Alexander Dukalskis

• Ph.D. Political Science & Peace Studies
• Professor (Associate) at University College Dublin

How China assumes its position of superpower is one of the most important questions regarding global order in the twenty-first century. While considerable and sustained attention has been paid to China’s growing economic and military might, work examining how China is attempting, if at all, to influence the ecosystem of global norms is in its earli...

Autocratic governments make claims about why they are entitled to rule. Some autocracies are more talkative than others, but all regimes say something about why they deserve power. This article takes seriously these efforts by introducing and interrogating the concept of autocratic legitimation. After engaging in a definitional discussion, it trace...

Authoritarian regimes craft and disseminate reasons, stories, and explanations for why they are entitled to rule. To shield those legitimating messages from criticism, authoritarian regimes also censor information that they find threatening. While committed opponents of the regime may be violently repressed, this book is about how the authoritarian...

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often...

This article analyzes the relationship between truth and politics by asking whether the ‘publicness’ of a truth commission – defined by whether it has public hearings, releases a public report, and names perpetrators – contributes to democratization. The article reviews scholarship relevant to the potential democratizing effects of truth commission...

To achieve foreign policy goals and boost prestige, states try to influence how foreign publics perceive them. Particularly during crises, the imperative to mitigate a negative image may see states mobilize resources to change the global narrative. This paper investigates whether China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ efforts influenced portrayals of the country...

Edited by Natasha Lindstaedt and Jeroen J.J. Van den Bosch This Research Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the latest knowledge on authoritarian regimes. Combining quantitative research and in-depth case studies, it not only provides novel insight into past and current dictatorships, but also forecasts potential new developments in auth...

Engaging with higher education institutions from the People’s Republic of China (China or the PRC) raises difficult tensions for universities in liberal democratic contexts. Universities in China are overseen by a political party that routinely silences dissent and does not respect principles of academic freedom in the social sciences and humanitie...

The emerging literature dealing with transnational repression has identified several strategies used by authoritarian states to control and coerce their populations abroad. This article builds on existing research by investigating the domestic determinants of transnational repression. It argues that an increase in domestic repression is likely to l...

China’s renewed prominence is the most important development in international relations in the 21st century. Despite longstanding rhetoric of its own “peaceful rise”, China is increasingly viewed as a long-term strategic competitor, especially in the United States. Foreign aid is one arena where this competition may be playing out. While Western fo...

This research report measures changes in China’s public diplomacy after a May 2021 collective study session of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo. The session examined the country’s global communications strategy and fuelled speculation about what might change in China’s external communications, particularly with regard to its “wolf warrior” dip...

Decades of social science research on human rights has mapped the conditions under which states sign and ratify treaties, abide by their conditions, and promote or criticize human rights in other states. Some norms contained in the core human rights treaties, particularly civil and political rights, are seen by authoritarian states as politically t...

Research on state repression generally focuses on what states do to populations within their own borders. However, recently scholars working at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations have begun to systematically analyse states repressing their populations outside their borders as part of their foreign policy. Variously...

This article investigates two accounts of political propaganda in autocratic regimes. One argues that propaganda’s content does not matter substantively and that propaganda is mostly a signal of the regime’s overwhelming power over citizens. A second argues that propaganda is substantively meaningful: autocrats may communicate strategically either...

This chapter unpacks and assesses the Rwandan government’s authoritarian image management strategies under the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). As relatively small, and aid dependent for much of the period under analysis, Rwanda under the RPF had special incentives to pay attention to authoritarian image management as the latter entrenched its power...

After a broad overview, this chapter analyzes two specific instances of North Korea’s authoritarian image management, spanning both the Cold War and post–Cold War eras. First, it focuses on North Korea’s Japan-based efforts to craft an appealing image among Koreans there through Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). Seco...

This book has argued that authoritarian states try to maintain a positive image of themselves abroad and work to protect that image from criticism. The logic for this authoritarian image management strategy is to enhance both the internal and external security of the regime. The book drew on an array of empirical content to substantiate its argumen...

Why would authoritarian states care how they are perceived abroad? This chapter builds theory to understand the motivations behind authoritarian image management. The chapter posits that scholarship on authoritarian legitimation and on autocracy promotion reveals that authoritarian image management can have causal effects for regime security. The c...

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often...

This chapter provides a global, cross-national snapshot of two dimensions of authoritarian image management, one promotional and one obstructive. First, to capture primarily the “promotional” mechanisms of authoritarian image management, it presents data on public relations and lobbying by authoritarian states in the United States. Analysis of 113...

How exactly do authoritarian states manage their image abroad, and what are the causal chains linking their activities to their desired outcomes of internal and external security? This chapter proposes four sets of mechanisms to explain how authoritarian image management is meant to have tangible effects for states that undertake such a strategy. T...

This chapter captures the myriad ways in which the Chinese government is packaging its image for international audiences (promotional/diffuse), cultivating messengers capable of conveying that image (promotional/specific), trying to respond to or downplay criticisms about its policies in international discourse (obstructive/diffuse), and intimidati...

