DEMOCRACIES, AUTOCRACIES AND

TRANSITIONS
LECTURE 1: READINGS

WHY BOTHER WITH ELECTIONS? BY ADAM PRZEWORSKI

1. Introduction

- We select our government through elections

- In a typical election about 1 in 2 voters end up on the losing side
- Presidential systems: The winner rarely receives much more than 50% of
the vote

- Parliamentary must-part systems: The largest share is rarely higher than

40%
- Many people who votes for the winner are dismayed with their performance in o ce
- In other realms of life we adjust our choices based on experience, but not in elections. Is that
irrational?

-> Questions concerning the value of elections as a mechanism through which we collectively
choose who will govern us and and how they will do it

Polarisation/ Crisis of Democracy:

- Fears that elections only perpetuate the rule of elites

- Fears about the rise of populist, xenophobic, repressive and racist parties
- Trump, Brexit, European anti-establishment partied etc. are often labelled as fascist
- However, there is nothing un democratic about the way they came to power
- Campaigns under the slogan of returning to the people - not anti-democratic
- Dissatisfaction with the results of elections is not the same as dissatisfaction with elections
mechanism of a collective decision-making

Why should and why do we value elections as a method for selecting by whom and how we
wish to be governed?

- The author disagrees with the popular criticism of elections that they o er no choice and
that individual electoral participation is ine ective

- Argues that elections provide an instruction to governments to minimise the dissatisfaction

with how we are governed.
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 RESPONSIVENESS: When governments follow these instructions

ACCOUNTABILITY: Whether elections serve to remove governments that do not.

- Under capitalism, there is an expectation for elections to have the e ect of reducing
economic inequality

MINIMALIST/CHURCHILLIAN VIEW OF ELECTIONS: This view admits that elections are never
quite fair, impotent against some barriers they face in particular societies, and generally far
from ideal. However, no other methods of selecting a ruler can do better.

- The author criticises comparisons between observed and counter factual states because they
are based on assumptions: eg. What would have transpired in the US if governments were not
elected and in China if they were?

COMPETITIVE ELECTIONS: Elections in which those in power lose when a majority of voters
so wish

- Competitive elections are a relatively recent and quite rare phenomenon

1788: First national election based of universal su rage (US)

- As of 2008, 68 countries, including China and Russia, had never experienced a change in
o ce between parties as a result of elections.

VOTING DOES NOT MEAN ELECTING!

- Elections in one-party systems: Intended to persuade the opposition that it has no chance
to remove the rulers by any means, aiming to intimidate rather than select.

- Contented but not competitive elections: Some opposition is legally allowed, but the
incumbent rulers make sure that no one has a chance to remove them

ADMITTING A NORM AND VIOLATING IT IN PRACTICE:

-> Holding non-competitive elections is a trick, but it is based on the ideal that the ultimate
source of power resides in the people, with recognition of the norm that people have the right
to be governed by governments they choose.

- Non-competitive elections can reduce civic violence by revealing information about the
rulers’ relative military strength and thus about the probable failure of any attempts to
remove the ruler by force

WHY WOULD ELECTIONS NOT BE COMPETITIVE?

1. Equal political rights exercised through elections can threaten property: if everyone has an
equal right to in uence political decisions and if a majority of the people is poor, the
majority would vote to con scate property.

2. Elections are threatening to the holders of political power - they fear they may lose.
Sometimes risk is too high - put yourself in Putin’s place. The opposition will destroy him.
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 DEMOCRACIES AS A UNIVERSAL VALUE BY AMARTYA SEN

- According to Sen, the most important thing that happened in the 20th century was the rise
of democracy

HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY

- Originated in Ancient Greece

- E orts at democratisation were also attempted elsewhere as well, including India
- Greek democracy eventually collapsed and was replaced by more authoritarian forms of
government

- It was in the 20th that the idea of democracy became established as the "normal" form of
government

- The American ghters for independence and the revolutionaries in France contributed greatly
to an understanding of the need for democracy as a general system. Yet the focus of their
practical demands remained quite local

19th century: Theorists of democracy discussed whether a country is “ t for democracy”

NOW: This thinking changed, and now a country has to become ‘ t through democracy”

- Only in 20th century did people nally accepted that "franchise for all adults" must mean
all--not just men but also women

- Democratic governance has now achieved the status of being taken to be generally right.
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE

- How well has democracy worked?

- A matter of dispute for the poorer countries
- Sen argues it has worked well enough
1947: India is in disarray as it just gained independence

- It had an untried government, an undigested partition, and unclear political alignments,

combined with widespread communal violence and social disorder.

- But half a century later democracy is working remarkably well

- India survived the tremendous challenge of dealing with a variety of major languages and a
spectrum of religions.

DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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THE LEE HYPOTHESIS: The claim that nondemocratic systems are better at bringing about
economic development.

- Advocated by Lee Kuan Yew: Former president of Singapore

- The hypothesis is based on sporadic empiricism, drawing on very selective and limited
information, rather than on any general statistical testing over the wide-ranging data that are
available.

- If not authoritarianism, then what led to the economic success of some countries in East
Asia?

- There is a broad consensus on a list of helpful policies:

- openness to competition
- the use of international markets
- public provision of incentives for investment and export
- high level of literacy and schooling
- successful land reforms

- No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a
relatively free press

- Famines are often associated with what look like natural disasters, and commentators often
settle for the simplicity of explaining famines by pointing to these events

- Nevertheless, many countries with similar natural problems, or even worse ones, manage
perfectly well, because a responsive government intervenes to help alleviate hunger.

- Since the primary victims of a famine are the indigent, deaths can be prevented by
recreating incomes (for example, through employment programs), which makes food
accessible to potential famine victims

- Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious e ort to do so, and a democratic
government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent
newspapers, cannot help but make such an e ort

- Many economic technocrats recommend the use of economic incentives (which the market
system provides) while ignoring political incentives (which democratic systems could
guarantee).
- The protective power of democracy may not be missed much when a country is lucky
enough to be facing no serious calamity, when everything is going quite smoothly.

- The recent problems of East and Southeast Asia bring out, among other things, the penalties
of undemocratic governance:
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 - Eg. Financial crisis in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia linked to the lack of transparency in
business

THE FUNCTION OF DEMOCRACY

What is democracy?

- Should not be identi ed with majority rule

- Demand for:
- Voting
- Respect of election results
- Protection of liberties and freedoms
- Respect for legal entitlements
- Guaranteeing of free discussion
- Uncensored distribution of news and fair comment
3 Ways In Which Democracy Enriches The Lives of Citizens:

1. Political freedom is a part of human freedom in general, and exercising civil and political
rights is a crucial part of good lives of individuals as social beings. Political and social
participation has intrinsic value for human life and well-being. To be prevented from
participation in the political life of the community is a major deprivation.

2. Instrumental value in enhancing the hearing that people get in expressing and supporting
their claims to political attention

3. Gives citizens an opportunity to learn from one another, and helps society to form its values
and priorities.

Reach and e ectiveness of open dialogue:

- Often underestimated in assessing social and political problems.

- Eg; Public discussion has an important role to play in reducing the high rates of fertility that
characterize many developing countries.

- The sharp decline in fertility rates in India's more literate states has been much in uenced by
public discussion of the bad e ects of high fertility rates on the community at large, and
especially on the lives of young women

UNIVERSALITY OF VALUES

- Intrinsic importance of political participation and freedom in human life

- Instrumental importance of political incentives in keeping governments responsible and
accountable
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 - Constructive role of democracy in the formation of values and in the understanding of needs,
rights, and duties

First counter-argument to seeing democracy as a universal value:

- Lack of unanimity: Not everyone agrees on the decisive importance of democracy,

particularly when it competes with other desirable things for our attention and loyalty

What is a universal value?

- Does not have to be unanimously consented to. No value is.

- The claim of a universal value is that people anywhere may have reason to see it as valuable.
- The biggest attitudinal shift toward democracy has occurred in the twentieth century
because of acceptance of this very presumption. That was based on observing the history of
the twentieth century. As democracy has spread, its adherents have grown, not shrunk.

Second counter-argument to seeing democracy as a universal value:

- Presence of regional contrasts, often related to poverty of some nations. According to this
argument, poor people are interested, and have reason to be interested, in bread, not in
democracy.

- This is wrong on 2 di erent levels:

1. The protective role of democracy may be particularly important for the poor. This obviously
applies to potential famine victims who face starvation.

2. There is very little evidence that poor people, given the choice, prefer to reject democracy.
Eg: The struggle for democratic freedoms in South Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Burma, Indonesia, and elsewhere in Asia

THE ARGUMENT FROM CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Third counter-argument to seeing democracy as a universal value:

- Asian values: It has been claimed that Asians traditionally value discipline, not political
freedom, and thus the attitude to democracy must inevitably be much more skeptical in
these countries.

- It is very hard to nd any real basis for this intellectual claim in the history of Asian cultures
- Asia is a vast area containing 60 percent of the world's population, and generalizations
about such a vast set of peoples is not easy. Also lack of recognition of heterogeneity within
each culture
- It is not hard, of course, to nd authoritarian writings within the Asian traditions. But neither
is it hard to nd them in Western classics

- Most of the supporters of Asian Values are governmental spokesmen, not academics
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LECTURE 2: READINGS

CHAPTER 5: DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP: CONCEPTUALISATION AND MEASUREMENT

- It is only relatively recently that democracy has come to be considered a political system to
be championed and exported around the world.

- Examination of how the meaning and appeal of democracy has changed over time.
DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

- Democracy acquired a highly positive connotation during the second half of the twentieth
century

- Dictatorships adjusted their de nition of democracy so that the word could be applied to
their form of regime

- Until the middle of the nineteenth century, democracy was commonly viewed as an obsolete
and ancient political system that was both dangerous and unstable.

- 520 BC, Persia: The earliest debates surrounding the merits of di erent forms of regime
- Plato and Aristotle were the rst who began to think systematically about the di erent forms
that regimes could take.

DEMOKRATIA (Greek): Rule by the people

DEMOS (Greek): Common people - those people with little or no economic independence who
were politically uneducated

PLATO’S VIEW:

- Democracy is the rule by the poor and uneducated against the rich and educated.
ARISTOTLE’S VIEW:

- Disagreed disagreed with Plato to the extent that he believed that there were some
conditions under which the will of the many could be equal to or wiser than the will of the
few
- This is not to say, however, that he thought highly of democracy
- He believed that regimes come in good and bad forms.
- In good forms of regime the rulers govern for the good of all, whereas in bad forms they
govern only for the good of themselves

- The good forms of regime were monarchy, aristocracy, and politeia; the bad forms were
tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy

- Each of the good forms of regime could be corrupted

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 - We should choose the type of regime that had the least dangerous corrupt form - aristocracy
for Aristotle

—> Some of the same fears about democracy—that it would result in class warfare, attempts
by the poor to expropriate the rich, and so forth—were just as strong in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, when people were debating whether to extend the su rage

- In the 18th century democracy was associated with direct legislation by the people and,
hence, was possible only in the city-states of the ancient world.

