How authoritarian rulers seek to legitimize repression: framing mass killings in Egypt and Uzbekistan

How do authoritarian rulers legitimate repressive actions against their own citizens? Although most research depicts repression and legitimation as opposed strategies of political rule, justified coercion against some groups may generate legitimacy in the eyes of other parts of the population. Building upon this suggested link between legitimation and repression, this article studies the justifications of mass killings. To this end, framing theory is combined with recent research on the domestic and international dimensions of authoritarian rule. We contend that frames are directed towards specific audiences at home and abroad. Moreover, given the common threats at the global level and the diffusion of repressive tactics, we assume that learning processes influence discursive justifications of repression in authoritarian regimes. We provide an analysis of government rhetoric by comparing the protest crackdowns of Rabi’a ‘Adawiya Square in Egypt and Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, taking into account the audiences and the sources of the frames that justify repression. In both cases, we find the terrorism frame to emerge as dominant.     

Authoritarian backsliding and the concentration of political power

This article introduces the concept of authoritarian backsliding as a class of strategies for the concentration of incumbent political power in hybrid regimes. Such actions include manipulating elections, violating civil liberties, creating an extremely uneven playing field for the opposition, and reducing the institutional constraints on executive power. While often falling short of a full regime change, backsliding can significantly alter the level of political competition in a country and reduce the quality of its political life. This article develops a theoretically-grounded strategy to identify and measure backsliding events since 1989, showing that they have been much more common than is typically appreciated. The article also shows the utility of the concept of backsliding for better understanding regime stability. Using cross-national analysis of backsliding events from 1989–2004, we find that threats such as opposition electoral gains or economic crises in resource-dependent regimes create incentives for authoritarian backsliding.     

Is Any Publicity Good Publicity? Media Coverage,Party Institutions,and Authoritarian Power-Sharing

Existing literature identifies nonofficial media as a tool for rulers to gather information from below. We argue that such media also help identify threats among elites. Motivated by profit, partially free media tend to cover politicians who challenge implicit norms of the regime. These political elites are perceived as threats to the power-sharing status quo, which leads peers to sanction them. We test this argument with evidence from the Chinese Communist Party’s intraparty elections of alternate Central Committee members in 2012 and 2007. With Bayesian rank likelihood models, we find that candidates who appeared more frequently in various partially free media received fewer votes from the Party Congress delegates, and this pattern is robust after accounting for a series of alternative explanations. Detailed case studies also show that low-ranked candidates have more partially free media coverage because they broke party norms.     

Failure of authoritarian learning: explaining Burma/Myanmar’s electoral system

What explains why some authoritarian governments fail to take all the steps they can to preserve their positions of power during democratic transitions? This article examines this question using the example of the leading pro-military party in Myanmar, which lost badly to the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the transitioning elections of 2015. This article argues that a key to understanding how the military failed to perpetuate its power in the electoral sphere resides in its choice of electoral system. In 2010, the military junta chose an electoral system, first-past-the-post, that was distinctly ill-suited to preserve its power. We explore several hypotheses for why this occurred and ultimately conclude that the military and its allies did not understand electoral systems well enough to act strategically and that they overestimated their support relative to the NLD. This failure of authoritarian learning has important implications for understanding authoritarian politics, democratic transitions, and the challenges faced by authoritarian governments seeking to make such transitions.     

Subverting autocracy: emancipative mass values in competitive authoritarian regimes

Competitive elections in authoritarian regimes are inherently ambiguous: do they extend regime persistence or, vice versa, operate as subversive events? This article tests Inglehart and Welzel's “emancipatory theory of democracy”, which has not been tested for competitive elections in autocracies: when emancipative values grow strong, autocratic power appears increasingly illegitimate in people's eyes, which motivates subversive mass actions against authoritarian rule. For electoral outcomes this suggestion implies, first, that authoritarian incumbents are more likely to suffer electoral defeat when emancipative values have become more widespread. Second, post-electoral protest against fraudulent elections is more likely when emancipative values have become more widespread. To test these hypotheses, we analyse 152 elections among 33 electoral authoritarian regimes over 21 years from 1990–2011. We find that emancipative values are indeed strongly conducive to incumbent defeat while their effect on post-electoral protest is conditional: it only occurs in elections won by the incumbent. These findings intertwine two separately developed literatures: one on authoritarian regime subversion and the other on emancipatory cultural change.     

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

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

Elite Co-optation,Repression, and Coups in Autocracies

This article provides an explanation for the significant variation in coups in autocracies. The existing theoretical literature focuses on the strategies that leaders use to thwart mass mobilization and survive in power. However, most autocratic leaders lose power through a coup, indicating that the main threats to political survival in autocracies emerge from insiders and not from outside the incumbent coalition. This article focuses on leaders’ strategies to mitigate elite threats and argues that autocrats’ strategies of co-optation and repression within the ruling elite and the armed forces affect the risk of coups in opposite ways. Elected authoritarian legislatures are instruments that leaders employ to co-opt members of the incumbent coalition and are expected to decrease the likelihood of coups. In contrast, purges of insider actors constitute a repressive strategy that depletes bases of support and increases the risk of coups. We find empirical support for these hypotheses from a sample of all authoritarian regimes from 1950 to 2004.     

