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Identity, procedures and performance: how authoritarian
regimes legitimize their rule
Christian von Soest and Julia Grauvogel
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany
ABSTRACT
Constructing convincing legitimacy claims is important for securing
the stability of authoritarian regimes. However, extant research has
struggled to systematically analyse how authoritarians substantiate
their right to rule. We analyse a novel data set on authoritarian
regimes’claims to legitimacy that is based on leading country
experts’assessments of 98 states for the period 1991–2010. This
analysis provides key new insights into the inner workings and
legitimation strategies of current non-democratic regimes. Closed
authoritarian regimes predominately rely on identity-based
legitimacy claims (foundational myth, ideology and personalism).
In contrast, elections fundamentally change how authoritarian
rulers relate to society. In their legitimacy claims, electoral
authoritarian regimes focus on their ‘adequate’procedures,
thereby mimicking democracies. All regimes also stress their
purported success in proving material welfare and security to their
citizens.
KEYWORDS
Authoritarian regimes; claims
to legitimacy; expert survey;
identity; procedures;
performance
Introduction
The current research on authoritarianism
1
has provided fundamental insights into the
inner workings of non-democratic polities (for recent overviews see Art, 2012; Köllner &
Kailitz, 2013; Pepinsky, 2014). However, even the growing body of research that differen-
tiates between authoritarian subtypes focuses disproportionally on institutional features
but largely ignores these regimes’different legitimation patterns (for an exception see
Kailitz, 2013), despite the fact that ‘even very coercive regimes cannot survive without
some support’(Geddes, 1999b, p. 125). Only recently have studies examined authoritarian
regimes’different legitimation strategies (Burnell, 2006; Kailitz, 2013).
Moreover, research on authoritarian regimes has tended to rely on general assumptions
about autocrats’different claims to legitimacy that are insufficiently backed by systematic
analyses. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, scholars have asserted that current-day
authoritarian regimes have faced a fundamental ‘crisis of ideology’(Linz, 2000, pp. 36–37),
which, however, does not uniformly apply to all authoritarian regimes (see for example
Holbig, 2013). Likewise, the claim that autocracies ‘lack the procedures which link political
decisions to citizens’preferences’and are thus ‘structurally disadvantaged’to claim
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Christian von Soest christian.vonsoest@giga-hamburg.de GIGA German Institute of Global and Area
Studies, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, 20354 Hamburg, Germany
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2017.1304319.
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2017.1304319
procedure-based legitimacy (Croissant & Wurster, 2013, p. 7) could be oversimplified, par-
ticularly with respect to electoral authoritarian regimes (Schedler, 2006).
In order to address these gaps and to systematically study authoritarian legitimation
strategies, we focus on regimes’claims to legitimacy as a domestic means –vis-à-vis
the ruling elite, the general population and the opposition –of securing authoritarian
rule. While studies examining the determinants of political support predominately
address democracies (e.g. Almond & Verba, 1989; Booth & Seligson, 2009; Gilley, 2009;
Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Kaase & Newton, 1998), we are particularly interested in
regimes that infringe upon civil liberties and political rights. We focus on legitimation as
the strategy used to seek legitimacy rather than on legitimacy itself, thereby taking
regimes’claims to legitimacy seriously. In doing so, we distinguish between six different
legitimacy claims and present the results of a new Regime Legitimation Expert Survey
(RLES) on non-democratic regimes in 98 countries worldwide between 1991 and 2010.
It is the first survey of its kind to systematically assess and compare authoritarian
regimes’legitimation strategies; previous accounts have predominantly been anecdotal
or case-based.
Our analysis proceeds as follows: First, we outline the importance of claims to legiti-
macy for the study of authoritarian regimes and establish six different legitimacy claims.
