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  • historical institutionalists
  • argue that paths are set at critical junctures, determining long-run outcomes
  • rational-choice institutionalists
  • are more interested in how institutions relate to the ongoing interests of groups and individuals in the polity.
  • look at how shifting configurations of interests and institutions change the bargaining positions of those groups and individuals.

historical institutionalist theories

  • Why might these events happen at certain key moments in the development of a polity?
  • certain groups that would be better off without democratization
  • Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
  • Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic (who declared himself emperor )
  • Idi Amin of Uganda

Oligarchy, Democracy, and Authoritarianism in Russia

Authoritarian Persistence

  • Putin could conceivably alternate between holding the presidency and governing indirectly through others.
  • a democratizing moment has been followed by
  • a return to more centralized power and decision making by a closed set of economic and political elites
  • rise to a corrupt network of oligarchs, newly wealthy tycoons that operated in a style reminiscent of the mafia

Hybrid and Semi-authoritarian Regimes

  • illiberal democracy: countries have reasonably fair elections but then do little to hold elected leaders to account
  • competitive authoritarian: allows some political competition but not enough to qualify as fully democratic.

  • managed democracy
  • a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few elites who were well-connected to the state.

Democracy and Authoritarianism in Germany

  • Germany has shown oscillations between
  • democracy and democratic breakdown, culminating in democratic consolidation over the last fifty years
  • the reestablishment of democracy in West Germany after the World War II
  • The successful re-unification of Germany and the continuation of robust democracy

Totalitarian Regime

  • Today's Communist Party embraces very different policies and a different style of rule than it did under Mao Zedong in the 1960s.
  • But the same party and the same basic state have remained in place, and thus most political scientists would consider this a case of a single authoritarian regime's persistence.
  • the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and his successors did not constitute an institutional break in regime type, but rather a slower transition that leaves the regime firmly in the authoritarian category.

Theocracies

  • An authoritarian state controlled by religious leaders, or a state with very strict religious restrictions that uses religion as its main mode of legitimation.
  • Saudi Arabia and Iran
  • In 1979, Iran underwent a social revolution that brought a religious government into power.
  • This government is regarded by many as totalitarian, as it imposes strict controls on public expression, religion, and issues of "morality."
  • Religious leaders at the top of the hierarchy have ultimate control
  • Elections are still periodically held, and they are actually contested, though not a ways fairly.

Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Regimes

  • organized bureaucracy (the military) to run the country
  • They can be right-wing or left-wing, but the fundamental rationale they typically use in trying to garner legitimacy is the alleged need to establish order or economic progress.
  • The Mexican government during the period of the PRI's dominance
  • China

Mexico was called "the perfect dictatorship."

  • The PRI, the party that governed from 1929 to 2000,
  • won every election in that period through a combination of inducements and repression, and by incorporating most of the major political actors in society, such as business and labor unions, into a standing relationship with the regime.
  • In 2000, the PRI lost for the first time in 71 years, and Mexico's regime changed
  • Why have democracies repeatedly broken down in Nigeria and given way to authoritarian rule?
  • Nigeria's democracies suffered from a vicious cycle of a weak state bureaucracy, poor economic performance, and political instability.
  • the repeated attempts by the military to centralize power only seemed to weaken the state further.
  • Neopatrimonialism
  • A weak state can contribute to authoritarianism if the state becomes a tool of a particular group.
  • In Nigeria, political leaders governed by dispensing patronage and favors to selected constituencies, including extended families and kinship groups, rather than by establishing clear rules and laws that applied uniformly to all.
  • The bureaucracy became increasingly dysfunctional, the economy declined, and the state weakened further.
  • Military leaders often sought to justify their overthrow of civilian regimes on the ground that
  • only they were required to stop the rot, but the military itself performed little better when in power.

"hybrid" or "competitive authoritarian" regime

  • Venezuela
  • A democratic system becomes more authoritarian over time as one set of actors becomes adept at manipulating institutions to maintain and augment their political interest

Personalistic Dictatorships

State Weakness and Failure

Poverty

Historical Institutionalist Theories

  • Theory: States with weak institutions are likelier to have authoritarian regimes
  • Weak institutions often result in more “predatory” states
  • Theory: Coalitions among groups or classes shape fates of regimes, and institutions give these coalitions enduring effects
  • Theory: high levels of poverty or inequality lead to more authoritarianism
  • Poverty leads populace to greater concern with economic issues than political liberties

Barrington Moore

Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966)

  • representatives of organizations
  • who receive special treatment under an existing authoritarian state perhaps religious organizations or, military actors;
  • economic actors
  • who want to control the state to use it as a tool against those who wish to redistribute wealth or to expand economic rights;
  • individuals or groups
  • who fear that democratization will lead to the confiscation of their wealth or the reduction of their privileges
  • a coalition has formed among four elite groups:
  • landowners, the military, the church, and the industrial entrepreneurs.
  • Each of these groups wants to protect its existing privileges.
  • the extent to which the persistence of a given democratic or authoritarian regime is a consequence of
  • (1) ongoing class coalitions
  • (2) institutional inertia.

