retailers are committed to the development of their business models, but require support. The research suggests enhancing network formation and skills development within the niche, increasing access to financial resources, and establishing green financing options. It also suggests drawing links to more established niches and setting up incubation and acceleration programs for sustainability-minded small and medium enterprises (SMEs), thereby supporting their growth. Beyond the Thai context, this paper may be relevant for other countries and for evaluating sustainability niches in other sectors.

The contestation of international ties and regime transitions: evidence from the former Soviet republics

ABSTRACT Studies of noncooperative transitions find that domestic balances of power shaped postcommunist regime trajectories in favor of the powerful. Then, what determined the balance of power during a transition? Drawing on relational-network analysis in IR, I argue that the configuration of international ties determined the relative strength of democrats and Soviet-era elites. States with diversified ties between the US and the Soviet Union - that occupy a brokerage position- were more likely to democratize. Their ties with the US funneled material and non-material assistance into democrats in postcommunist states. However, states deeply integrated into the Soviet order resisted democratization to a greater extent. Their extensive ties to the Soviet order resulted in stronger Sovietization and Soviet legacies impeding democratization. The interplay of states' ties with the US and the Soviet Union, as a function of brokerage and integration, shaped the domestic balance of power, conditioning postcommunist political changes. Empirical analysis using medium-N analysis and case studies on the former Soviet Union republics lends support to the argument. The finding contributes to the literature on international determinants of regime changes by highlighting how underlying global power structures frame the domestic balance of power.

Electoral contests in the aftermath of military coups: how domestic constraints motivate praetorian conduct

ABSTRACT Inspired by recent studies about the effects of coups on future regime trajectories, the article examines the conduct of praetorian armies in electoral contests that occur in the aftermath of military coups. In some countries, putschist militaries refrain from interfering in post-coup elections and withdraw from executive power. In others, they rig elections in favour of their preferred candidate and become entrenched in executive power. In each outcome, coup makers play a different role in subsequent regime dynamics. To explain these different outcomes, the article designs an integrative framework and applies it to countries displaying different post-coup electoral outcomes over time. The findings reinforce skepticism about the democratisation potential of militaries and highlight the importance of intra-military factionalism on praetorian leaders. The article encourages scholars to engage in case-based and processual research linking coup makers to long-term regime dynamics and provides hypotheses guiding such research agendas.

Regime trajectories of Tunisia and Turkey: a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT Both Turkey and Tunisia have attracted significant attention regarding their democratization and religious politics. While Turkey was considered a successful case of blending Islam and democracy in the decade of 2000s, it plunged into autocratization in the following decade. Tunisia became the only Arab spring country to go through democratic transition between 2011 and 2015 but 6 years later, an elected president grabbed power over the democratic institutions. Inspired by the elite theories of democratization and combining the comparative method with a within-case analysis, this article evaluates the regime trajectories of the two countries, emphasizing the points of convergence and divergence. First, it argues that the emergence of a power symmetry between the elites representing the religious-secular cleavage constituted a critical juncture in each case, paving the way for democratic reforms. Second, it argues that the power symmetry was of an adversarial nature in Turkey and a consensual nature in Tunisia, which affected the elite choices to deal with the masses in different ways. The article concludes with a discussion of how the elite-mass interactions ultimately eroded the power symmetries and reversed the democratic processes in Turkey and Tunisia.

Good seed makes a good crop? The relationship between civil society and post-independence democracy levels

ABSTRACT The impact of civil society on democracy is contested. Some argue that Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are important ‘schools of democracy’ and may foster democratic consolidation. Others emphasize that anti-democratic CSOs may undermine democracy. This debate is particularly relevant in the context of newly independent states. At that critical juncture, both democratic and authoritarian regime trajectories are possible. Societal preconditions – such as the state of civil society – can therefore be particularly relevant for the way forward. To what extent does the nature of CSOs prior to independence has an impact on the subsequent level of democracy? We argue that the existence of democratic CSOs prior to independence strengthens post-independence democracy whereas non-democratic CSOs have a detrimental effect. For the first time, this argument is empirically tested, using Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data on 91 cases of independence since 1905. The empirical results demonstrate that the presence of democratic CSOs prior to independence is positively correlated, whereas non-democratic CSOs are negatively correlated to democracy levels following independence.