- Only with the establishment of a major fault line between democracy and aristocracy in the
age of revolution—French and American—did representative government and democracy
come to be synonymous with each other

- Until this time, moves away from absolutism were motivated by attempts to get rid of unjust
rulers rather than a desire to shift power to the people

- Members of the nobility would often side with commoners to get rid of unjust rulers
CLASSIFYING DEMOCRACIES AND DICTATORSHIPS

Dahl’s View of Democracy and Dictatorship

- The central notion under- lying our contemporary concept of democracy is that “the people”
rather than some subset of the people should rule

- Dahl cautioned scholars against employing a substantive view of democracy

SUBSTANTIVE VIEW OF DEMOCRACY: Classi es political regimes in regard to the outcomes
that they produce and not just the institutions that they have.

- Dahl argued that if scholars used normatively derived or substantive de nitions of “ideal
democracy”—that “true” democracies should rule in certain ways and should produce
certain outcomes such as economic justice or government accountability—then they may
nd it di cult to nd real-world examples of such regimes.
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 - Dahl believed that researchers should employ a minimalist, or procedural, view of
democracy

MINIMALIST/PROCEDURAL VIEW OF DEMOCRACY: Classi es political regimes only in regard

to their institutions and procedures.

- Dahl identi ed two dimensions as being particularly important for classifying political
regimes—contestation and inclusion.

CONTESTATION: Captures the extent to which citizens are free to organize themselves into
competing blocs in order to press for the policies and out- comes they desire.

- Includes: freedom to form political parties, freedom of speech and assembly, and the extent
to which leaders are chosen in free and fair elections

INCLUSION: Has to do with who gets to participate in the democratic process.

- Dahl was willing to drop the use of the term democracy altogether. Instead, he used the
word polyarchy to describe a political regime with high levels of both contestation and
inclusion

POLYARCHY: A political regime with high levels of both contestation and inclusion.

THREE MEASURES OF DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

1. The Democracy-Dictatorship (DD) Measur

- Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland (2010

- Conceptualisation of democracy: Democracies are “regimes in which governmental o ces
are lled as a consequence of contested elections”

- 2 primary components:
1. Governmental o ces: It must be that both the chief executive o ce and the legislature are
elected.

2. Contestation: Requires that there exists an opposition that has some chance of winning
o ce as a consequence of elections.

- 3 ELEMENTS OF CONTESTATION:
1. ex ante uncertainty: the outcome of the election is unknown before it happens,

2. ex post irreversibility: the winner of the election actually takes o ce

3. repeatability: elections that meet the rst two criteria must occur at regular and known
intervals

- A country is classi ed as a democracy if all of the following conditions apply:

1. The chief executive is elected.

2. The legislature is elected.

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3. There is more than one party competing in the elections.

4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place.

—> An alternation in power means that the individual who is the chief executive is replaced
through the electoral process by someone else.

- A country is classi ed as a dictatorship if any of these four conditions do not hold.

This theory builds on Dahl:

- The DD measure is based on a purely procedural or minimalist view of democracy and

dictatorship

- It focuses strongly on Dahl’s notion of contestation

- But treats regime type as a dichotomy—countries are either a democracy or a dictator-
ship—whereas Dahl treats regime type as a continuum

2. Polity IV

- Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers

- Provides an annual measure of democracy and autocracy for 190 polities from 1800 to the
present

- The Democracy and Autocracy scores for each country both range from 0 to 10.
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- From these two measures, a Polity Score is constructed for each country
- The Polity Score is calculated as the Democracy Score minus the Autocracy Score. As a
result, the Polity Score for each country ranges from a minimum of –10 (as autocratic or
dictatorial as possible) to a maximum of 10 (as democratic as possible).

- Measures democracy on a continuum

- Many scholars code countries as democracies if their Polity Score is +6 to +10, dictatorships
if their Polity Score is –6 to –10, and as an “anocracy” or “mixed regime” if the Polity Score is
between –5 and 5.

- Also a procedural measure of democracy

- The Polity Score is based on 5 di erent attributes:
1. The competitiveness of executive recruitment

2. The openness of executive recruitment

3. The constraints that exist on the executive (Addition to Dahl)

4. The regulation of political participation

5. The competitiveness of political participation

3. Freedom House

- An independent, nongovernmental organization

- Provided an annual measure of “global freedom” for countries around the world since 1972.
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- Not exactly a measure of democracy, but scholars use it as if it were.
- The score is based on 2 dimensions capturing a country’s level of political rights and civil
rights.

- The amount of freedom on the political rights dimension is measured by a series of ten
questions, each worth between 0 and 4 points, covering three primary categories: (i) the
electoral process, (ii) political pluralism and participation, and (iii) the functioning of
government.

- Whatever score a country gets out of the possible 40 points is then converted to a 7-point
scale. Thus, each country ultimately receives a score of 1 to 7 on the political rights
dimension.

- The amount of freedom on the civil rights dimension is measured by a series of fteen
questions, each worth between 0 and 4 points, covering four primary categories: (i) freedom
of expression and belief, (ii) associational and organizational rights, (iii) rule of law, and (iv)
personal autonomy and individual rights.

- Whatever civil rights score a country gets out of the pos- sible 60 points is also converted to
a 7-point scale. Thus, each country ultimately receives a score of 1 to 7 on the civil rights
dimension as well.

- The overall Freedom House score for each country is simply the average score on each of
the two dimensions.

- Measures democracy as a continuum

- In practice, if a country scores 1 to 2.5, it is considered Free; if it scores 3 to 5.5, it is con-
sidered Partly Free; and if it scores 5.5 to 7, it is considered Not Free.

- Employs a substantive view of democracy; believes that although particular institutions are
necessary for democracy, they are not su cient. As a result, Freedom House takes into
account the substantive outcomes produced by di erent political regimes, such as whether
there is academic freedom, freedom from war, and freedom from socioeconomic
inequalities.

COMPARING DD, POLITY IV, AND FREEDOM HOUSE SCORES

- High degree of overlap between the 3 measures in clear-cut cases

- There is considerable disagreement among the measures when it comes to classifying the
mixed regimes,

- There is growing evidence that the results from empirical tests relating to democracy and
dictatorship do in fact depend on which particular measure is employed

EVALUATING MEASURES OF DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

1. Conceptualisation

- All 3 measures di er in their conceptualisations of democracy and dictatorship

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 - In particular, they di er in regard to whether they employ (a) a minimalist or substantive and
(b) a dichotomous or continuous view of democracy

- DD and Polity IV: minimalist

- Freedom House: substantive
- The measure you choose depends largely on the research question you ask
Advantages of the minimalist approach:

- Potential advantages when it comes to isolating causal processes.

- Recognises that democracies can be organized in many di erent ways: does not place
importance on things such as how the judiciary is organized or how the state intervenes in
the economy.

—> In many ways, a free and democratic country according to Freedom House looks
remarkably similar to an idealized version of the United States

- Dichotomous vs. Continuous measure

- DD: Dichotomous
- Polity IV and Freedom House: Continuous
- Scholarly disagreement about the merits of each measure
- Choice will depend to an extent on the RQ
2. Validity

- Validity refers to the extent to which our measures correspond to the concepts that they are
intended to re ect

1. Attributes: Whether a particular measure includes the “correct” attributes, whether it

includes enough attributes to fully capture the concept, or whether it includes too many
attributes.

- Issue with too many attributes.

- Often the case in substantive approaches like the Freedom House
- Dahl was worried that there would be no actual countries in the world that could
be classi ed as true democracies if too many attributes were included
- Issue with too few attributes
- Minimalist or procedural measures of democracy, such as those constructed by DD and
Polity IV, are open to the criticism that they do not really capture all of what we think of when
we think of democracy.
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 - Eg. DD measure does not take into account the notion of inclusion
2. Aggregation: How to combine these attributes into a single measure of the concept.

- The measure of regime type from DD does not require aggregation rules—a country is either
a democracy or a dictatorship based on whether it passes a set of necessary and su cient
conditions.

- The measures of democracy and dictatorship from both Freedom House and Polity IV
require aggregation rules to combine scores on multiple attributes into a single overall
regime score.

- A consequence of requiring aggregation is that there can be numerous ways of obtaining

the same Freedom House or Polity IV score.

3. Measurement level: nominal, ordinal, or interval

- DD: nominal
- Polity IV and Freedom House: Interval

3. Reliability

- A reliable measure is one that repeatedly and consistently produces the same score for a
given case when we apply the same measurement process

- A reliable measure of democracy would be one in which several people, when given the
same rules for measuring democracy, all produce the same democracy score for a given
country.

- The DD measure of regime type is likely to be highly reliable because it is based entirely on
observables. Given the ease with which we can observe elections, political parties, and so
on, it is highly unlikely that two individuals would code the same country di erently using
DD’s rules.

- The measures provided by Freedom House and Polity IV are likely to be less reliable
because of their reliance on the subjective judgments of the individuals coding each country.

4. Replicability

- The ability of third-party scholars to reproduce the process through which a measure is
created.

- At a minimum, replicability requires that scholars provide clear coding rules and make their
disaggregated data available.

- DD and Polity IV provide much more detailed and clear coding rules for constructing their
measures of regime type than Freedom House does.

- Freedom House provides no coding rules for why a country might be given, say, a 3 on one
of its twenty- ve questions instead of any other score.
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 THE CULTURAL PARTICULARITY OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY BY BHIKHU PAREKH

WESTERN TRIUMPHALISM

- After the fall of Communism, many argued that western liberal democracy is the best regime
out there

- Some think that the spread of western democracy is justi ed because the west is seen as a
‘moral leader’

- The nature and universalizability of western liberal democracy has thus become a subject of
great philosophical and political importance.

AIM OF THE PAPER:

a) To elucidate the inner structure of liberal democracy

b) To assess the validity of the universalist claims made on its behalf.

SECTION I

- Athenian democracy ourished between 450BC-322BC

- It left behind a mixed legacy
LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: A liberalized or liberally constituted democracy; that is, democracy
de ned and structured within the limits set by liberalism.

LIBERALISM:

- Begun to gain intellectual and political ascendancy in di erent parts of Europe from the
seventeenth century onwards.