Building upon this discussion and the differentiation between types of authoritarian
regimes, we investigate which regimes are more likely to use particular legitimation
strategies. In the second section, we introduce the RLES and discuss its advantages com-
pared to previous efforts at data collection, as well as the challenges it presents. We also
outline our empirical strategy for assessing different authoritarian regimes’legitimation
strategies. In the third section, we present the differences in the use of identity- and
procedure-based legitimation strategies across closed and electoral authoritarian
regimes, before discussing the implications of our results for further research in the
conclusion.
Conceptual considerations
A regime’s claim to legitimacy is important for explaining its means of rule and, in turn, its
durability (Brady, 2009; Easton, 1965), because relying on repression alone is too costly as a
means of sustaining authoritarian rule. In the tradition of Weber (1980), who introduced an
empirical concept of legitimacy, we adopt an understanding of legitimation that refers to
the process of gaining support. We conceptually distinguish claims to legitimacy ‘made by
virtually every state in the modern era’about their ‘righteous’political and social order
(Gilley, 2009, p. 10) from legitimacy itself, understood as ‘the capacity of a political
system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the
most appropriate or proper ones for the society’(Lipset, 1959, p. 86). In contrast to
much of the existing literature, which focuses on the popularity enjoyed by a regime
(e.g. Dimitrov, 2009), we analyse the different foundations upon which various regimes
claim legitimacy. Hence, we focus on the ‘supply side’of legitimacy (von Haldenwang,
this issue). For us, legitimation strategies or, in other words, claims to legitimacy
2
can be
both instrumental manipulations to safeguard political power or genuinely held beliefs
among the political elite. They are thus of strategic value and may also express elite
members’true convictions about their perceived entitlement to rule.
2C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
Such claims have fundamental political repercussions as regards elite cohesion, regime
popularity, and opposition activity. First, strong claims to legitimacy enhance elite cohe-
sion (Barker, 2001; Krastev, 2011; LeBas, 2011). The more pronounced the process of legit-
imation, the more likely it is to create collective identification, which in turn increases
bonds among the ruling elite (Cummings, 2006). Second, well-crafted claims to legitimacy
make it more likely that an authoritarian regime will successfully steer the broader popu-
lation’s perceptions of legitimacy (Case, 1995, p. 104). Third, the respective legitimation
strategies determine who can criticize the regime and in which ways (Alagappa, 1995,
p. 4). This agenda-restricting function may serve to marginalize anti-government actors
(Thompson, 2001). Claims to legitimacy hence enable a regime to maintain its entitlement
to rule, particularly when facing periods of economic decline (e.g. Huntington, 1968; Maga-
loni, 2008, pp. 151–174). They therefore shape the way in which a regime implements its
rule, and ultimately its susceptibility to internal crises and external pressure (Beetham,
1991, p. 103). The relationship between legitimacy claims and elite cohesion, opposition
activity and a regime’s popularity among the general population highlights the different
audiences of such claims. Following Case (1995), the survey focuses on central legitimacy
claims directed at a national audience.
Six claims to legitimacy
Many studies of legitimation strategies have underlined the concept’smultidimen-
sional nature (Alagappa, 1995; Burnell, 2006;Mayer,2001). Based on two central heur-
istics by Easton (1965,1975)andWeber(2004) as well as incorporating current research
on the importance of international aspects of authoritarian rule (Burnell, 2006), we
differentiate between six dimensions on which an authoritarian legitimation strategy
can rest. Following Easton (1965,1975), legitimacy claims can be output- and iden-
tity-based. We characterize the former as performance-based legitimacy claims,
meaning a regime’s claim of being successful at producing socio-economic goods or
security for its citizens. In contrast, several dimensions can be subsumed under the
notion of identity-based claims (see Table 1). In line with leading scholars (Alagappa,
1995; Burnell, 2006;Levitsky&Way,2013), we conceptualize a regime’sfoundational
myth and its ideological claims, which stress the prospective societal order, the trans-
cendental nature of the regime or simply the superiority of a nation as key identity-
based elements. As the third identity-based element, we combine Weber’snotionof
charisma (the personal appeal of the ruler) and traditional authority (hereditary succes-
sion) into what we call personalism-based legitimacy claims that focus on the person of
the ruler. In addition, we subsume Weber’s third ideal type, rational-legal authority,
under the procedural
3
dimension. Finally, recent studies highlight that a regime may
also refer to its international engagement as part of domestic legitimacy claims
(Kneuer, 2013;Schatz,2006).