Elite coordination and popular protest: the joint effect on democratic change

Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized how these two threats interact to promote higher levels of democracy. We argue that the effect of vertical threats is contingent on the existence of lateral threats. Popular mobilization is more likely to promote democratic change if a unified opposition translates popular grievances to democratic demands. Conversely, a mobilized population increases the probability that a unified opposition will enhance democratic change by increasing the reputational and organizational costs of repression and electoral manipulation. Our theoretical claims are corroborated by statistical analysis of 169 elections, held in 74 electoral autocracies around the globe 1991–2014.     

Institutional stepping stones for democracy: how and why multipartyism enhances democratic change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We argue that multiparty elections create an institutional space for oppositional parties, instrumentally motivated to promote further positive democratic change. We hypothesize that multiparty regimes are (1) generally more likely to experience positive democratic change, and (2) more importantly, more likely to do so when faced by internal or external regime threats. We test these hypotheses using cross-section time-series data on 166 countries in the period 1973–2010. Our results show a general positive effect of multipartyism for democratic change, and that multiparty regimes are more likely to improve their levels of democracy when faced with demonstrations and economic crisis.     

The Taliban and Islam

This paper examines the aims, motives and methods of the Taliban, the present rulers of most of Afghanistan. In accordance with their fundamentalist views the Taliban have established an Islamic system which focuses on the implementation of Shariah. This paper argues that the Taliban apply directly the divine injunctions which they have drastically sharpened ‐ that means without being sanctioned by act of law of men. The government which the Taliban have set up has so far reached only a low level of institutionalization; the real power emanates from their leader, Mullah Omar.     

The Taliban and Islam

This paper examines the aims, motives and methods of the Taliban, the present rulers of most of Afghanistan. In accordance with their fundamentalist views the Taliban have established an Islamic system which focuses on the implementation of Shariah. This paper argues that the Taliban apply directly the divine injunctions which they have drastically sharpened - that means without being sanctioned by act of law of men. The government which the Taliban have set up has so far reached only a low level of institutionalization; the real power emanates from their leader, Mullah Omar.     

Continuity despite change: Kenya's new constitution and executive power

What explains the continuation of strong executive power despite the introduction of new formal constraints on presidents? This article focuses on the elites working within the state agencies that execute presidential power, who benefit materially from their authority and have incentives to defy formal constraints placed on their own power. To evaluate this claim, I examine Kenya's 2010 constitution, which intended to reduce the power of Kenya's “imperial presidency” through formal constraints on the executive. As implementation has progressed, however, the executive bureaucracy – the Provincial Administration (PA) – has not changed in size, structure, or function, contrary to the explicit goals of the constitution's drafters. Using original interview and archival evidence, I find that the persistence of this agency – and by extension strong executive power – is due to PA administrators’ attempts to protect their material interests. This article shows that formal rule change may be insufficient to spur democratization in the face of entrenched authoritarian bureaucracies with strong incentives to maintain their pre-existing interests.     

Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Forced Migration, 1964-1989

In this study we explore why persons flee their homes to become refugees and internally displaced persons. We contend that individuals will tend to flee when the integrity of their person is threatened. Further, we argue that they will flee toward countries where they expect conditions to be better. We conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 129 countries for the years 1964-1989. Our findings support the conclusion that threats to personal integrity are of primary importance in leading people to abandon their homes. Measures of state threats to personal integrity, dissident threats to personal integrity, and joint state-dissident threats each have statistically significant and substantively important effects on migrant production. We also find that countries making moves toward democracy tend to have greater number of forced migrants, once other factors are considered. We conclude the analysis by identifying several lucrative areas for further investigation.     

Abortive regime transition in Egypt: pro-democracy alliance and demand-making framework

What accounts for the failed transition and restructuring of authoritarianism in Egypt after a fleeting rupture in 2011? How did the dominant statist party lose its iron grip on power? Why did the collapse of the dominant party not bring about significant democratic transformation and generate power-sharing pacts? The article aims to go beyond the question of the importance of either authoritarian resilience or the transition paradigm to offer a two-layered analytical framework based on leverage level and the coherence of pro-democracy forces’ demands to account both for the timing of one-party collapse and the consequent dynamics of authoritarian revival. I allow room for complex and strategic interactions between different components of pro-democracy forces and the old ruling class to elucidate the contingent political trajectory after the time of disintegration. When pro-democracy forces maintained their leveraged position and kept a demand-claiming framework unified, they secured a ‘cooperative differentiation’ position and were able to apply consistent democratization pressure that led to regime breakdown. When they adopted a conformist stance and accommodated their demands to the incumbent regime, they became captive to the interests of old regime holdovers and asserted an ‘antagonistic identification’ position that hobbled efforts to move towards democratization.     