  • Why some societies ended up with liberal democratic, fascist, or communist/socialist regimes
  • Answer is in the class structures of the societies as they made the passage to modernity

Guillermo O'Donnell

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Barrington Moore

  • Economic collapse, increasing poverty, and increasing income inequality likely predict a turn toward authoritarianism,
  • ongoing economic stagnation and poverty likely predict authoritarian persistence.

When actors combine forces, they may get the regime that benefits them

  • weak or failing states
  • are more likely to yield authoritarian politics.
  • Well-institutionalized strong states
  • tend to be less personalistic and
  • more resistant to the efforts of private actors to co-opt them for their own gain.
  • "Predatory states"
  • one group in society is able to capture the state and use it for the group's own benefit.
  • some inefficient bureaucracies probably required reform.
  • If such reforms reduced the state's ability to deliver basic citizenship rights and rule of law,
  • this might undermine their democratic status.
  • Democratization and democratic consolidation are likely to be successful
  • only to the extent that the state is able to fulfill its functions, establish rule of law, and treat citizens equally.
  • Elites will choose democracy
  • only if they have to and if they expect that they can hold on to more resources through doing so than through choosing another path.
  • If elites cannot implement pro-citizen policies, and
  • if democracy is likely to lead to a dramatic decline in their privileges,
  • they are likely to choose repression.
  • democratic states need to be understood
  • as both bureaucratic organizations and
  • as legal systems that establish their legitimacy by providing the rights of citizenship to their subject populations.
  • To be viable and considered legitimate,
  • states need to
  • (a) establish rule of law and protect citizens' rights and
  • (b) be immune from the predatory efforts of private actors
  • Elites can choose repression or
  • they can try to placate the general population in one of two ways:
  • they can make pro-citizen concessions and try to run a polity that keeps the population rich and happy, or
  • they can make the credible commitment of institutionalizing citizen control through democracy
  • An existing agrarian elite join forces with the small middle class to outcompete peasants (right-wing authoritarianism) or
  • the middle class form an alliance with the peasant themselves, producing that tends toward left-wing authoritarianism
  • democratization and democratic consolidation will not be complete without the creation of relatively strong democratic states.
  • If a strong middle class was present when a society passed to political modernity, it was likely to end up a liberal democracy
  • If countries without a strong middle-class present during the passage to modernity were likely to result in coalitions averse to democracy.
  • People in poorer societies would, all else being equal, likely prefer democratic regimes in many instances,
  • but they may be less likely to successfully press for democratization and/or the maintenance of democratic institutions.

Important actors may include:

  • Social classes
  • Economic interests (landowners, industrialists)
  • Working class and peasants
  • Military

Types of Authoritarianism

Types of Transition to Authoritarianism

intervening variable

Inequality

  • Most polities in human history were authoritarian.
  • In the twenty-first century, so many of the world's polities are democratic
  • what is sometimes authoritarian persistence

What Causes Authoritarian Regimes to Emerge and Persist?

  • If Singapore and China show that certain types of authoritarian rule may lead to economic success,
  • how do we evaluate the trade-off between economic success and political freedom?
  • Venezuela and Russia are hybrid or "competitive authoritarian" regime
  • notable authoritarian elements but continues to hold elections.

Transitions to Authoritarianism

Barriers to Collective Action

Why Did Zimbabwe Become and Remain Authoritarian?

Low development

state weakness

Societies with high levels of income inequality seem more likely to be authoritarian than those with low levels of income inequality.

Rational calculations and personal incentives can explain persistence of repressive regimes

authoritarian regime

Authoritarian Persistence

  • One authoritarian regime remains in power
  • Transition from one authoritarian regime to another

Democratic Breakdown

  • Transition from democratic to authoritarian regime

Transition to Hybrid/Semi-authoritarian Regime

  • From one regime to an “in-between” regime

Unstable coalition

Theocracies

Totalitarian Regimes

Authoritarianism

Individuals have few incentives to rebel

state weakness

Political regime characterized by form of government that is non-democratic

  • Inequality leads to mistrust between groups
  • Wealthy interests and reactionary authoritarians may defend privilege
  • Poor masses and radical authoritarians may favor populism and redistribution

An authoritarian state controlled by religious leaders, or a state with very strict religious restrictions that uses religion as its main mode of legitimation

Ex.: contemporary Iran (despite some democratic features)

A form of authoritarian regime that aims to control everything about the lives of its subject population

Ex.: Soviet Union (1917 – 1991),

Nazi Germany (1933 – 1945)

authoritarian regime

This country granted few rights to the black African majority and concentrated economic and political power in white hands.