These six dimensions (see Table 1) represent interlinked but functionally different
mechanisms. Real-world cases are typically characterized by ‘highly complex variations,
transitional forms and combinations of these pure types’(Weber, 2004, p. 34) and a
single legitimation resource is rarely adequate in itself to ensure a regime’s survival (Ala-
gappa, 1995, p. 50). Invoking different dimensions at the same time strengthens the
overall legitimacy claim, also because some dimensions may work as functional
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 3
equivalents, thereby offsetting weaknesses in respect to other dimensions (Brusis, 2015). In
the following, we introduce the six dimensions in more detail.
Foundational myth: Incumbents, ruling elites, and parties all refer to their role in the
state-building process in order to legitimate their rule: ‘historical accounts are significant
and contentious precisely because of their relationship to the legitimacy of power in the
present’(Beetham, 1991, p. 103). Particularly strong solidarity ties are established during
periods of violent struggle such as war, revolutions, and liberation movements (Levitsky
& Way, 2013, p. 5), which are often used as powerful legitimation narratives. Moreover,
parties that emerge from a successful national liberation struggle often claim an entitle-
ment to steer the country’s future based on past achievements and a fusion of the
(former) liberation movement and the state (Clapham, 2012; Schedler, 2013, p. 227).
Hence, this dimension does not simply focus on the fact that the politicians or parties
were involved in the establishment of a polity but their recurrent and prominent reference
to it in order to boost their domestic legitimacy. Former liberation movements in Africa
have, for instance, strongly invoked this foundational myth (Schatzberg, 2001).
Ideology: In line with Easton (1975), we understand ideology-based legitimacy claims
as narratives regarding the righteousness of a given political order. In this sense, ideology
denotes a belief system intended to create a collective identity and, in some cases, a
specific societal order (Linz, 2000). The main point from this paper’s perspective is not a
specific content of the ideology invoked, but the regime’s teleological proclamation of
an ‘official’belief system against which all political behaviour is assessed. This ideology
can comprise ‘macro’or ‘micro’claims and also encompasses narratives other than
grand ideologies such as communism. Ideological claims, as understood here, may there-
fore include references to nationalism and religion. Post-independence regimes often rely
strongly on nationalism as a legitimation strategy (Linz, 2000, p. 227). Likewise, nationalism
can be particularly pronounced following a change of government, with the new leader-
ship seeking to strengthen national consciousness (Krastev, 2011). Religion (Albrecht &
Schlumberger, 2004; Wintrobe & Ferrero, 2009) is regularly discussed as a major source
of legitimacy claims, also in conjunction with nationalism (Mansfield & Snyder, 1995;
Razi, 1990).
Personalism: Authoritarian regimes frequently focus on the person of the ruler to boost
their appeal among both the population and the political elite. Personalism comprises two
aspects: Weber (1980, pp. 133–136) refers to charismatic authority as an important source
of legitimacy, which stems from the ‘extraordinary personality’and leadership qualities of
an individual. Charismatic leaders portray themselves as chosen ‘from above’to fulfil a
certain mission (Fagen, 1965, pp. 275–277) and as having traditional authority through
hereditary succession (Brownlee, 2007;Herb, 1999). Personalism-based claims may also
Table 1. Six claims to legitimacy.
Types of claims
Identity-based:
(1) Foundational myth
(2) Ideology
(3) Personalism
(4) Procedures
(5) Performance
(6) International engagement
4C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
represent a discursive mechanism that emphasizes the ruler’s centrality to certain achieve-
ments such as the nation’s unity, prosperity, and stability (Isaacs, 2010; Nelson, 1984).