INDIAN AND PAKISTANI REGIME TRAJECTORIES: SOCIAL HIERARCHY AND MAJORITY RELIGION’S PUBLIC PRESENCE VERSUS DEMOCRACY

The hierarchical organisation of society and the lack of distinction between the public and private sphere in Islam and Hinduism are cultural features of India and Pakistan that seem inconsistent with democracy. Reservation policy and the recognition of the most popular regional languages both demonstrate the adjustment of India’s democratic framework to the caste system and the arithmetic of ethnic groups respectively. These measures have helped to pave the way for India's smooth political transition. In contrast to the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League refused to introduce similar solutions in Pakistan. The public presence of Hinduism in India and Islam in Pakistan have barely affected the countries overall political trajectories. However, the recent radicalisation, marked by the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India and the emergence of the Islamist political movements, including the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Party in Pakistan, have triggered tendencies towards authoritarianism. This paper concludes by reconsidering the similarities between the impact of the majority religion’s public presence on the post-2014 Indian and Pakistani regime trajectories. By the comparative analysis of the two countries, this study contributes to the contemporary debates in political sciences about the rise of authoritarianism and the demand for identity.

The Fate of International Monetary Systems: How and Why They Fall Apart

The collapses of the interwar and Bretton Woods monetary regimes have been understood as evidence that international monetary regimes fail when sudden economic shocks destabilize the political coalitions or shared ideas underpinning them. But while these histories are important, other monetary regimes, such as the Sterling Area and Latin Union, disintegrated over long periods of time. If exogenous shocks do not account for varied patterns of destabilization, what does? Using the tools of comparative-historical analysis, I argue that these patterns are the result of strategic choices made by hegemonic powers, choices that are in turn governed by the historical-structural foundations of regimes. From these foundations emerge alternative leadership strategies and membership behaviors responsible for endogenous macro-institutional effects that drive the observed regime trajectories. Regime leaders may establish visibly unequal collective arrangements that maintain their positions but leave a system vulnerable to overt internal resistance and sudden breakdown. Or leaders may reject collective arrangements in order to secretly discriminate among members, slowly building dysfunction into a system, driving its gradual abandonment by members and institutional decline. The analysis both suggests that more equal state power may improve long-run regime performance, and also locates structural vulnerabilities in contemporary regimes.

Democratic Legacies: Using Democratic Stock to Assess Norms, Growth, and Regime Trajectories

We recognize support by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2018.0144; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg; as well as by internal grants from the Vice- Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. The computations of expert data were enabled by the Swedish National Infrastruc- ture for Computing (SNIC) at National Supercomputer Centre, Link oping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement no. 2019/3-516.

Democratization and budget openness: evidence from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan

The existing literature postulates that budget openness often improves at critical moments of democratization. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, which are transitional regimes currently experiencing different regime trajectories, should be ideal places to test the validity of this theory. By examining whether and how open budget reforms in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are related to their regime trajectories through historical-comparative case studies, this article aims to make an original contribution to the comparative budgeting literature by providing a new and unique set of Open Budget Survey-based case studies in the context of East Asian transitional regimes. Points for practitioners This article uses comparative studies of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to illustrate the politics of budget openness facing policymakers in the process of democratization. For policymakers, the lesson from the comparative studies is that the rise of competitive electoral and legislative politics will bring about pressures for open budget reforms. More policy learning is necessary for policymakers from different types of political regimes to share the experiences of handling the politics of budget openness.

Regional international organizations as a strategy of autocracy: the Eurasian Economic Union and Russian foreign policy

This article investigates whether and how regional international organizations created by authoritarian countries can aid the regime survival of their member states. Numerous regions of the world have witnessed a proliferation of regional organizations established by powerful authoritarian states. We argue that the external influence of these organizations can affect regime survival and reinforce non-democratic regime trajectories, but in a nuanced manner. The article argues that, in addition to examining the impact of the regional organization itself, one must examine how the existence of these regional organizations changes the strategy of autocratic leading states, which-in bilateral relations with other countries-could become more eager to support authoritarian regimes of geopolitical importance. We use the case of the Eurasian Economic Union to explore various strategies of Russia, the leading state, vis-a-vis post-Soviet Eurasian countries. These strategies, however, appear only to matter for authoritarian consolidation when countries, from the Russian point of view, are on the 'front line' of geopolitical competition with the EU, and which are, therefore, important in stabilizing Russian influence. The article identifies five strategic foreign policy models of leading states which are determined by the existence of regional organizations and evaluates the benefits of these strategies for both leading and targeted states.