- Takes the individual as the ultimate and irreducible unit of society and explains the society in
terms of it - INDIVIDUALISM

INDIVIDUALISM: The view that the individual is conceptually and ontologically prior to society
and can in principle be conceptualized and de ned independently of society

- Di erent societies individuate people in di erent ways

- Ancient Athenians: Saw the human being as an integral part of nature and society and
believed that a man taken together with his land and political rights constituted an individual.

- Almost until the end of the Middle Ages a craftman’s tools were believed to be inseparable
from him such that they constituted his ‘inorganic body’

- Hinduism: caste as an integral part of one’s body

- The Chinese view of the family as an indissoluble organism linking ancest‘orsand
descendants into a living union gives rise to a highly complex conception of the individual.
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 INDIVIDUALISM IN LIBERALISM

- Each individual is distinct and easily distinguishable from others, unassimilable, and leads a
separate existence.

- Individuals de ne their individuality in terms of their separateness from others and feel
ontologically threatened and diminished when the boundary of their individuality gets blurred
or their selves overlap with those of others.

- Their constant concern therefore is to preserve their separateness

- Not warm emotional involvement, which leads to overlapping selves and compromises
autonomy, but the relatively cold and distant principle of mutual respect is the liberal’s
preferred mode of governing the relations between individuals.

- How closed individuals can form an open society?

- Liberty is conceptually prior to morality.
- Since morality, including moral rules, principles and ways of life, is a matter of choice, there
is and can be no substantive general agreement on the kind of life the individual and the
community ought to live.

- The individual’s central moral concern is twofold, to maintain his or her personal
independence and autonomy and to live peacefully with others by respecting theirs

- Liberals think that they share several interests derived from our common nature. These
include the security of life, liberty, property and so on

VIEW OF THE STATE

- The state, like civil society it is based on interest and has largely an instrumental value.
- However, unlike civil society, the state is a coercive and compulsory institution, coercive
because it enjoys the power of life and death over its members, compulsory because its
citizens are its members by birth and may not leave it, and outsiders may not enter it,
without its approval.

- The government’s primary task is to create and maintain a system of rights and to undertake
activities required by this.

- The government owes its existence and authority to the fact that its subjects are self-
determining agents wishing to pursue their self-chosen goals under conditions of minimal
constraints.
- The government is tasked with maximising their liberties and to facilitate their goals, which
by de nition it cannot do if it pursues large-scale goals of its own.

- Citizens of a liberal society do not all share a substantive conception of the good life. There
is therefore no moral source from which the government can derive, and in terms of which it
can legitimize, its substantive goals.

- A government engaging in a programme of large-scale economic redistribution or radical

transformation of the social order uses some of its citizens as instruments of its will and
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 treats their interests as less important than others’, violating the principles of human dignity
and equality.

- Such a programme implies that the government has something to distribute, but that’s not
true, because everything it owns is the product of the citizens’ labour

- Government intervention in the economy runs against human desires (life betterment) and is
therefore counterproductive

SECTION II

- Why and how democracy as traditionally understood on the basis of the Athenianexperience
enters the liberal world-view and whether the latter has a conceptual space for it

- Athenian democracy was grounded in the sense of community and liberalism is individualis
- Liberalism needs some kind of democracy for at least two reasons:
1. In the liberal view all individuals are free and equal ‘by nature’ and masters of themselves,
and no one can have authority over others without their consent. A liberal polity therefore
needs some mechanism by which the people can give their consent to and thereby confer
on the government the authority to govern them.

2. The liberal expects the government to set up and maintain a system of rights based on the
principle of maximum liberty. But the government might not set up such a system or, having
set it up, violate it. A liberal polity therefore needs a mechanism by which the people can
control and compel the government to ful l its trust.

—> Democracy is seen not as a form of collective existence, but as a mode of constituting and
controlling public authority

• The concept of democracy, as de ned by liberals, raises two signi cant questions.

• These questions are closely related:

• Who constitutes the people and wields ultimate political authority?

• What is the relationship between the people and their representatives?

The First Question:

• Liberals were initially hesitant about granting universal su rage.

• Arguments against universal su rage:

• a. Fear of hostility of the poor masses toward the rich and private property.

• b. Concern that universal su rage was associated with socialism.

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 • c. Belief that the rise of the masses to power would lead to cultural homogeneity,
intolerance, and the tyranny of public opinion.

• d. Concern that the masses preferred ignorance and habit over critical reasoning,
freedom of expression, and the pursuit of truth.

• e. Argument that voting rights should be limited to those possessing rationality,

knowledge, and an understanding of social and political a airs.

• f. Belief that universal su rage concentrated political power in the majority,

disenfranchising the minority.

• Liberals considered ideas like plural votes for the elite, proportional representation, and a
strengthened upper chamber to balance power.

The Liberal Response:

• When liberals realized the inevitability of democracy, they developed a strategy

to contain it.

• Constitutionally guaranteed rights to protect individual freedoms.

• Parliamentary sovereignty over popular sovereignty.

• Emphasis on elitist theories of representation and political parties.

• State-sponsored compulsory education to educate the masses in liberal

principles.

• Extending capitalism and colonialism to involve the masses in the capitalist

economy.

The Second Question:

• The relationship between the people and their representatives has two potential answers.

• One approach is "representative" or "indirect democracy," where representatives act as

delegates, and the people give them clear instructions.

• The liberal view opposed this, considering it a danger to democracy because it

threatened individual rights and private property.
• The atomized nature of liberal society hindered the formation of collective views on public
a airs.

• Representative democracy required a participatory culture that was often absent in liberal
societies.

Liberal Democracy:

• Liberal democracy is a complex blend of liberalism and democracy, with liberalism

determining the theory of the state and democracy shaping the theory of government.
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 • Liberalism de nes the state's nature, structure, rationale, and units, emphasizing
individual rights and autonomy.

• Democracy de nes the legitimate government, its authority, the means of acquiring
authority, and its exercise in harmony with public opinion.

• Liberal democracy manages to keep the democratic impulse in check within the
framework of liberalism.

Diversity of Liberal Democracy:

• The liberalization of democracy has taken di erent forms in various Western societies,
in uenced by their history, traditions, and social structures.

• Despite variations, common features of liberal democracies include individualism,

elections, majority rule, limited government, civil society autonomy, and the rule of law.

Comparison with Athenian Democracy:

• Liberal democracy di ers from its Athenian counterpart in terms of ideology, structure,
and central concerns.

• It cannot be considered a degenerate form of "true" democracy but a distinct historical

form with its own insights and limitations.

• It values individuality and protection of rights but misses the importance of public life and
communal well-being.

• It brings universality to democracy through the principle of one person, one vote.

Conclusion:

• Liberal democracy is open to criticism but should be evaluated based on its ability to
satisfy modern human aspirations and challenges, rather than conforming to classical
models.

SECTION III

• The text explores the question of whether liberal democracy has universal validity and
whether political systems that do not conform to it are improperly constituted and
defective.

Combining Liberalism and Democracy:

• Liberal democracy combines elements of liberalism and democracy to de ne a political

system.
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 • There is no inherent reason why a political system cannot combine these elements
di erently, assigning equal importance to both and using each to check the other's
excesses.

• Di erent combinations are possible, and political systems can adapt to their speci c
history, values, and needs.

Democratically Constituted Liberal Polity:

• Some political systems prioritize democracy over liberalism, cherishing individuals but
de ning rights in social terms.

• These systems seek a balance between individual and community, promote a fair
distribution of opportunities, extend participation in various spheres of life, and create
new centers of power.

• This approach is close to social democracy and partially transcends traditional liberalism.

Cultural Diversity and Political Systems:

• Political systems' approach to combining liberalism and democracy depends on their

history, values, and needs.

• Insisting on the universality of liberal democracy can undermine cultural diversity, impose
unsuitable governance systems, and result in cultural disruption, similar to the e ects of
colonialism.

Limitations of Liberal Democracy:

• Liberal democracy addresses the challenges posed by individualist societies after the
seventeenth century.

• However, its applicability may be limited in cohesive communities and multi-communal

societies.

Cohesive Communities:

• Societies with a strong sense of community de ne individuals in communal terms and

value the community over individualism.

• These societies restrict individual rights to maintain their traditional way of life and social
solidarity.

• Liberal democratic principles may not align with their values and aspirations.

Multi-Communal Societies:

• Multi-communal societies consist of several self-conscious communities preserving their

traditional ways of life.

• The Athenian and liberal models do not apply to these societies.

• India serves as an example, with distinct legal systems for various communities.
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 Evolution of Political Forms:

• Political forms should be adapted to cultural resources, needs, and circumstances.

• The value of liberal democratic institutions for non-western societies should be

determined based on their speci c contexts.

Universal Principles:

• A body of universally valid regulative principles must be negotiated broadly and grounded
in a global consensus.

• These principles should be freely accepted by involved parties, and moral authority
should evolve through resonating with people's lives and experiences.

UN Declaration of Human Rights:

• The UN Declaration has both liberal and genuinely universal principles.

• Universal principles, like respect for human life and protection of minorities, are not
unique to liberalism and are accepted across cultures.

Evidence of Universal Support:

• The UN Declaration was signed by governments from diverse cultures and geographical
areas.

• Amendments to the Declaration were accepted in the International Covenants of 1966,

emphasizing universal principles.

• People worldwide appeal to these principles in their struggles against repressive

governments.

Respecting Di erent Choices:

• Countries should be free to determine their forms of government within the bounds of
universally valid principles.

• Diversity is important, and choice and progress arise from competition between di erent
ways of life.

• Di erent forms of government should be respected and encouraged if they adhere to

universally accepted principles.

LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION

Today

• Patterns of democracy

• Why bother with democracy?

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• Democracy as an independent variable

• About DAT

PATTERNS OF DEMOCRACY

- Recent invention
- Easy to take it for granted
- Democracy is currently increasing globally
- Recent decline in the US democracy, which coincided with the election of Donald Trump
- Three waves of democracy:
1. Aftermath of WW1

2. Decolonisation

3. Decline of communism

—> We thought there was a 4th one during the Arab Spring, but it hasn’t really materialised

- Democracy is unevenly distributed in space

- There are clusters of democratic/authoritarian regimes (geographically)
Why bother with democracy?

- Adam Przeworski and Amartya Sen

- Both born in authoritarian regimes
- Sen -> British India, lived through a famine as a child
- Przeworski -> born in Communist Poland, then moved to the US

Why bother with democracy?