Procedures: Attempts to create procedural legitimacy can be based on the carrying out
of elections and other rule-based mechanisms for handing over power through ‘orderly’
process, be it nominally democratic through elections, hereditary power transfer (Yom &
Gause, 2012), within a ruling party or based on mechanisms for the implementation of pol-
icies. This applies to more than just democracies. Bureaucratic–military authoritarian
regimes, for example, go to considerable lengths to operate within a legalistic framework
despite the many arbitrary elements in their exercise of authority (Linz, 2000, p. 186).
Performance: Our take on performance-related narratives is based on Easton’s(1965)
notion of specific support, which refers to regime legitimacy that stems from success in
satisfying citizens’needs. We hence focus on the extent to which the regime either delib-
erately cites its achievements in fulfilling societal demands such as material welfare and
security or, alternately, employs claims of achievements in the absence of real improve-
ments (see Dimitrov, 2009 on economic populism). Hence, different components can com-
prise the notion of ‘performance’, among them the claim that the state organizes equal
redistribution and access to certain public goods, such as healthcare and education
(von Soest & Grauvogel, 2015), as well as the presentation of a regime as a guarantor of
stability, territorial integrity or state building after a civil war (Radnitz, 2012). Instead of,
as is common practice, using proxies such as economic growth, inflation, and unemploy-
ment to measure a regime’s performance-based support we ask to what extent a regime
explicitly invokes such performance-related claims.
International engagement: Lastly, autocrats also use international engagement to
bolster their domestic legitimation narrative. This has hardly been considered in a sys-
tematic fashion by the extant research on authoritarian attempts to gain legitimacy. In
contrast to ‘external legitimacy’, i.e. recognition from other states (Burnell, 2006; Jackson
& Rosberg, 1982), we focus on the extent to which a regime refers to its international
role in order to legitimate its rule domestically. Disproportionate international engage-
ment –for instance, in international negotiations or regional organizations but also in
providing global public goods and acting as an ideological ‘model exporter’,asinthe
case of Venezuela or Iran (von Soest, 2015; Whitehead, 2015)–may serve to strengthen
the legitimation of regimes, especially those that can hardly draw on domestic sources
of legitimation (Schatz, 2006). Using the term ‘externalization’, Dzhuraev (2012,p.2)
describes how political leaders leverage their country’s role in international arenas ‘as
tools in manufacturing domestic legitimation’(see also Koesel & Bunce, 2013). Further-
more, the need to defend the country against an external enemy can also be used to
claim domestic legitimacy.
Different forms of authoritarianism and their claims to legitimacy
Authoritarianism is structured in various ways. Indeed, ‘[d]ifferent kinds of authoritarianism
differ from each other as much as they differ from democracy’(Geddes, 1999a, p. 6). Our
principal expectation is that the different types of authoritarianism also vary in a systema-
tic fashion in their claims to legitimacy. Most important in this regard is the established
differentiation between closed and electoral forms of authoritarianism. As we are inter-
ested in the difference between electoral and non-electoral forms of authoritarianism,
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 5
we refrain from using Geddes, Wright, and Frantz’s(2014) well-known differentiation
between personalist, military and party regimes.
While electoral authoritarian regimes are characterized by the existence of the nomin-
ally democratic institution of elections and –at least formally –allow open political con-
testation, closed regimes, for instance single-party regimes, forestall this public political
contest. This does not mean, however, that there is no competition within dominating
institutions in closed authoritarian regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2010).
Unlike closed authoritarian regimes, electoral authoritarianism in principle opens up
political positions of executive and legislative power to elections. The institution of
elections fundamentally changes how rulers relate to society and how they claim legiti-
macy. ‘By establishing multiparty elections for highest office, electoral authoritarian
regimes institute the principle of popular consent –even as they subvert it in practice’
(Schedler, 2013, p. 121). Even if the elections are fraudulent, these authoritarian
regimes allow citizens a stronger oversight than their closed counterparts. It can be
assumed that electoral authoritarian regimes use the institution of elections as a key
resource to strengthen their claim to legitimacy. We therefore expect that they focus
more strongly on procedural claims to legitimacy than closed authoritarian regimes
(expectation 1).