The structural sources of postcommunist regime trajectories

ABSTRACTRegime trajectories in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU) have diverged considerably since the collapse of communism. We argue that this variation is the product of two largely structural factors: the salience of anti-Soviet nationalism and the opportunity for membership in the European Union (EU) that was mostly the product of geography. In Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, anti-Soviet nationalism and the stimulus of EU democratic conditionality contributed to the rise of a non-communist elite that confronted serious internal and external pressure to democratize. By contrast, weaker anti-Soviet nationalism and dearth of pressure from the EU allowed for the persistence of communist elites who faced relatively weak external constraints on autocratic behavior. We argue that these structural factors played a more important role in accounting for variation in democratization across the postcommunist world than factors such as institutional design. At the same time, the different character of structural forces in Eastern Europe and the FSU has likely created greater room for voluntarist factors in determining regime variation within the former Soviet Union than within Eastern Europe.

Disciplined and undisciplined repression: illicit economies and state violence in Central Asia’s autocracies

ABSTRACTWhat explains the use of disciplined repression in some autocratic regimes and undisciplined repression in others? Despite its relevance to these broader debates on authoritarianism, this question remains inadequately explained in conventional approaches to repression. This article proposes that autocrats’ discipline over the use of state repression is a consequence of their differential control over illicit commercial networks. Autocratic regimes that consolidate their control over rents become dependent on security apparatuses to deepen and maintain that control. These regimes invest in and support the development of coercive capabilities, which leads to more disciplined state repression. Where autocratic regimes do not control illicit networks and rents, their dependence on security offices is low. Consequently, their investment in coercive capacity suffers, giving rise to patterns of undisciplined repression. This article explores the empirical implications of these regime trajectories through a controlled comparison of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two drug transit states in post-Soviet Eurasia whose coercive institutions and patterns of state violence have developed in markedly different ways.

Democratization in clan-based societies: explaining the Mongolian anomaly

ABSTRACTMongolia is a long-standing democratic anomaly – a democracy in a clan-based society – that is rarely discussed in research. This article addresses the question, why did Mongolia and the Central Asian countries embark upon markedly different regime trajectories following 70 years of Soviet rule? I argue that the prospects of democracy were shaped by a complex relationship between clan-based traditional authority structures, social relations based on nomadism and the style of Soviet rule. In Mongolia, Soviet authorities carefully enforced collectivization across kin groups and provided all necessary public goods to citizens, effectively dismantling clan-based authority structures. This process unintendedly fortified nomadic social relations that enabled re-emergent elements of opposition and forces in civil society to fill the void of authority generated by the Soviet collapse and to use this counterweight to state power to push for competitive politics. In contrast, the Soviet authorities’ “divide and rule” with clans in Kyrgyzstan reproduced clans that easily took on a dominant role on the eve of the Soviet breakdown and filled the void of authority by placing themselves at the apex of political power providing welfare services and political order. This placed Kyrgyzstan on the path to a post-communist non-democracy.

Social Forces and Regime Change

This article discusses three recent books that analyze patterns of political conflict and regime change in postcolonial Asia and Africa using a social forces approach to political analysis. The social forces tradition, originally pioneered by Barrington Moore, studies the social origins and political consequences of struggles between social groups whose members hold shared identities and interests. The works under review examine, respectively, the varied regime trajectories of Southeast Asia's states, divergent regime outcomes in India and Pakistan, and the institutional origins of social cleavages and political conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Although historically the social forces paradigm has focused on conflict between class actors, the author argues that these three works fruitfully extend the social forces approach to encompass struggles between nonclass social groups, including those defined along the lines of ethnicity, religion, nationality, region, and family. This pluralized version of the social forces approach is better suited to studying patterns of regime change in Asia and Africa, where the paradigm has been less frequently applied than it has been to cases in Europe and Latin America.