Arab Spring constitution-making: polarization,exclusion, and constraints

What determines the balance that democratizing constitutions strike between majority empowerment and individual rights? Some constitutions deliberately handicap state power to forestall threats to liberty, while others try to empower the government to hold the country together. We answer this question in the context of post-Arab Spring constitution-making, hypothesizing a U-shaped relationship between polarization among politically significant factions and net majority-empowering provisions in constitutions of new democracies, a relationship mediated by breadth of inclusion in the constitutional drafting process. We test the hypothesis through a controlled case comparison of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, the three Arab-majority countries in which protestors successfully toppled authoritarian regimes.     

Sovereignty at Sea: States and Security in the Maritime Domain

The oceans present a variety of perils to both states and private actors, ranging from smuggling to direct attacks on vessels. Yet, a disconnect exists between states’ maritime power and sovereign fleets due to the emergence of open shipping registries in the 20th century. How have great powers like the United States responded to threats generated by transit of the oceans for legitimate and illicit purposes? The nature of peacetime security threats that states confront at sea has shaped divergent responses. The main maritime powers draw a distinction between threats aimed at states and threats to commerce. Where perceived threats to the state are concerned, great powers have sought to revise understandings of the protections sovereignty provides—specifically, by seeking expanded interdiction rights—to further their own security goals. When maritime powers perceive that international commerce is under threat, they delegate the sovereign protection function both upward to internationally sanctioned maritime coalitions and outward to private security firms. These policies are responses to the security challenges that result from the decoupling of sovereign power and the merchant fleet that followed the emergence of open shipping registries.     

Why do they vote out of habit? Habitual voting under diverse regimes in East Asia

While scholars have shed light on our understanding of elections in less and non-democratic countries, the incentives behind electoral participation in these countries remain unexplored. This paper sets out to investigate how regime structure is associated with voters' incentives of habitual voting. We assert that the formation of voting habits is associated with the relationships of citizens with the state and their expectations about it. Thus, habitual voting reflects voters' understandings about, perceptions of, and concerns with their political environment and system. In democracy, habituated voting behavior is strongly associated with respondents' support for the regime because their sense of civic duty encourages them to vote. In authoritarian regimes, knowing that their ballots are the adornments of the authoritarian government, habitual voting simply reveals citizens' short-term support for the government or their concerns with the vertical accountability of the government. We further test the hypotheses against Asian Barometer Survey data and the analysis evidences our assumptions.     

The Interaction Effects of Bargaining Power: The Interplay Between Veto Power,Asymmetric Interdependence,Reputation, and Audience Costs

In international relations, different rationalistic theories have developed to explain negotiators’ behavior and the outcomes of negotiations. The compatibility and interaction effects between the different forms of bargaining power, however, remain unexplored. In this article, I seek to fill this gap by connecting four rationalistic concepts of bargaining power: veto power, asymmetric interdependence, reputation, and audience costs. By showing that domestic veto players are only semiveto players in international politics – because they can veto an improvement but not a deterioration of the status quo – threats based on asymmetric interdependence to disrupt a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship can be connected to veto power; the incompatibility of the factors concerned would otherwise make this impossible. The combination of veto power and asymmetric interdependence, however, raises a theoretical question: Will rational actors ever approve a deterioration of the status quo? Theories of reputation and audience costs can help answer this question. According to these approaches, threatening parties suffer ex post costs when they back down from their own threats. This theoretical analysis sheds new light on how different forms of bargaining power interact with each other and also helps to address some of the theoretical inconsistencies of the original individual concepts. Finally, this analysis suggests some of the weaknesses of empirical studies that have neglected these interaction effects.     

Meeting the Dalai Lama and perceptions of democracy in China: a quasi-natural experiment

How does the international human rights community affect the likelihood of democratization? Scholarship on Chinese citizens’ preferences about their political system has not explored the importance of the external environment, perhaps surprising given the extensive foreign pressure on China’s authoritarian system over the last 30 years. I use a quasi-natural experiment around the meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama in 2011 to examine the impact of foreign pressure on citizens’ perceptions of democracy in China in real time. I show that the meeting significantly increased the Chinese public’s belief that their country is democratic, with those of above average patriotism over 11 percentage points more likely to believe China is democratic in the five days following the meeting than before. The findings suggest that some kinds of external pressure may help to increase satisfaction with authoritarian rule, ultimately boosting autocrats’ ability to hold on to power.     

The Post-Coup Military Spending Question Revisited, 1960–2000

Do military regimes spend more on the military than other regime types? All leaders cater to their winning coalition. For military leaders, core supporters are other members of the military. To solicit support from this group, first, leaders are persuaded to spend more on the military to ensure their political survival, while other autocratic leaders tend to view the military as a competing power center. Second, the cost of repressing challenges from the public in military regimes is cheaper than in other regimes; therefore, leaders in military regimes allocate more resources to the military to satisfy them. We test this argument by examining military spending in different regime types for 1960–2000. The empirical results from Prais-Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors indicate that military regimes allocate more, on average, to the military than other regimes and that military rulers brought into power through military coups or who have experienced military coup attempts against them increase their military resource allocation.