• Amartya Sen – Democracy as a universal value

- Makes an optimistic case for democracy

- Universal value - Something most people would nd value in if they were asked about it;
values that appeal to broad sections of the population
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 • The value of democracy:

1. Intrinsic: It is valuable in its own right, for its own sake, no matter if it provides any other
bene ts.

2. Instrumental: Democracy provides other bene ts, like government accountability.

3. Constructive: Democracy contributes to the creation of values. Makes people more aware
of their own needs.

Why bother with democracy?

• Amartya Sen – Democracy as a universal value

• “A country does not have to be deemed t for democracy; rather, it has to become t
through democracy.”

-> Against economic or cultural preconditions for democracy

Economic: poor people don’t care about voting

Culture: Asian countries not t for democracy

Why bother with democracy?

• Adam Przeworski – Why bother with elections?

—> De nes democracy in terms of elections:

• Competitive elections “as a mechanism by which we decide who will govern us and how.”

• When repeated, voters can express dissatisfaction with how they are governed.

—> More minimalist de nition

Why bother with democracy?

• Adam Przeworski – Why bother with elections?

-> More cautious view of democracy

• “For, in the end, elections are but a framework within which somewhat equal, somewhat
e ective, and somewhat free people can struggle peacefully to improve the world
according to their di erent visions, values, and interests.”

Why bother with democracy?

• E.g. India

• “How does one explain the paradox of a democratic system continuing to function in the
midst of sharp social cleavages and large-scale violence?” (Weiner 1989)
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- Festive atmosphere around elections in India
- Voting in India - the only way to remain visible to the state
- In India, larger voter turnout for the poor than the rich

Democracy as an independent variable

• Democracy as outcome (DV) vs democracy as cause (IV)

DEMOCRACY —> GROWTH

- Does democracy have a positive e ect on economic growth?

- The Lee Hypothesis: Authoritarian leaders are in a better position to be economically

successful as they don’t have to respond to the whole population.

—> We need more systematic data to draw a conclusion like this

- Data shows that democracies are better at fostering economic growth

- Authoritarian states - either economic miracles (China) or disasters (North Korea)

DEMOCRACY —> CLIMATE CHANGE

- Democratic regions that are high CO2 emitters

- Some autocratic countries are also very low emitters
- As countries progress towards democracy, their CO2 decreases (Povitkina 2018)
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 ABOUT DAT

• Democracy as an outcome – constructing questions

• Why do some countries become democratic while others do not?

• Why do some countries remain democracies while others return to authoritarianism?

• Are some types of authoritarian regimes more likely to democratize than others?

• Are structural factors or elite behavior more important in explaining democratization? What
about the role of domestic versus international factors?

• Why is democracy eroding in some established democracies, but not others?

• What lessons can be learned for international e orts at promoting democracy?

ABOUT DAT

Democracy as an outcome – constructing answers

• Concepts

• De nition

• Theory

• Links concepts

• Simpli es and complicates

• Clari es agency

• Empirical traction

• Research design

• Measurement

• Current and historical events, illustrative cases, quantitative data

ABOUT DAT

Fit in curriculum

• Situated within the sub eld of comparative politics

• Methodologically eclectic

• Global scope

• Beyond DAT?

• Core Module Comparative Politics (Imke Harbers, Norah Schulten, Joost Berkhout)
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 • Core Module International Relations (Brian Burgoon)

• The Politics of Di erence (Saskia Bonjour and Darshan Vigneswaran)

• Various BAWCs and BARPs

LECTURE 2: WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

Today

• Democracy, then and now

• Conceptions of democracy

• From concepts to measurement

• Democratizing democracy

Democracy, then and now

• Etymology

• Democracy as rule by the people

• But who, what, how, when, and where?

Democracy, then and now

• Early theoretical treatments

• Plato, The Republic

• Government as realm of experts

• Democracy as mob rule: The poor would let the demagogues rule

• Aristotle, The Politics

• Regime classi cation

• Number of rulers

• Exist in good and bad forms

• Democracy seen as susceptible to class warfare, unstable and dangerous

—> This negative view of democracy shared for centuries to come

Democracy, then and now

• Early experiments
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 • Athenian democracy

• Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon

• Su rage for free, adult males (30% of the population)

• Free speech, political equality, direct participation (those who had the right to
vote)

• Early ‘democracy’: council governance, village governance

• Involved sharing power, or a society governed by a council collective

• Ali and Stasavage (2020), Koelble and Lipuma (2008), Parekh (1992)

• Democracy was very di erent than it is now:

• E.g. Election by lot, and/or direct decision-making, and limited in processes and size

Democracy, then and now

• Shift in mid-19th century: Changes in perception and structure of democracy

• French and American Revolutions: Events that brought democracy to the stage

• Democracy as representative government

• Rapid expansion: Spread to many parts of the world

• Connection with liberalism (Parekh 1992): Hard to separate democracy from the emergence
of liberal ideas

• Emphasis on individual (“One person, one vote”): Economic democratisation

• Industrial revolution and expansion of capitalism: Political and economic freedom

• Resistance to expansion of democracy, including from liberals

• Conservative parties in Europe

Conceptions of democracy (debates)

1. Substantive vs. procedural conceptions

• Substantive or maximalist view

• Classi es regimes by the outcomes they produce

• However:
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 • Too many attributes —> no empirical referents

• For some questions —> limited analytical use

• Procedural or minimalist view

• Classi es regimes according to institutions and procedures

• Eg: Competitive elections, freedom of speech, rule of law, multiple parties

• However:

• Too few attributes à all cases become instances

• Procedural de nitions dominant

Conceptions of democracy

2. Electoral vs. liberal conceptions

• Electoral democracy (Dahl’s polyarchy)

• Contestation: Classi es regimes by procedures of democratic competition

• However:

• Are competitive elections enough?

• Inclusion: Classi es regimes based on who participates in the democratic process

• Eg: Citizenship: is it enough to vote?

• However:

• Inclusion —> little variation

• Liberal democracy

• Contestation and inclusion, but adds democracy as limited government

• Parekh )1992: 165): “The liberal expects the government to set up and maintain a
system of rights based on the principle of maximum liberty”

• Eg: Limits on the gov -> Division of power, congressional hearings etc.

Electoral democracy (Dahl’s polyarchy)

• Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971)

Limits on voting rights in the United States (in the context of exclusiveness)
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- Vary state by state
- In Europe: your citizenship linked to citizenship of your parents - exclusive
Conceptions of democracy

• 3. Other conceptual debates

• Dichotomous vs. continuous

• Democracy as a qualitative di erence

• Clark et al chapter

• Beyond electoral vs. liberal democracy

• Varieties of Democracy project (Coppedge et al. 2011, also see V-Dem website): See
democracy as multidimensional

• Electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian conceptions

• National vs. subnational democracy

• Examples

Subnational autocracy, national democracy?

- In some states in the US, democracy seems way worse than in others. In Republican-
controlled states, the state of democracy is declining. Subnational authoritarianism?

Subnational democracy, national autocracy?

Eg. India?: Less and less choices in elections on the national rather than state level.

From concepts to measurement: Building democracy indices

- Index that measures multiple components

Measuring electoral democracy (V-Dem)

• Institutional and procedural prerequisites:

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 1. Elected o cials

2. Free, fair and frequent elections

3. Freedom of expression (including press freedom)

4. Associational autonomy

5. Inclusive citizenship

Measuring liberal democracy (V-Dem)

• Institutional and procedural prerequisites:

I. Includes electoral democracy index

II. Adds liberal component index

1. Equality before the law and protection of civil liberties

2. Judicial constraints on the executive

3. Legislative constraints on the executive

Comparing measures

• See Clark et al. chapter

• Freedom House

• Polity V

(N.B. Teorell (2010) combines both!)

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 From concepts to measurement: Debates on measurement

• Divergence in ndings (Clark et al. chapter)

• Most disagreement for “mixed” or hybrid regimes

• Lecture on November 16

• Casper and Tu n (2017)

• Objective vs. subjective measures

• Disagreement on presence and extent of global democratic backsliding (Little and

Meng 2023, Knutsen et al. 2023)

• V-Dem, Polity, Freedom House use expert ratings, while Little and Meng claim to
use more objective measures

• Concerns about expert coder bias

“Democratizing” democracy

• Bikhu Parekh, The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy

• Liberal democracy: Critique

• Liberalism as the dominant element: Democracy is dominated by the liberal element

• Constructs individual as central unit: individuals distinct from the society - culturally
problematic around the world

• Democratic government as limited government

“Democratizing” democracy

• Bikhu Parekh, The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy

• Discussion

• What is Parekh’s critique of liberal democracy?

• What are other critiques?

• Discuss in pairs, then reconvene

“Democratizing” democracy

• Bikhu Parekh, The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy

• What is Parekh’s critique of liberal democracy?

• Universal aspirations of a culturally particular form

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 • Imposes liberal ideology

• What are other critiques?

• State formation radically di erent in postcolonial states

• Limited state capacity to pursue alternative paths

• Constraints imposed by international system

• Are other combinations of liberalism and democracy possible?

• Importance of social groups - often neglected

LECTURE 3: READINGS

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS UNDER DICTATORSHIP: CHAPTER 1; THE WORLD OF

DICTATORIAL INSTITUTIONS by Jennifer Gandhi

1.1: INTRODUCTION

- Little consensus exists over the de nition of regime type

- Some regimes are easy identify, for example Stalinist Russia. However, Singapore is a
di cult case

- Part of the problem is that dictatorial rulers are quite inventive in how they organize their rule.
- This inventiveness is most apparent when they govern with nominally democratic
institutions.

- The institutional diversitymakes it di cult to identify a consistent set of criteria by which to

de ne and classify dictatorships.

- Another point of confusion is due to the fact that even though historically dictatorship was
well de ned (originated in Rome), over time the understanding of what constitutes
dictatorship evolved due to political manipulations of the term.

- The author classi es dictators into 3 types:

1. Monarchical

2. Military

3. Civilian

1.2 WHAT IS DICTATORSHIP?

- Opposite of democracy
- Evolved from an institutional device used in ancient Rome to a system of rule that in modern
times is frequently associated with the absence of institutions and constraints

- Distorted due to political manipulation

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 - The neglect of institutional forms in nondemocratic regimes is not justi ed
1.2.1: HISTORICAL USAGE

- Contemporarily, tyranny and dictatorship maintain close association

- Tyranny was an Aristotelian regime type
- Not identi ed with dictatorship initially
- Dictatorship originated in Rome and it postdates Aristotle

ORIGINAL MEANING OF DICTATORSHIP: Rule by a leader who was selected by the Consul in
Rome to govern during periods of emergency when external war or internal rebellion
threatened the existence of the polity

- The term of the dictator was to last no more than six months
- He could not remain in power after the Consul that appointed him stepped
down

- Regular institutions of the state (eg. Magistrates or the senate) determined

whether the situation at hand required the nomination of a dictator for a
resolution

- Those who decided on the necessity of a dictatorship were not allowed to

nominate themselves for the position

- Only 1 man could occupy the position

- Did not have the power to abolish other state institutions
- Never chosen by the people
- The goal of dictatorial rule was restoration of the old political order

- 76 dictatorships ex- isted in Rome from 501 to 202 b.c.