Towards a Model Explaining the Political (In)stability and Variety of Regimes in the Post-Soviet Region

The article examines the conditions of political stability and different regime trajectories in the post-Soviet region. The impact of political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors is explored to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for political stability and democracy, as well as their relationship with each other. Applying fuzzy set comparative analysis, this article demonstrates the significance of social inclusion in political stability, although it cannot confirm any causality between political stability and democracy in the post-Soviet region. In terms of the necessary conditions for democracy, only a democratic political culture is significant; while both democratic political cultureandthe absence of a strong economic dependence on natural resources are sufficient conditions for democracy in the region.

Political parties in MENA: their functions and development

This article provides an overview of the development of parties and party systems in the MENA region from early oligarchic pluralism to the mass single-party systems of the populist era and the limited multi-party experiments of the 1990s era of political liberalization. The survey shows how parties develop in parallel with the deepening of politicization and become nearly indispensable adjuncts in the construction of political order. The article then examines parties in the post-2010 period, with case studies of Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia demonstrating how very different configurations of party development dramatically impact on regime trajectories, ranging from democratization to hybrid regimes.

Exit, Resistance, Loyalty: Military Behavior during Unrest in Authoritarian Regimes

A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They mayexitthe regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exile,resistby fighting for the challenger or initiating a coup d’état, or remainloyaland use force to defend the regime. We argue that existing accounts of civil-military relations are ill equipped to explain the diverse patterns in exit, resistance, and loyalty during unrest because they often ignore the effects of military hierarchy. Disaggregating the military and parsing the interests and constraints of different agents in that apparatus is crucial for explaining military cohesion during such crises. Drawing on extensive fieldwork we apply our principal-agent framework to explain varying degrees and types of military cohesion in three Arab Spring cases: Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria. Studying military hierarchy elucidates decision-making within authoritarian regimes amid mass mobilization and allows us to better explain regime re-stabilization, civil war onset, or swift regime change in the wake of domestic unrest.

The Indigenous Roots of Representative Democracy

We document that rules for leadership succession in ethnic societies that antedate the modern state predict contemporary political regimes; leadership selection by election in indigenous societies is associated with contemporary representative democracy. The basic association, however, is conditioned on the relative strength of the indigenous groups within a country; stronger groups seem to have been able to shape national regime trajectories, weaker groups do not. This finding extends and qualifies a substantive qualitative literature, which has found in local democratic institutions of medieval Europe a positive impulse towards the development of representative democracy. It shows that contemporary regimes are shaped not only by colonial history and European in uence; indigenous history also matters. For practitioners, our findings suggest that external reformers' capacity for regimebuilding should not be exaggerated.

Aerosol characteristics observed in southeast Queensland and implications for cloud microphysics

[1] Regular cloud base aerosol measurements were collected by a research aircraft over a 4 month period during the wet season in southeast Queensland, near Brisbane, Australia. In situ cloud microphysical measurements were also collected in many of these clouds. Brisbane is situated on the east coast of Australia and, depending on the synoptic weather conditions, can experience influences from inland or from the adjacent ocean. In situ aerosol measurements were used to compile a climatology of the aerosol conditions in the region and a back trajectory model was run for 120 h from each measurement to determine the possible air mass influences on each measurement. The most influential factor on the measured aerosol concentrations was the time the trajectory spent over land beneath 2 km (a proxy for the boundary layer). Using this criterion, the measurements were divided into two regimes: maritime for those with minimal time histories over land and continental for the remainder. Other influential factors on the aerosol concentration were also diagnosed and quantified with a regression model, including the proximity of the trajectory to the city of Brisbane and the number of fires along the trajectory. Thermodynamic, aerosol, and cloud microphysical characteristics are presented for each regime. The maritime regime tended to have more coarse mode (larger) aerosol particles and a tail of larger drops in the cloud base droplet spectra, which could be due to nucleation on the larger aerosol particles. The city influence on maritime regime trajectories yielded enhanced nucleation (fine) particle concentrations.