The limits of authoritarian solidarity: The Gulf monarchies and preserving authoritarian rule during the Arab Spring

Scholars have recently begun to examine how authoritarian rulers cooperate with each other in order to fend off popular challenges to their power. During the Arab Spring the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) supported fellow authoritarian regimes in some cases while backing opposition movements in others. Existing theoretical approaches fail to explain this variation. Advancing the study on authoritarian cooperation, this article develops a theoretical approach that sets out to explain how authoritarian regimes reach their decisions. Drawing on poliheuristic foreign policy analysis, it argues that perceptions of similarity serve as a filter for estimating threats to regime survival at home. If regimes perceive the situation in other countries as similar to their own, supporting other authoritarian regimes becomes the only acceptable strategy. In contrast, if perceptions of similarity are low, regimes also consider other options and evaluate their implications beyond the domestic political arena. Applying this framework to the example of the GCC states during the Arab Spring, the analysis reveals covariation between perceptions of similarity and threat among GCC regimes, on the one hand, and their strategies, on the other.     

The cartelization of local governments

Intergovernmental competition can enhance efficiency. Centralization of government expenditures inhibits intergovernmental competition because it makes governments more homogeneous, and so cartelizes local governments. Cartelization reduces Tiebout competition, and limits benchmark competition in which one government??s performance can be compared with neighboring governments. Measuring fiscal centralization as the ratio of local to state and local government expenditures within the state, the evidence shows that more fiscal decentralization is associated with higher levels of state per capita income. Cartelization of local governments negatively impacts income.     

Democracy prevention: The international collaboration of authoritarian regimes

Current scholarship increasingly argues that international factors and, more specifically, authoritarian collaboration fundamentally affect the persistence of authoritarian rule. In order to generate a better understanding of the nature and effects of these international dimensions of authoritarianism, this article provides a conceptual framework for various aspects of authoritarian collaboration to prevent democracy, particularly the relationship between authoritarian regime types and their international democracy‐prevention policies. It differentiates between authoritarian diffusion, learning, collaboration and support, as well as between deliberate efforts to avert democracy and efforts not explicitly geared towards strengthening autocracy. The article further distinguishes between crisis events and normal conditions where authoritarian rulers' hold on power is not in danger. It is argued that authoritarian powers' motivations to provide support to fellow autocrats are self‐serving rather than driven by an ideological commitment to creating an ‘authoritarian international’: authoritarian rulers first and foremost strive to maximise their own survival chances by selectively supporting acquiescent authoritarian regimes, maintaining geostrategic control and fostering their developmental goals.     

在哲学意义上的民主与独裁的同一性

绝对意义上的民主是每个人都能完整地实现自己的权利,成为独立自主的,独裁的人,这样的民主与独裁有某种共通之处,因为独裁就是每个独立自主的人汇成的共同体,这个共同体由一个独立自主者(独裁者)来代表所有独立自主者(独裁者)。这是一种理想状态,要达到这种理想状态,人类要经历漫长曲折的道路,必须要经历专制的、片面性的、异化的过程,只有当人类智慧和文明程度的进展克服了这个过程,民主与独裁才能达到完美的同一交融境地。     

Election turnout in authoritarian regimes

What explains election turnout in authoritarian regimes? Despite the significant energy, resources, and time ruling parties devote to improving the participation rates of citizens, there exists extraordinary variation both within and across authoritarian regimes. This paper hypothesizes that election turnout is explained by contestation, coercion and clientelism. To test this theory, the paper uses an original dataset capturing turnout rates for 548 legislative elections in 108 countries between 1960 and 2011. The resulting empirical analysis confirms these Hypothesis – with one notable exception. Instead of encouraging turnout amongst citizens, clientelism discourages it. This counterintuitive finding occurs because citizens lack the optimum incentives for participation and ruling parties lack effective monitoring strategies of that behavior. The conclusion of the paper addresses its implications for existing theories of authoritarian politics and proposes several avenues for further research on election turnout under authoritarianism.     

The diminishing role of governments in cable policy

Abstract The article examines the role of governments in the transition in cable policy in the three largest media countries of Europe (Britain, France and Germany). In theoretical terms it is argued that the involvement of governments in determining the course of development of cable systems has comprised three main stages. In the first stage, governments tried to ignore cable and prevent the establishment of cable infrastructure. In the second stage, governments regulated the technology in order to promote a national cable policy and encourage the overall development of the broadcasting media. In the third stage, although at different speeds and perceptions, governments deregulated cable by giving permission to market forces to dominate cable's development and abandoning the social goals of cable policy.     

The diminishing role of governments in cable policy

The article examines the role of governments in the transition in cable policy in the three largest media countries of Europe (Britain, France and Germany). In theoretical terms it is argued that the involvement of governments in determining the course of development of cable systems has comprised three main stages. In the first stage, governments tried to ignore cable and prevent the establishment of cable infrastructure. In the second stage, governments regulated the technology in order to promote a national cable policy and encourage the overall development of the broadcasting media. In the third stage, although at different speeds and perceptions, governments deregulated cable by giving permission to market forces to dominate cable's development and abandoning the social goals of cable policy.     