1960s Southern Rhodesia

  • It was a British colony that asserted its independence and was ruled by a white minority descended from colonial settlers.

By the 1970s a resistance movement emerged to overthrow the white regime, led by a charismatic rebel leader who vowed to bring democracy to the black African majority.

  • Zimbabwe's economy collapsed into hyperinflation
  • Mugabe was still in power, more than thirty years later
  • Mugabe renamed the country Zimbabwe
  • Beginning in the 1980s, his regime was responsible for massacres of opponents and innocent victims

Why Did Zimbabwe Become and Remain Authoritarian?

(1) historical relationships between contending groups,

(2) the strength and form of existing institutions,

(3) a country's level of economic development,

(4) political-cultural traditions and tendencies,

(5) the strategic situations and choices of key actors.

looking for evidence that works against one theory or another

Hybrid and Semi-authoritarian Regimes

Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Regimes

Personalistic Dictatorships

Political Culture

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba

A type of authoritarian regime in which the state is controlled more by a group of elites (often military) rather than by a single individual leader

Ex.: Argentina and Brazil in 1970s

A form of authoritarianism in which the personality of the dictator is emphasized

Ex.: Zaire in 1970s and 1980s

A class of regime that is neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian

Electoral authoritarianism

Competitive authoritarianism

Delegative democracy

Illiberal democracy

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba

  • Subject cultures
  • have higher levels of investment and trust in the state than parochial cultures, but they have lower levels of trust than participatory cultures, and members of subject cultures are not optimistic about their chances to influence politics.
  • Participatory (civic) cultures
  • Members of civic cultures of participation have high trust in government and other actors and also believe themselves to be very capable of shaping political decisions through participation.
  • people in societies that are culturally authoritarian are more likely to have and keep authoritarian regimes.
  • Lee Kuan Yew
  • claimed "Confucian values" were not compatible with "Western" democracy.
  • Parochial cultures
  • are characterized by populations that are largely distant from politics and try to stay out of the government's way, trusting it and other actors outside of their local groups very little.

“Free rider” problem:

  • let others take the risk, even if you may reap rewards of regime change

Theory: Some countries may have cultural traditions more suited to authoritarianism

Ex.: “Asian values” argument

  • Emphasis on authority and obedience over individual

Lee Kuan Yew

  • Singapore's per capita GNP is now higher than that of its erstwhile colonizer, Great Britain.
  • It has the world's busiest port, is the third-largest oil refiner and a major center of global manufacturing and service industries.
  • Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew
  • you must have order in society.
  • Guns, drugs and violent crime all go together, threatening social order.
  • you have to educate rigorously and train a whole generation of skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable people who can be productive.
  • the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity or religion.
  • have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms.
  • Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family.

In absence of effective coordination, regime remains intact

Critics

Lee Kuan Yew

  • argument may be made most strongly by authoritarian leaders (who want to retain power)

Rational-choice approach

  • The Asian model is too rigid to adapt well to change.
  • national decline is caused fundamentally by sclerosis, the rigidity of interest groups, firms, labor, capital and the state.
  • An American-type system that is very flexible, laissez-faire and constantly adapting is better suited to the emerging era of rapid change than a government-directed economic policy and a Confucian value system.
  • If you have a culture that doesn't place much value in learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain, development will be much slower.
  • the rise of religion: There is a quest for some higher explanations about man's purpose, about why we are here.
  • we would have a better system if we gave everyman over the age of 40 who has a family two votes because he's likely to be more careful, voting also for his children.
  • at 60 they should go back to one vote
  • actors are unlikely to engage in collective action unless it becomes rational for them to do so
  • the chances of success seem high, their contribution seems important to the desired outcome
  • they are unlikely to face major costs for participating in such action

Rational-choice approach

  • a repressive authoritarian state
  • severely restricts rights,
  • grants decision-making authority to a small elite,
  • authorizes a police agency to use violence and torture as key tools for stifling dissent,
  • censors media heavily, and reads e-mails
  • taps the phones of any potential democratic activists.
  • most people want more democratization (regardless of their culture)

  • but it would be irrational for any individual actor to take the necessary steps to provoke a democratic transition
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