- Did not engage in repression or sedation - therefore not associated with brutal or repressive
rule.

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP

- Sulla, a Roman general who refused to accept his dismissal and went on to march on Rome,
revived the institution of dictatorship in 82 b.c. in an attempt to legitimate his rule

- His regime marks the rst time that a dictatorship was established by the use of military
force
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- The excessive brutality that Sulla used to neutralize his opponents led to an association of
dictatorship with terror.

- Involved the complete placement of power – military, executive, legislative, judicial – in one
man to remake the political order.

- The old notion of dictatorship was over

- He did adhere to some limitations of the dictatorial power:
- After a short period, he stepped down from power and returned to private life
- In January 44 b.c. Caesar accepted the title of “dictator for life,” that the temporariness of
dictatorial power was abandoned.5
- The failure of Roman dictatorship was forgotten by Machiavelli and Rousseau who praised it
years later

DICTATORSHIP IN THE FOLLOWING CENTURIES

- In October 1973 dictatorship no longer referred to rule by just one man but to rule by a
group in relation to France

- Later, it was in reference to the entire class. Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917.
- Later used in relation to the Fascist Italian and Nazi regimes, meaning a highly oppressive
and arbitrary form of rule, established by force or intimida- tion, enabling a person or group
to monopolize political power without any constitutional limits, thus destroying
representative government, political rights, and any organized opposition”

- Also used in reference to the Soviet regime

INTERWAR PERIOD

- Events of the interwar period were important in that they precipi- tated an attempt to save
the original notion of dictatorship

- Carl Schmitt distinguished commissarial from sovereign dictatorship

- Commissarial dictatorship conforms to the original Roman concept of dictatorship
- Schmitt was writing to justify giving dictatorial powers to Germany’s reichspresident to deal
with escalating economic and social crises.

- He claimed that the dictator has authority to restore the preconstitutional will of the people,
even if it means altering the constitution itself

- The positive connotation of dictatorship was never to take hold

20th CENTURY

- The emphasis on the distinction between democracy and dictatorship is a twentieth-century

phenomenon.
 ——————-

- The crucial distinction is between autonomy and heteronomy:

Autonomous norm: Democratic forms of government are those in which laws are made by the
same people to whom they apply

Heteronomous norm: In autocratic states, lawmakers di er from those to whom the law is
addressed

- In this dichotomy, dictatorship is only de ned by what it is not:

- Dictatorships are regimes without competitive elections, without rule of law, without political
and civil rights, without regular alternation in power.
1.2.2: CONTEMPORARY CONTROVERSIES

- Dictatorships are de ned here as regimes in which rulers acquire power by means other than
competitive elections.

Reasons for why this is a useful de nition:

1. MINIMALISM: Focuses the procedural rather than substantive aspects of the regime type.
The purpose of a minimalist de nition is primarily for analytical clarity. It makes it easier to
establish causal connections.

2. APPLICABILITY: Broad de nitions can entail substantive notions that either generate
tautologies or limit the applicability of the concept produced.

3. EASY TO MEASURE: A strong correlation seems to exist between the number of attributes
and the amorphousness of these concepts

4. Finally, by appending more and more attributes to a de nition of dictatorship, we run the
risk of creating an empty set or, at the very least, neglecting the most important distinctions
among regimes.

Why is the focus on elections?:

1. The prospect of acceding to power by regular, contested elections is thought to produce

incentives for political actors that are di erent from those produced by irregular, nonelective
methods of selection. Elections are the reason why political actors are expected to behave
di erently and produce di erent outcomes in democracy and dictatorship.

2. Distinguishing regime type on the basis of elections reminds us that even if dictators have
other nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and parties, they are still
dictators.

1970s: 75% of all countries were dictatorships

Mid-1990’s: 50% of all countries were dictatorships

TYPES OF REGIME IDENTIFICATION:

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1. Freedom House

2. Polity

3. The one established by Przeworki et al (2000)

- Determine the regime type of countries on the basis of clear and observable criteria

- They all correlate well with each other

- However, once the easy cases at the extremes of the distribution (e.g., North Korea, Iran,
Sweden, and Great Britain) are excluded, the correlations become signi cantly weaker

1.3: WHO ARE THE DICTATORS?

- Why is it more di cult to identify the heads of government in dictatorships?

1. In dictatorships, the head of government goes by many di erent titles.

2. Dictatorships frequently have multiple executive gures – both nominal and e ective.

3. The nominal and e ective heads di er because an eminence grise lurks behind the scenes.

- There are also cases in which a long- lasting dictator rotates nominal
heads of government even as he retains ultimate power

4. For some countries, their political histories are largely about ghting over who is the e ective
head of government. In these cases, the nominal head of government may not be the e ective
head of government.

EMINENCE GRISE: A. powerful decision-maker or adviser who operates "behind the scenes

How to identify the e ective head of government?

1. General -secretaries of the com- munist party in communist dictatorships, except in the
case of Deng Xiaoping in China

2. King or presidents in noncommunist dicta- torships, except in the cases of Singapore,

Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, where the e ective head sometimes bears the
title of “prime minister

3. Another individual or the institutionalized military if sources agree that the nominal head of
government is not e ectively in charge

Why distinguish between monarchs, military rulers and civilian dictators?

1. These distinctions signify the unique types of threats to dictators and the institutional
methods by which they deal with them and organize their rule.
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2. The dictator’s decisions to govern with other types of institutions – namely legislatures and
political parties

1.3.1: MONARCHS

- Treated as a separate type of a dictatorship partially based on the number of people who
rule

- Aristotle distinguished monarchy as rule by one

- History revealed the drawbacks of monarchies: Freedom from all constraints opened up the
possibility of myopic, unpredictable, and unstable behavior on the part of monarchs that was
detrimental to their interests along with those of their subjects.

- Virtues of binding or constraining one’s own powers became apparent (more obedience for
the monarch)

FAMILIES

- Constrains for monarchs came in the form of dynastic families. Rulers of contemporary
monarchies had to accept kin as holders of important government positions, as legitimate
recipients of state revenues, and as participants in decision-making at all levels.

- Natural death is one way in which monarchs leave power but so is assassination or deposal
at the hands of other family members.

- Monarchs are not constrained by parliaments or courts but rather by family factions and kin
networks. Hence, rule by one has become rule by family.

1.3.2: MILITARY DICTATORS

- The use of armies and force in seizing power has a long history.
- The use of violence or coup d’e ́ tats in taking power is not what distinguishes military
dictatorship from other forms of nondemocratic rule.

- Force is almost always necessary

- What constitutes military rule is the fact that the armed forces are the institution through
which rulers govern.

- Military dictators must neutralize the threats posed by their closest colleagues and harness
their cooperation to govern.

- Within military regimes the junta is the locus of decision- making power.
- For generals who take power on behalf of the institutionalized military, their juntas typically
are small and include heads of the various service branches.

- For members, sometimes lower ranked, who seize power in a factional coup, their juntas
tend to be larger based on their need to attract members to their cause

- Military dictatorship as a regime type cannot have existed prior to the professionalization of
the armed forces that occurred at varying times throughout the developing world.
- Professionalization of the military created an institution distinct from the rest of society
- The military coup d’e ́ tat is only an inter- vention of the state within itself
PODER MODERADOR (moderating power): The military is repeatedly called into politics to be
the moderator of political activity, but is denied the right systematically to attempt to direct
changes within the political system.

—> Here, the military plays the role of Roman dictatorship

- The military was the rst sector to utilize imported technology (i.e., earlier than industry or
agriculture), to em- ploy meritocratic standards in recruitment and promotion, to regularly
provide for the basic needs of its members (e.g., literacy, food, shelter), and to o er programs
associated with the modern welfare state (e.g., insurance, pensions, family bene ts).

—> That happened when members of the military were not only soldiers but also citizens

1.3.3: CIVILIAN DICTATORS

- Civilian rulers do not have a ready-made organization on which to rely.

- They are often the subject of military contempt particularly when the armed forces are
imbued with a sense of mission.

- The military might obey because it may want to stay out of power to maintain institutional
cohesion

- Civilian dictators must have their own type of organization, eg: The Communist Party in
Russia

- Regime parties are also useful in maintaining civilian control over the military
1..3.4: OPERATIONALISATION OF DICTATORIAL TYPES

- 3 distinct forms of non-democracy:

1. Royal

2. Military

3. Civilian

- The following rules classify the sample of postwar dictators into these three typ
RULE 1; The ruler is a monarch if he, rst, bears the title of “king” or “emir” and, second, is the
successor or predecessor of rulers from the same family.

- If a ruler fails in his succession plans, he is not considered to be a monarch.

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 RULE 2: The e ective head of government is a military ruler if he is or was a member of the
institutionalized military prior to taking power.

- Not included as military dictators are those rulers who come to power as heads of guerilla
movements.

RULE 3: Ifdictatorsdonotqualifyaseithermonarchsormilitaryrulers by these two rules, they are

considered civilian dictators.

1.4: NOMINALLY DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

- Dictators do not rule alone

- They govern with institutions that are particular to their type.
- Those institutions may even be nominally democratic
1.4.1: LEGISLATURE

- De ned as a body with formal, but solely, legislative powers.

- Does not include:
1. Juntas because they fuse executive and legislative powers

2. Consultative councils because, lacking formal legislative power, they are authorized to
provide only advice and council to the ruler.

- The manner in which these legislatures are selected and organized varies considerably.
- Legislators may be appointed by the regime, or elected directly by citizens
- Even when elections are allowed, candidates must often be approved by government-
controlled bodies.

1.4.2: POLITICAL PARTIES

- De ned by their de jure existence.

- If the regime formally bans political parties, they are considered nonexistent even if some
may still operate underground.

- Dictators sometimes enter power, inheriting a system in which all parties have been banned.
- Yet it is more common for dictatorial rulers to close parties for a short period upon rst
entering power or to deal with emergencies during their tenures.

- Alternatively, the regime may create its own single party

- The regime party may contain “groupings” or “factions,” but they are not enough to
constitute a multiparty system

- When multiple political parties are allowed but are all forced to join a “front” with the regime
party, the arrangement is considered to be a single party.
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- There may be other parties outside of the hegemonic one, but they are not independent
enough to resist the regime’s demands that they stand together on electoral lists.