The authoritarian logic of regulatory pluralism: Understanding China's new environmental actors

Over the last decade, Chinese citizens, judges, and prosecutors have started to take action against industrial pollution, pluralizing a regulatory landscape originally occupied by administrative agencies. Regulatory pluralism here has an authoritarian logic, occurring without the retreat of party‐state control. Under such logic, the party‐state both needs and fears new actors for their positive and negative roles in controlling risk and maintaining stability. Consequently, the regime's relation to regulatory pluralism is ambivalent, shifting between support and restriction. This prevents a development of a regulatory society that could bypass the regulatory state. Theoretically, this special edition argues for a subjective definition of regulation in a context of pluralism. Moreover, it finds that regulatory pluralism need not coincide with a decentring of regulation. Finally, it highlights how entry onto the regulatory landscape affects the non‐regulatory roles of new actors, creating unintended consequences for regulatory pluralism.     

The incentive effects of property taxes on local governments

This paper applies the ideas of Brennan and Buchanan (1977, 1978, 1980) to local property taxes. When local governments maximize their revenues, property taxes provide incentives for adequate amenity provision. Local amenity provision determines property values which then determine local tax revenues. As long as the demand for housing is inelastic, property-taxes will provide stronger incentives for local governments than lump-sum taxes. As current property values reflect expectations about future amenity levels, property taxes create incentives for even the most myopic government to invest for the future. Local property taxes can also act to limit the incentives of localities to tax; there are cases where higher levels of local property taxes lead to lower overall tax burdens. These ideas are applied to the tax reform in the late 1970s; one reason that tax reform may have been so successful is that in a period where land prices are driven by many forces other than government amenities, property taxes lose their value as incentive devices.     

Voters and coalition governments

Coalition governments are the norm in parliamentary democracies. Yet, despite the predominance of this type of government, political scientists have only recently started to investigate how voters approach elections when a coalition government is the likely outcome. Such elections present additional uncertainty and complexity for voters compared with elections in plurality systems, where party choice translates more directly into a choice of government. These factors have lead to the assumption that strategic voting is unlikely to occur in systems that produce coalition governments. In this introductory article to the special issue on Voters and Coalition Governments, we consider whether voters have the capacity to anticipate specific coalition outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the conditions that lead to strategic voting in both plurality and proportional systems.     

Balancing conflicting goals: The big challenge for governments

Australians are now reaping the economic fruits of two decades of reform and structural change. But they are being asked to turn their backs on egalitarian values once considered untouchable. This article examines key changes and applies two tests: first, could Australia have achieved broadly the same economic benefits with less equity sacrifice; and, second, did the shift in policy values towards individualism and materialism adequately reflect the community's own preferences and priorities? The article suggests that the economic and social policy revolution of the last two decades does not fully meet these tests. The policy trade‐offs could have been managed better.     

The myopic Foucauldian gaze: discourse,knowledge and the authoritarian peace

ABSTRACT

The discourse of liberal peacebuilding has often been characterized by critics as a hegemonic discourse, in which power and knowledge are co-constitutive. Influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, an important strand of the literature has demonstrated how epistemic communities have produced knowledge that supports this discourse, while marginalizing other, contrary voices. A ‘local turn’ has sought to uncover what Foucault termed ‘subjugated knowledges’, peripheral voices that were seen as potentially contributing to a more emancipatory peace. This article, in contrast, argues that the explicit and implicit Foucauldian framing of discourse and knowledge is no longer adequate to conceptualize the contested nature of peace and conflict in a rapidly changing international system. In a period of significant geopolitical shifts away from a Western-centric international order, post-Foucauldian discourse theories offer a more productive analytical perspective that makes visible the multiple, competing discourses that attempt to achieve closure in defining meanings of peace and conflict. A theoretical framework that emphasizes discursive contestation rather than unitary domination allows serious consideration of alternative conceptualizations of peacemaking. In particular, theoretical frameworks that highlight contestation make visible an authoritarian, illiberal approach to managing conflict that challenges both liberal and emancipatory conceptualizations of peace and conflict, but is occluded in the current debate over post-liberal peace.     

Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival

Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By ‘institutionalisation’, it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete-time event-history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.     

Policy transfers between governments: The case of administrative reforms

Administrative reform has been a very common activity of governments in almost all industrialised democracies, including those in Western Europe. The frequent contacts among these governments, and the presence of organisations such as the OECD that are spreading the reforms, might be expected to produce widespread diffusion of administrative innovations. That diffusion is not, however, as widespread as might have been expected and there are marked differences among countries as well as among types of reform. Using Boolean algebra, this article analyses the correlates of the diffusion of reform among European countries and the implications of that diffusion for public administration in these countries.     

Friction and bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes

Democracies deliberately create “friction” in bureaucratic processes, using inefficiencies to mitigate the impact of government transitions and asymmetric information on leaders' ability to exert control. With far more centralized power, would authoritarians prefer less friction? We argue that they do not. In fact, excess friction is actively supplied to hinder bureaucratic coordination independent of or even in opposition to top-down control, leaving the central leaders the only player powerful enough to organize complex actions. Our analysis of data on the Chinese government indicates that bureaucrats are systematically sent to unfamiliar work environment, and that agencies that are more exposed to the resultant inefficiencies are also more likely to come under direct control by senior Politburo members. The pattern of targeted intervention indicates that bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes is predicated not only on centralized power in general but also the deliberate supply of friction to obstruct independent actions from the bottom up.