With their ‘contradictory mix of democratic procedures and authoritarian practices’
(Schedler, 2013, p. 78), electoral authoritarian regimes occupy the middle ground
between closed authoritarianism on the one hand and liberal democracy on the other
(Morse, 2011, p. 164). If we focus on the level of openness and electoral competitiveness,
the broad category of electoral authoritarianism can be further differentiated into hege-
monic and competitive authoritarianism (Howard & Roessler, 2006; similarly Hyde &
Marinov, 2012). The main focus herein lies on the strength of the opposition (Levitsky &
Way, 2010). These categories, as well as the thresholds separating them, are disputed
(e.g. Bogaards, 2009; Morse, 2011; Munck, 2006; Snyder, 2006). The most important
aspect for this paper, however, is that electoral contestation is much more central in com-
petitive than in hegemonic authoritarianism.
Both hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes hold regular elections under
non-democratic conditions. Yet in the former category, any opposition activity is severely
constrained due to the widespread intimidation of the opposition and severe electoral
fraud. In these cases, elections are hardly more than an authoritarian façade (Diamond,
2002, p. 29; Schedler, 2002, p. 38). As a result, the dominant candidate or party wins the
elections by wide margins (Simpser, 2013). In contrast, competitive authoritarian
regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2010,2002)
4
allow for regular elections with more meaningful
competition, even if the incumbent manages to create an ‘uneven playing field
between government and opposition’(Levitsky & Way, 2002, p. 53).
As a final point of reference, so-called electoral democracies come closest to liberal
democracies, where the electoral process is free and contestation is not restricted in
any meaningful way.
5
The boundaries between electoral, imperfect democracy and elec-
toral authoritarianism are contested (Bogaards, 2009; Schedler, 2002). Most fundamentally,
and in contrast to electoral authoritarian regimes, electoral democracies conduct free and
fair elections. Deficiencies can be found with respect ‘to checks and balances, bureaucratic
integrity, and impartial judiciary’(Schedler, 2002, p. 37). Rulers in electoral democracies
might therefore have the fewest problems in claiming that the procedural mechanisms
6C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
are fair. On the other hand, due to the existing deficiencies in their political processes, elec-
toral democracies cannot be considered liberal democratic.
6
In sum, hegemonic authoritarian regimes, competitive authoritarian regimes and elec-
toral democracies can all be considered not (fully) democratic, but they vary with respect
to the quality of their electoral processes, which should systematically influence the pro-
pensity to invoke certain claims to legitimacy. Accordingly, we expect competitive author-
itarian regimes and electoral democracies to make stronger procedural legitimacy claims
than hegemonic authoritarian regimes (expectation 2).
In contrast, closed authoritarian regimes attempt to preclude any opposition (Levitsky &
Way, 2010, p. 7). Closed authoritarian regimes can therefore be defined as those ‘in which a
country’s leaders are not selected through national elections, opposition political parties
remain banned, political control is maintained through the use of repression, and there
is little space for a free media and civil society’(Howard & Roessler, 2006, p. 367). (For a
sub-differentiation of the institutionally ‘heterogeneous’category of closed authoritarian
regimes see Cassani, this issue). This also has implications for the regimes’legitimation
strategies, as procedural claims should be less central for closed authoritarian regimes
(Dukalskis, 2017, provides an analysis of legitimacy claims in the three closed authoritarian
regimes China, Myanmar, and North Korea). Having said that, studies of paradigmatic cases
demonstrate the importance of ideology –for instance, in contemporary China, where
‘ideology still plays an indispensable role in the quest to legitimise authoritarian rule’
(Holbig, 2013, p. 61). In addition, authors have repeatedly stressed that ideological foun-
dations and references to the genesis of a –frequently new –nation and to a heroic
‘father of the nation’remain particularly salient for those regimes that attempt to inhibit
every opposition (Dimitrov, 2013; Levitsky & Way, 2013; Mayer, 2001). Hence, we
assume that closed authoritarian regimes rely more on identity-based claims than do
other types of non-democratic regimes (expectation 3).