THE GLOBAL RISE OF PERSONALISED POLITICS:

IT’S NOT JUST DICTATORS ANYMORE by Andrea
Kendall-Taylor, Erica Frantz and Joseph Wright
- Examples of personalisation: Putin in Russia and Erdogan in Turkey
- But also Orban, Kaczynski, and leaders in Bangladesh, China and the Philippines
THE AUTHORITARIANIZATION MODEL

- Increased personalism is most pronounced in authoritarian settings

PERSONALIST DICTATORSHIP: Those regimes where power is highly concentrated in the

hands of a single individual

- Number of those increased signi cantly since the end of the Cold War
- Personalist dictators rule 40 percent of all authoritarian regimes.
- Most dictatorships since 1946 have not been ruled by personalist dictators
- Most dictatorships have been governed by strong political parties, or military juntas
- Over time, personalist regimes have become the dominant form of authoritarianism.
How do we explain the rise of personalism in authoritarian regimes?

1. Shift in the geopolitical environment in the post-Cold War period.

- During the Cold War, there were authoritarian Communist Party systems on the left, and
military dictatorships on the right

- Both of those system types were eventually discredited

- The decline of these ideology-based regimes has led to a post-ideological moment in
authoritarianism, with personalization as its main form.

2. Shift in the way that autocrats are coming to power

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 - Historically, most dictatorships have come from coups or insurgencies.
- Now more autocrats are assuming power through a process we call “authoritarianization,” or
the slow and incremental dismantling of democratic systems by democratically-elected
leaders.

- The way a dictator comes to power matters for the extent of personalization because the
strength and cohesion of the group that supports a leader’s ascent to power help determine
the institutional constraints the leader faces, and there- fore their latitude to consolidate
control
- Personalisation occurs when a leader emerges who is intent on expanding executive power
at the expense of their allies.

- If a leader succeeds in several power grabs, s/he may accumulate enough power that
regime o cials will no longer be able to resist.

- Historically, personalist dictatorships have been less prevalent than other forms of autocracy
because leaders entering o ce via coup or insurgency had to contend with and satisfy
members of the insurgent movement or military

- The rise of authoritarianization has meant that a growing number of autocrats are facing
weaker, less coherent elite inner circles, paving the way to greater personalization.

- The political parties surrounding autocrats who emerge through authoritarianization are often
weak and fragmented.

- In many cases of authoritarianization, ruling parties are newly created around the time that
the leader assumes power, and are built by co-opting opponents and merging with other
parties.

- This enables autocrats to negotiate with factions, as opposed to a united front, and therefore
more easily divide and conquer potential threats to personal power.

- Leaders who come to power via authoritarianization are also well-positioned to expand
executive control because they eliminate most other constraints on their power in the
process of emerging as autocrats.

THE PERILS OF PERSONALISM

- Personalist dictatorships tend to produce the worst outcomes of any type of political regime.
- Personalised leaders pursue the most risky and aggressive foreign policies
- The lack of accountability that personalist leaders face translates into an ability to take risks
that dictators in other systems simply cannot a ord

- Personalist dictators also prioritize loyalty over competence and dole out government
positions as well as promotions accordingly. This strategy decreases their access to
accurate information, raising the risk of miscalculations that can lead to con ict

- Decision-making in personalist settings means that leaders have the latitude to change their
minds at whim, producing volatile and sometimes even erratic policies.
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 - Personalist leaders are among those autocrats most suspicious of U.S. intentions, and view
the creation of an external enemy as an e ective means for boosting public support.

- Personalist regimes are the most likely types of autocracies to defy the e orts of the
democracy community. Personalist regimes are the least likely of all autocracies to
democratize upon their collapse.

THE PARADOX OF PERSONALISM

- Personalisation autocracies appears to run counter to popular arguments about the

international di usion of power.
- Many scholars argue that power is now being shared more widely by a growing number of
actors—to non- government organizations, corporations, and wealthy or even technology-
empowered individuals.

- The di usion of power has led many to suggest that the age of authoritarianism is over.
- Some political observers argue that current dictators will soon nd themselves unable to
build and maintain the level of power that autocracies—particularly highly personalized ones
— require to maintain their repressive systems of rule.

- However, autocrats possess a distinct set of skills and strategies that are allowing them to
slow the dissipation of power in ways that democracies cannot.

- By quashing alternative centers of power, con- trolling the media, and degrading institutions,
authoritarian regimes—and those leaders in the process of dismantling democracy—are
actually well positioned to insulate power.

- Autocrats create incentives that lead the myriad actors who can chip away at power—
including governors, judges, and entrepreneurs—to support rather than work against regime
goals.

- Academic research suggests that as individual fears of societal change and external threats
grow, so too does their preference for strong, decisive leaders who are willing to use force to
maintain order.

WARNING SIGNS: INDICATORS OF PERSONALIST DICTATORSHIP

- 5 INDICATORS
1. Install loyalists: Leaders seeking to consolidate their personal control over the political
system install loyalists in key positions of power including in the courts, the security
apparatus, the military, the ruling political party, and the bureaucracy

2. Promote family: Leaders looking to amass power seek to place close family members in
in uential positions, regardless of government experience.

3. Create a new party or movement: Leaders use these movements to signal their break with
the political establishment and create a new base for their support

4. Use of direct rule or referendum: Leaders intent on concentrating power also seek to
appeal directly to the public through referendum or plebiscites to legitimate their rule or
extend their time in o ce
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 5. New security services: This gives leaders direct access to an armed organization that is
person- ally loyal and that has the capacity to counterbalance the formal military.

DEMOCRATIC DECAY AND THE RISE OF PERSONALISM

- The personalization of politics is not con- ned to autocracies

- Many of today’s democracies that have experienced a decline in respect for democratic
principles, like Hungary and Poland, feature strong and decisive leaders, like Viktor Orban
and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who enjoy a disproportionate share of power
- The the subtle and incremental ways in which these leaders expand control rarely provide a
clear triggering point that serves to mobilize resistance.

- In cases in which vocal critics do emerge, personalizing leaders have learned to discredit
them as “agents of the establishment” or other provocateurs seeking to destabilize the
system.

- Many of today’s personalist democrats are popular, which provides a broad base of support
for their proposed changes.

- Once these leaders change the rules of the game to abolish well-established institutional
constraints on their behavior, even initial allies lose their ability to check the leader.

- It is imperative for organized groups, both in civil society and traditional political parties, to
mobilize against changes in the rules of the game.

LECTURE 3 and 4 : READINGS

How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression By
Gary King, Jennifer Pan, Margaret E. Roberts

INTRODUCTION

- The size and sophistication of the Chinese government’s program to selectively censor the
expressed views of the Chinese people is un- precedented in recorded world history.

- Social media is fractured across hundreds of local sites.

- The responsibility for censor- ship is devolved to these Internet content providers, who may
be ned or shut down if they fail to com- ply with government censorship guidelines.
- To comply with the government, each individual site privately em- ploys up to 1,000 censors.
- Internet police and 50 cent party members also contribute to the censorship e orts
- China overall is tied with Burma at 187th of 197 countries on a scale of press freedom
- This program, designed to limit freedom of speech of the Chinese people, paradoxically also
exposes an extraordinarily rich source of information about the Chinese government’s
interests, intentions, and goals

- The purpose of the censorship program is not to suppress criticism of the state or the
Communist Party.
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 - The purpose of the censorship program is to reduce the probability of collective action by
clipping social ties whenever any collective movements are in evidence or expected.

GOVERNMENT INTENTIONS AND THE PURPOSE OF CENSORSHIP

1. PREVIOUS INDICATORS OF GOVERNMENT INETNT

• Previous Focus on Government Intent:

• Scholars used to focus on deciphering the intentions and goals of the Chinese
regime's leaders.

• They used methods like Kremlinology or Pekingology.

• Notable researchers include Chang, Charles, Hinton, MacFarquhar, Schurmann,

and Teiwes.

• Western researchers depended on limited data sources.

• Shift in Research Focus:

• Cultural Revolution and China's economic opening led to more data sources.

• Researchers shifted their focus to areas with accessible information.

• Data Sources for China Studies Today:

• Researchers rely on government statistics, public opinion surveys, interviews with

• local o cials, and visible government actions.

• Notable sources include Guo, Kung, Chen, Shih, and Tsai.

• Limitations of Current Data Sources for Government Intent:

• These sources are indirect, sparsely sampled, and often of uncertain value.

• Government statistics and surveys may be manipulated or limited in their scope.

• Respondents may not freely express their views.

• Challenges in Measuring Government Intent:

• Di erent government agencies, leaders, or levels may have con icting objectives.

• Unitary intent or motivation can be hard to de ne or measure.

• Potential Solution:

• Censorship behavior provides insights into the state's revealed preferences.

• It may improve our ability to produce meaningful measures of government intent.

2. Theories of Censorship
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 - 2 theories of what constitutes the goals of the Chinese regime as implemented in their
censorship program

STATE CRITIQUE THEORY: Posits that the goal of the Chinese leadership is to suppress dis-
sent, and to prune human expression that nds fault with elements of the Chinese state, its
policies, or its leaders. The result is to make the sum total of available public expression more
favorable to those in power.

COLLECTIVE ACTION POTENTIAL THEORY: The target of censorship is people who join
together to express themselves collectively, stimulated by someone other than the
government, and seem to have the potential to generate collective action. In this view,
collective expression—many people communicating on social media on the same subject—
regarding actual collective action, such as protests, as well as those about events that seem
likely to generate collective action but have not yet done so, are likely to be censored.

3. Outline of results

- The nature of the two theories means that either or both could be correct or incorrect.
- State critique theory is incorrect and the theory of collective action potential is correct.
TYPES OF CENSORSHIP

- Human expression is censored in Chinese social media in at least three ways

1. The Great Firewall of China,” which disallows certain entire Web sites from operating in the
country. The Great Firewall is an obvious problem for foreign Internet rms, and for the
Chinese people interacting with others outside of China on these services, but it does little
to limit the expressive power of Chinese people who can nd other sites to express
themselves in similar ways.

2. Keyword blocking which stops a user from posting text that contain banned words or
phrases. This has limited e ect on freedom of speech, since netizens do not nd it di cult
to outwit automated programs. To do so, they use analogies, metaphors, satire, and other
evasions. The Chinese language o ers novel evasions, such as substituting characters for
those banned with others that have unrelated meanings but sound alike

3. Removal: Once past the rst two barriers to freedom of speech, the text gets posted on the
Web and the censors read and remove those they nd objectionable. As nearly as we can
tell from the literature, observers, private conversations with those inside several
governments, and an examination of the data, content ltering is in large part a manual
e ort—censors read post by hand.
CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS

- The government censors all posts in topic areas during volume bursts that dis- cuss events
with collective action potential.