This chapter focuses on how Chinese authorities attempt to control the image of China that the world sees. It first sets the stage by describing China’s domestic media sphere. It then draws on semi-structured interviews with current and former foreign correspondents for European and North American outlets in China. The interviews reveal the techniq...

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often...

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often...

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often...

This article examines the political consequences of widespread social changes in North Korea to illuminate how, if at all, shifts in everyday life influence the power of an autocratic government. Our study is based on 23 interviews with North Korean defectors in 2017 and supplemented by interviews conducted in previous years. The main finding is th...

This article studies the ideological reactions of communist regimes to the advent of a post-communist world. It examines two cases of reformed communist regimes (China and Vietnam) with two relatively unreformed cases (North Korea and Cuba) to understand different legitimation strategies employed during and after the downfall of the Soviet Union. T...

This article traces the evolution of “everyday nationalism” in North Korea and assesses its relationship to authoritarian resilience. It argues that coercion and the prospect of coercion play important roles in policing the contours of everyday nationalism. The state is able to infuse nationalism and authoritarian control into everyday life, but th...

This article proposes and tests a mechanism of grassroots image management to explain how rising powers craft an international environment more conducive to their interests. The aim is to promote the state’s foreign policy goals by influencing the perceptions of ordinary foreign citizens. To test this mechanism, we examine the impact of China’s Con...

It is commonly understood that authoritarian regimes attempt to legitimize their rule and de-legitimize opponents. What is less clear is the intensity with which they do so, whether (de-)legitimation varies by institutional structure, and whether and how this intensity varies in times of crisis. To address these questions, this article focuses on t...

This article studies the ideological reactions of communist regimes to the advent of a post-communist world. It examines two cases of reformed communist regimes (China and Vietnam) with two relatively unreformed cases (North Korea and Cuba) to understand different legitimation strategies employed during and after the downfall of the Soviet Union. T...

What explains why some authoritarian governments fail to take all the steps they can to preserve their positions of power during democratic transitions? This article examines this question using the example of the leading pro-military party in Myanmar, which lost badly to the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the transitioning elections of 201...

This article analyzes foreign policy changes toward the International Criminal Court (ICC) of four African states between 1999 and 2014: Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa. It considers each state’s normative disposition, which measures the extent to which it legally consents to, complies with, and promotes the norms contained in the Rome Statu...

This article aims to understand the policies of three major Northeast Asian states toward the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court (ICC) that it established. Using a unique measurement tool, it traces the interactions of South Korea, Japan, and China with the Court since negotiations on its formation in the late 1990s. Included in this...

Myanmar has experienced significant political liberalization since 2011. Alongside the political reforms, a peace process to end the country's several insurgencies has continued. This article analyzes this "double transition" by asking how political liberalization has shaped the peace process. It elaborates six ways that liberalization has influenc...

For full text, visit: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2016.1154137 An unofficial or ‘shadow’ economy like that found in contemporary North Korea generates countervailing pressures for a socialist regime. It can buttress the regime by facilitating the cynical use of anti-market laws, alleviating shortages, helping the official...

Since 2010, Burma/Myanmar has significantly liberalized. In this context questions about if and how to address the country's legacy of repression and armed conflict have received attention both domestically and internationally. This article draws upon interdisciplinary comparative transitional justice scholarship, both quantitative and qualitative,...

This article uses Burma/Myanmar from 1948 to 2011 as a within-case context to explore why some armed insurgent groups agree to cease-fires while others do not. Analyzing 33 armed groups it finds that longer-lived groups were less likely to agree to cease-fires with the military government between 1989 and 2011. The article uses this within-case var...

Working paper available at: http://www.eai.or.kr/type/panelView.asp?bytag=p&catcode=+&code=eng_report&idx=13666&page=1

The Endtimes of Human Rights. By Hopgood Stephen . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. 272p. $27.95. The Human Rights Paradox: Universality and its Discontents. Edited by Stern Steve J. and Straus Scott . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. 274p. $21.95. The Legitimacy of International Rights Regimes: Legal, Political and Philosophica...

Developing normative indicators to measure governments' consent to, promotion of, and compliance with international laws prohibiting genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other norms constituting the International Criminal Court (ICC) demonstrates that it is possible to calibrate variation in state conduct over time and to compare one...

While there have been recent advances in theories of transitional justice, there remains a lack of theory about how truth commissions and human rights trials interact with each other to facilitate or constrain efforts at transitional justice. This is an important deficiency to remedy because numerous countries long ago leapt ahead of transitional j...

This article attempts to analyze the construction and maintenance of political legitimacy in North Korea through the lens of its state-produced films. After classifying North Korea’s regime as totalitarian, we then discuss the strategies of legitimation available given this classification, and highlight the importance of ideology therein. Next, we...

The fact that Myanmar is not democratic is too often taken as a given in international policy discourse without analysis as to why it has not democratized or what conditions might allow for democratization. Plausible theories to explain Burma's authoritarian politics include poor levels of economic development, colonial history, regional geopolitic...