Finally, according to various authors, all political systems, and authoritarian regimes in
particular, need output legitimacy (material welfare, law and order, external security) to
successfully claim their right to rule (Lipset, 1959; Miller, 2015; e.g. Przeworski &
Limongi, 1993; most strongly Rothstein, 2009). This implies that rulers attempt to
strengthen the belief in the economic, distributional and security performance of their
regime (Easton, 1965). In short, according to Rothstein (2009, p. 313), ‘legitimacy is
created, maintained, and destroyed not by the input but by the output side of the political
system’. Thus, we anticipate performance-based claims to legitimacy to be important for
all authoritarian regimes (expectation 4).
Data and research design: the regime legitimation expert survey
Expert judgements can be a powerful tool for bridging informational gaps (Schedler,
2012). First, they allow for the collection of comparable data across a wide range of
countries (Saiegh, 2009). Moreover, other ways of obtaining systematic information on
legitimation strategies, such as direct elite surveys or opinion polls, are hardly feasible
in authoritarian contexts (Bunce & Wolchik, 2010; Gerschewski, 2013). Accordingly, an
expert survey is arguably an appropriate means to gather data on the claims to legitimacy
made by non-democratic regimes worldwide and to complement existing case-specific
literature.
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 7
For the survey, we contacted approximately 800 leading country experts. They were
selected on the basis of their publication records,
7
their local expertise and their prior
work for high-quality country-based indices such as the Bertelsmann Transformation
Index (BTI), research institutes such as the German Institute of Global and Area Studies
(GIGA) and high-profile think tanks including Chatham House. In other words, a theoretical
sampling technique, also referred to as purposive non-randomized sampling, was applied
(Goldstein, 2002; Tansey, 2007, p. 770); this was supplemented by snowballing based on
previously contacted experts’recommendations. Two-hundred and seventy-six online
questionnaires were completed for a total of 98 countries, amounting to a response
rate of 34 per cent, which is fully in line with that of other expert surveys (e.g. Huber &
Inglehart, 1995; Staats, Bowler, & Hiskey, 2008).
8
As potential memory biases make it unad-
visable to rely on judgements regarding issues that took place too far in the past (Gerva-
soni, 2010), we collected expert assessments of the most recent non-democratic regime in
the period 1991–2010 (see Online Appendix A for the regime spells) in countries with a
population of more than one million. To determine whether or not a regime was demo-
cratic, we followed Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius (2013). They use a combined
Freedom House and Polity IV measure to compensate for the individual shortcomings
of the two indices (Hadenius & Teorell, 2005). According to the most current classification,
a country is regarded as non-democratic in a certain year if its score is lower than seven on
their 10-point index (Wahman et al., 2013).
9
The survey comprised questions covering the strength of a regime’s six legitimation
strategies, as introduced above, and the overall legitimation narrative based on a six-
point scale ranging from zero to five (see Online Appendix B); in addition, it was possible
to write comments. Moreover, a question on the respondent’s level of confidence regard-
ing their answers was included. Each country assessment is based on at least two expert
responses with a minimum confidence level of three on a scale from zero to five, with five
indicating the highest level of confidence.
10
More than 50 per cent of the country
values build on three assessments or more. Larger expert surveys in the field, such as
the Varieties of Democracy project (Coppedge, Gerring, & Lindberg, 2012), work with a
minimum of five country experts, but we are convinced that the RLES, the first survey
of its kind, provides solid information on the legitimation strategies of current authoritar-
ian regimes worldwide.