- Instead, we hypothesize that the censors make the much easier judgment, about whether
the posts are on topics associated with events that have collective action potential, and they
do it regardless of whether or not the posts criticize the state.

- The censors also attempt to censor all posts in the categories of pornography and criticism
of the censors, but not posts within event categories of government policies and news.
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 CONCLUDING REMARKS

- The evidence suggests that when the leadership al- lowed social media to ourish in the
country, they also allowed the full range of expression of negative and positive comments
about the state, its policies, and its leaders.

- As a result, government policies sometimes look as bad, and leaders can be as

embarrassed, as is often the case with elected politicians in democratic countries, but, as
they seem to recognize, looking bad does not threaten their hold on power so long as they
manage to eliminate discussions associated with events that have collective action potential

- So long as collective action is prevented, social media can be an excellent way to obtain
e ective measures of the views of the populace about speci c public policies and
experiences with the many parts of Chinese government and the performance of public
o cials.

- As such, this “loosening” up on the constraints on public expression may, at the same time,
be an e ective governmental tool in learning how to satisfy, and ultimately mollify, the
masses.

AUTOCRACY WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS: BEIJING'S BEHIND- THE-SCENES REFORMS

BY YUEN YUEN ANG

- 1998: Broad consensus that China’s autocratic regime will not last
- 10 years after this prophecy, China has morphed into the world’s second largest economy
- Communication technology rapidly spread
- But democratisation has not arrived - the government actually seems even more
authoritarian

- Most Western observers have long believed that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand,
that economic liberalization both requires and propels political liberalization

- China de es this logic

- This leads to 2 broad conclusions:
1. China represents a temporary aberration and that liberalization will come soon. But this is
mostly speculation; these analysts have been incorrectly predicting the imminent collapse
of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) for decades.

2. The other camp sees China's success as proof that autocracies are just as good as
democracies at promoting growth--if not better
- Both of these explanations overlook a crucial reality: since opening its markets in 1978,
China has in fact pursued signi cant political reforms

- Those were below surface reforms: reforming its vast bureaucracy to realize many of the
bene ts of democratization--in particular, accountability, competition, and partial limits on
power-- without giving up single-party control.
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- Result: autocracy with democratic characteristics
CHINESE BUREAUCRACY 101

- In the Chinese communist regime, there is no separation between political power and public
administration.

- That bureaucracy is composed of two vertical hierarchies--the party and the state--
replicated across the ve levels of government: central, provincial, county, city, and
township.

- Matrix structure
- Formally the party and the state are separate entities, but in practice they are intertwined
- The premier is also a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top body,
which currently has seven members.

- And at the local level, o cials often simultaneously hold positions in both hierarchies.
- Massive public administration
- The top one percent of the bureaucracy--roughly 500,000 people--make up China's political
elite.

REFORM AT THE TOP

- Deng Xiapoing reforms

- Injection do democratic characteristics into the bureaucracy, namely, accountability,
competition, and partial limits on power.

- Perhaps the most signi cant of Deng's reforms was a shift in the bureaucracy away from
one-man rule toward collective leadership and the introduction of term limits and a
mandatory retirement age for elite o cials.

- These changes constrained the accumulation of personal power and rejuvenated the party-
state with younger o cials.

- Lower down, the reformist leadership changed the incentives of local leaders by updating
the cadre evaluation system, which assesses local leaders according to performance targets
- Deng's Approach to Leadership and Performance Criteria:
- Deng shifted away from Mao's emphasis on class background and ideological fervor.
- Deng was pragmatic and focused on turning local leaders into more productive economic
agents.

- Starting from the 1980s, o cials were assigned a speci c set of measurable objectives,
primarily related to the economy and revenue generation.

- Tasks unrelated to the economy, such as environmental protection and poverty relief, were
deprioritized or omitted.
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 - The central goal was economic growth, always coupled with the imperative of maintaining
political stability.

- Failing to ensure political stability, such as allowing mass protests, could result in leaders
failing their annual evaluation.

- Incentives and Rewards for Local Leaders:

- High performance scores improved the chances of promotion and lateral transfers to
preferred positions.

- Local leaders were eligible for performance-based bonuses, with top performers receiving
signi cantly more than lower performers.

- The government began ranking localities publicly, with o cials from high-ranking areas
earning prestige and honorary titles.

- O cials from low-ranking areas faced a loss of community respect and reputation.
- This competitive environment motivated local leaders to excel and avoid being left behind.
- Innovations and Solutions:
- Local leaders became highly motivated to promote industrialization and economic growth.
- They developed creative strategies, such as township and village enterprises, which
bypassed restrictions on private ownership by operating as collectively owned enterprises.

- Another innovation involved the creation of "land quota markets" in Chengdu and
Chongqing, enabling developers to purchase land quotas from villages for urban use.

- Achieving Accountability and Competition within Single-Party Rule:

- Deng's reforms introduced a degree of accountability and competition within the one-party
rule of the CCP.

- Although there were no elections, lower-level o cials were held responsible for the
economic development of their respective regions.

- Deng's reforms primarily focused on capital accumulation, leading to issues like

environmental degradation and inequality.
- Nevertheless, these reforms propelled China's economic growth by making the bureaucracy
results-oriented, highly competitive, and responsive to business needs, qualities often
associated with democracies

STREET LEVEL REFORMS:

Bureaucratic Reforms and Incentives:

- Local leaders and street-level bureaucrats play crucial roles in governance and economic
development.

- They act as potential agents of economic change, using personal connections and state-
a liated agencies to attract investors and provide commercial services.
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 - The bureaucracy relied on nancial incentives, such as internal pro t sharing, linking nancial
performance to individual remuneration.

- The pro t-sharing system allowed public employees to take a share of the revenue
generated by their organizations.

- This pro t-sharing system incentivized a results-oriented culture within the bureaucracy, with
a primary focus on economic performance.

Drawbacks of a Pro t-Oriented Bureaucracy:

- Complaints about arbitrary payments and pro teering in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Reforms introduced to combat petty corruption and the theft of public funds, reducing the
vulnerability of citizens to abuses of power.

- Transparency International's ndings in 2011 showed low levels of bribery in China

compared to other countries.

- While addressing petty corruption, the most signi cant issue in China remains collusion
among political and business elites.

Limits of Bureaucratic Reform:

- The cadre evaluation system has evolved over time, with leaders facing multiple, competing
demands.

- In addition to economic growth, leaders must now maintain social harmony, protect the
environment, provide public services, and enforce party discipline.

- Xi Jinping's anticorruption campaign, which has led to many o cial arrests, has created
additional constraints on leadership.

- Corrupt dealings were often associated with bold policy innovations, and strict discipline
may hinder bureaucratic innovation.

- To sustain growth in a high-income economy, the government must tap into the creative
potential of civil society, which would require more freedom of expression and less state
intervention.

Xi's Leadership and Political Liberalization:

- China is now a middle-income economy with political pressures stemming from prosperity.
- The cadre evaluation system has become more complex, with leaders facing multiple
demands and constraints.

- Xi's anticorruption campaign and his emphasis on party discipline further limit innovation
and policymaking.

- Political freedoms are essential for continued economic growth, yet China is backpedaling in
this regard.
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 - The decision to remove term limits for top leaders raises concerns about leadership
idiosyncrasies.

China and Democracy:

- The need to move beyond the narrow conception of democratization as multiparty elections.
- Some bene ts of democratization can be achieved under single-party rule through
bureaucratic reforms.

- Promoting political change by building on existing traditions and institutions, such as a

Leninist bureaucracy.

- The false dichotomy between the state and society, particularly in non-democratic societies
like China.

- An intermediate layer of actors between the state and society with direct access to those in
power.

- The uid and overlapping identities of o cials in traditional societies and the role of
intermediate actors.

- The importance of pro t-sharing practices in China's bureaucracy to give public employees
a stake in the country's capitalist success.

Lessons for U.S. Democracy Promotion:

- Policymakers should reconsider the export of democracy and state-building e orts based on
unspoken assumptions.

- Democracy can be achieved through a variety of institutional forms, not just a replication of
the U.S. political system.

- The key is to adapt reforms to existing traditions and institutions in di erent societies.
- The success of China's economic reforms was achieved by introducing democratizing
measures to ensure accountability, competition, and limit leadership power.

- Other authoritarian governments should not misinterpret China's success as a justi cation
for top-down control; the key was a combination of capitalist reforms and democratizing
measures.

THE THREE PILLARS OF STABILITY: LEGITIMATION, REPRESSION, AND CO-OPTATION

IN AUTOCRATIC REGIMES by Gerschewski Johannes

WHAT MAKES AUTOCRACIES ENDURE?

- Aim: To propose a theoretical framework for the analysis of stable autocratic regimes
- It will be argued that the stability of all autocracies – irrespective of their subtype – can be
explained with reference to what might be aptly called the three pillars of stability:
legitimation, repression, and co-optation.
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WHAT DOES THE LITERATURE SAY?

- 3 research waves can be identi ed:

1. The totalitarianism paradigm until the mid-1960s that highlighted ideology and terror

2. The rise of authoritarianism until the 1980s that placed more emphasis on socio-economic
factors

3. Starting in 1999, a renaissance of autocracy research that centred mostly on strategic

repression and co-optation.

FIRST WAVE, 1930s-1960s: THE TOTALITARIANISM PARADIGM

- The use of the concept of totalitarianism to characterize a new social phenomenon became
widespread.

- 1950s: Friedrich and Brzezinski proposed their famous “six-point catalogue” for identifying
totalitarian regimes.

- Hannah Ardent’s work highlighted what she identi ed as the two main features of totalitarian
Herrschaft: ideology and terror

- 1960s: Totalitarianism increasingly edged out by the concept of authoritarianism.

SECOND WAVE, 1960s-1980s: THE RISE OF AUTHORITARIANISM

- The rise of authoritarianism as a distinct regime type began, with O'Donnell's study on
“bureaucratic authoritarianism”

- O'Donnell argued that, due to the fact that Argentina and Brazil reached limits in their import
substitution strategy, bureaucratic elites from the military and business that became
increasingly frustrated with the political and economic circumstances emerged.

- He emphasized a point that had previously been overshadowed: the socio-economic

dimension functioned both as a driver for the emergence and the maintenance of
authoritarian regimes.

- 2 other trends: proliferation of subtypes and a “regionalization” of explanations

- The quintessence was that autocrats cannot rely solely on ideology and terror, but also need
to deliver improved socio-economic performances, sometimes focused in informal reward
policies.

THIRD WAVE: A RENAISSANCE IN STUDIES OF AUTOCRACIES

- Neo-institutionalist approaches have recently entered the research on autocracies and have
highlighted the stabilizing e ect of institutions

- It has been demonstrated that one-party regimes are more robust than other regimes.
- Acemoglu and Robinson compellingly point out that strategic and “optimal” degrees of
repression play a particularly decisive role in the longevity of autocratic regimes.
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 —> In order to synthesize these di erent strands in one coherent analytical framework, I
propose the three pillars of legitimation, repression, and co-optation.

- Regime breakdown may stem from 3 sources:

1. Ordinary citizens whose non-compliance usually takes the form of popular uprisings and
rebellions

2. Oppositional actors that organize resistance

3. Intra-elite splits in which strategically important elites deviate from the ruling elite's course.

REINCORPORATING LEGITIMATION IN THE STUDY OF AUTOCRACIES

1. Legitimation: The process of gaining support which is based on an empirical, Weberian

tradition of “legitimacy belief“.

- Behind every political order there must be a “legitimacy idea”.

- Today's autocracies cannot rely (at least in the long term) entirely on their abuse of power in
a strictly hierarchical, pyramid-shaped political order

- They are characterized by many more interdependencies between the ruler and the ruled.
- It seems that autocratic regimes cannot maintain a utopian ideology and shield the people
from external in uences over a longer period.

- Therefore, we should go beyond the reasoning of the intensity of ideological indoctrination

and include performance and output legitimation as a di erent legitimation source in our
studies

- The distinction between “di use” and “speci c support” captures the concept of legitimation
most appropriately.

SPECIFIC SUPPORT: The quid pro quo for the ful lment of demands”,and particularly includes
the performance orientation.

- Autocracies have to address popular demands for socio-economic development and

physical security

- Can also stem from the state's ability to maintain internal order and social security.

DIFFUSE SUPPORT: What the regime “actually is or represents

- More general and long-term oriented than speci c support

- Can stem from both the political ideologies that have been the main focus in classic
totalitarian research, and also from religious, nationalistic, or traditional claims, from the
charisma of autocratic leaders as well as from external threats that lead to domestic rally-
around-the- ag e ects.
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 HOW CAN WE MEASURE LEGITIMATION?

- The better the regime performs economically, socially, and in terms of public order, the more
legitimate it is in the eyes of the ruled

- The di erent World Bank Development Indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
growth rates, in ation rates, growth of energy consumption/capita, but also vehicles per
capita or telephones and televisions per capita, are good indicators for the economic
performance of the regime.

- The growth or decline in social, health, and educational expenditures, the GINI index for
social inequality, the school enrolment per capita and the literacy rate, the physicians per
capita, or the overall Human Development Index (HDI) are adequate indicators that can be
used for measuring speci c support.

- To what extent the promise to guarantee internal security and public order has been kept
can be measured by proxy-indicators like the number of riots, strikes, guerrilla warfare, or
the country's crime rate

- Harder to measure di used legitimation

- The number and intensity of public protests can be taken as a proxy- indicator for societal
discontent.

- Via qualitative assessments of country experts or assessments in secondary literature, which

are both labour-intensive tasks.

- O cial legitimacy claims by the ruling elite can be taken more seriously and can be
classi ed by using content analysis techniques.

REPRESSION AS THE BACKBONE OF AUTOCRACIES

- Repression alone cannot account for the longevity of autocracies.

- Repression is too costly a way to maintain stability in the long run
REPRESSION: Actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or
organization, within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, for the purpose of imposing a cost on
the target as well as deterring speci c activities
- Its main function lies in channelling public demands vis- -vis the political system in a way
that these demands do not endanger the autocratic regime.

- Distinction between high and low intensity repression

HIGH INTENSITY COERCION; Visible acts that are targeted either at well-known individuals
like opposition leaders, at a larger number of people, or at major oppositional organizations.
Concrete measures include the (violent) repression of mass demonstrations, (violent)
campaigns against parties, and the attempted assassination or imprisonment of opposition
leaders.

LOWER INTENSITY COERCION: Aims at groups of minor importance, is less visible, and often
takes more subtle forms. Concrete measures can be the use of (formal and informal)
surveillance apparatus, low intensity physical harassment and intimidation, and also non-
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physical forms such as the denial of certain job and education opportunities as well as the
curtailment of political rights like the freedom of assembly.

HOW TO MEASURE REPRESSION?

- Freedom House
- The Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset
- Political Terror Scale
THE THIRD PILLAR: CO-OPTATION

CO-OPTATION: The capacity to tie strategically-relevant actors (or a group of actors) to the
regime elite.

- Co-optation needs to be exerted so that the actor is “persuaded not to exercise his power to
obstruct” and instead to use the resources in line with the ruling elite's demands.

- The “players” in this “autocratic subgame” are on the intra-elite level.

- Military and business elites of strategic importance need to be co-opted
- Prima facie democratic institutions like parliaments, parties, or elections have vital functions
for the co-optation of strategic elites from business or military ranks.

- Patronage, clientelism, and corruption are the most commonly used instruments.
THE STABILISATION PROCESS

- The pillars are not in existence from the very beginning of the regime, but need to be built
over time

- 3 processes that take place within and between these pillars to explain the stabilization
processes:

1. exogenous reinforcement processes that are propelled by the availability of outside power
and material resources of the regime, but take place within the pillars

2. self-reinforcing processes within the pillars that lead to path-dependency

3. reciprocal reinforcement processes and the emergence of complementarity advantages
between the pillars.

REINFORCING AUTOCRATIC RULE WITHIN THE PILLARS

- The three pillars need to be institutionalized over time

- In this sense, institutions are here understood as behavioural patterns.
- They are “compliance procedures and standard operating practices that structure the
relationship between individuals”.

- How does this process take place?

 - 2 di erent processes:
1. Exogenously reinforced institutionalization.

2. Self’reinforcing institutionalization process in the case of increasing returns.

-> Path-dependent explanations

- Once an institution is set on track, the path is di cult to alter and reinforces itself.

LECTURE 3 : WHAT IS AUTOCRACY

- The most common form of governance throughout human history, until the 1990s
- Dictatorships are very common
- Democracies are outliers in history
- Before 1990s, non-democratic regimes were a majority

DEFINING REGIME TYPE: TWO APPROACHES

Regime: A set of institutions that regulate governance (of a state)

A dichotomous approach has only two discrete categories or values, such as ‘tall’ and ‘short’.

A continuous approach can take on any intermediate value within a given range, such as
‘height in centimeters’.

- Pro of this approach: more variation

DEFINING AUTOCRACY: DICHOTOMOUS

DICTATORSHIP: A regime in which the ruler is not chosen through contested election - a
residual category

DEFINING AUTOCRACY: DICHOTOMOUS

1.) Free and competitive legislative elections?

2.) Executive elected either directly in free and competitive presidential elections or indirectly
by a legislature?

- If those 2 conditions are satis ed = democracy

- If not = autocracy
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LEGISLATIVE SELECTION IN DICTATORSHIPS

- Why do some autocracies conduct election?

MEASURING AUTOCRACY: DICHOTOMOUS

- Democracy-Dictatorship (DD) Measure

- Long-time ruling parties in Japan and Botswana

- LDP in Japan (ruled for 40 years) - lost power in the 90s, so we can see it’s a democracy
- BDP in Botswana

CLASSIFYING AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES

- Dictators need to keep their support coalitions (ruling coalitions) happy to stay in power.
Actors:

- Dictator: one person who holds the power

- Citizenry: Excluded from the access to power
- Ruling coalition: No matter how part the dictator, he still has to rely on the ruling coalition.
Those are the regime insiders

FIGURE: UNCONSTITUTIONAL EXISTS OF AUTHORITARIAN LEADERS

- Most common way of leaders to lose their power: coup d’etat

- Second most common: popular uprising
- Third: transition to democracy
- 4th assassination
- 5th: foreign intervention

CLASSIFYING AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES

- One common typology classi es dictatorships based on the characteristics of their ‘ruling
coalitions.’

- Rebellion of key insiders = dictator out of power

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CLASSIFYING AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES

Gandhi (2008: 19-21):

•Monarchs
- Rely on kin networks

•Military rulers
- Rely on military organization

•Civilians
- Rely on political parties

MONARCHIC DICTATORSHIP

Monarchic leaders survive in o ce longer than other authoritarian leaders.

•Monarchic dictatorships su er less violence and political instability than other forms of
dictatorship.

Monarchies have developed a political culture where a leader’s promise to distribute rents is
particularly credible.

•Clear rules and norms on how rents are to be shared among members of the royal family.

•Institutions to monitor the actions of the ruler and enforce norms regarding the distribution of
rents.

MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

- What constitutes military rule is the fact that the armed forces are the institution through
which rulers govern.

- Military dictatorships tend to have short durations, are more likely to end with negotiations,
and are more likely to democratize as opposed to violence than other types of authoritarian
regimes.

- The fact that the military has all the ‘guns’ means it retains a credible threat to re-intervene in
politics.

- •The military can give up power safely in the knowledge that whoever wins the elections will
still have to take account of its preferences.

CIVILIAN DICTATORSHIPS

- Unlike monarchic and military dictatorships, civilian dictatorships do not have an

immediate institutional support base; instead, they must create one.
X
- Many civilian dictators do this with the help of regime parties or personality cults.
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 CIVILIAN DICTATORSHIPS: PERSONALISTIC

- A personalistic dictatorship is one in which the leader, although often supported by a party
or military, retains personal control of policy decisions and the selection of regime personnel.

- Shifts in the geopolitical environment in the post-Cold War period

- Shifts in the way that autocrats are coming to power
- Erosion of democracies by democratically-elected leaders
- Weak and fragmented political parties
- Aggressive foreign policies
- A higher risk of miscalculation
- Personalisation of government budget: corruption
CIVILIAN DICTATORSHIPS: DOMINANT PARTY

- A dominant-party dictatorship is one in which a single party dominates access to political

o ce and control over policy, though other parties may exist and compete in elections.

- Party controls military

- Large (civilian support) coalitions
- Local-level party members/o cers
- Regularized turnover
- Party precedes individual leader
- After authoritarian monarchies, dominant-party dictatorships are the longest-lived
dictatorships.

- Majority factions within regime parties tend to try to co-opt minority factions rather than
exclude them from power.

- Regime parties often engage in electoral fraud to deter regime party defections and
discourage opponents

LECTURE 4: HOW DO AUTOCRACIES WORK? THE CASE OF CHINA

A MODEL OF AUTHORITARIAN POLITICS

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