Despite the strengths of expert surveys, this method also involves challenges with
respect to reliability, validity and transparency. In the following, we demonstrate how
we have addressed these potential shortcomings. First, the reliability of expert assess-
ments can be problematic due to information collection challenges and the inability of
experts to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information (Bollen & Paxton, 2000). In
the RLES, this difficulty is mitigated because the experts assess the regimes’legitimacy
claims on the basis of their own empirical research. In addition, our careful selection of
experts, which was based not only on their general country expertise but also on their
knowledge in our specific area of interest, minimized this threat to reliability (see also
Schedler, 2012). According to Hooghe et al. (2010), such familiarity with the topic strongly
increases the reliability of expert assessments. Another potential reliability problem is rep-
resented by reporting asymmetries, which arise if experts are asked to evaluate phenom-
ena across different countries including those they know less (Saiegh, 2009). Following the
approach developed by the BTI, the RLES minimizes this pitfall by including assessments
8C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
from experts based inside and outside the evaluated country. Their assessments are
largely identical (see Table 2).
The reliability of a survey is a necessary but not sufficient condition for its validity (King,
Keohane, & Verba, 1994, p. 25). The validity can be undermined by random and systematic
errors, with systematic errors being particularly problematic (Marks, Hooghe, Steenbergen,
& Bakker, 2007; McDonald, Mendes, & Kim, 2007). They arise when misperceptions are
replicated by various experts in a similar fashion. For instance, experts may mix up
claims to legitimacy and the acceptance of these claims, which is a frequent problem of
most legitimacy research. Similarly, they may confound a regime’s rhetoric and its behav-
iour in their assessments (Marks et al., 2007). However, our focus on claims to legitimacy
was clearly stated in the survey questions, and the pre-test as well as the experts’com-
ments indicated that the experts indeed focused on authoritarian regimes’claims to
legitimacy.
We cannot entirely eliminate the risk that the experts’assessments regarding the
strength of the different claims to legitimacy were influenced by a regime’s duration.
Experts might have ascribed stronger legitimation strategies to long-lasting regimes. As
previously noted, the RLES survey addresses the legitimation strategies pursued by each
country’s most recent authoritarian regime. This period was conveyed to the experts on
the basis of the data set by Wahman et al. (2013), but adjusted based on country-specific
literature. However, the fact that the relatively short-lived regimes in, for example, Thai-
land, Haiti, Turkey before Erdoğan, and Bhutan were described as making strong claims
to legitimacy with respect to three or more dimensions whereas long-lasting regimes
such as Azerbaijan were characterized as only making weak claims to legitimacy suggests
that experts were clearly able to differentiate between a regime’s duration and the
strength of its respective claims to legitimacy.
Finally, a review of the survey’s external validity through a comparison with similar data
sets was not possible (Bollen & Paxton, 2000) because the RLES is the first expert survey of
its kind to focus on the legitimacy claims of non-democratic regimes. Therefore, we
describe the procedure for conducting this exploratory expert survey in a particularly
transparent manner. In addition to providing information on the number of experts,
their selection and their response rates, we also report on their confidence levels in
Online Appendix A.
As outlined above, we differentiate between four groups of non-democratic regimes
according to their openness and level of electoral contestation. Closed authoritarian
regimes are the most repressive, leave ‘little space for a free media and civil society’
and, most importantly, do not hold national elections (Howard & Roessler, 2006, p. 367).
Accordingly, we have assessed, based on the National Elections across Democracy and
Autocracy (NELDA) data set (Hyde & Marinov, 2012) and country-specific literature,
Table 2. Comparability of expert assessments.
Dimension Average RLES value Average RLES value without experts from the regions
Foundational myth 2.95 2.98
Ideology 2.76 2.77
Personalism 2.82 2.73
Procedures 3.53 3.53
Performance 3.43 3.41
International engagement 2.05 2.00
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 9
whether national elections take place and whether they serve to select the head of state or
government.
Following Roessler and Howard (2009, p. 112), our operationalization takes into account
the regime’s Freedom House (FH) and Polity IV values and the winner’s share of votes or
seats in the previous election, which we assess on the basis of the Database of Political
Institutions (DPI) (World Bank, 2012). More precisely, hegemonic authoritarian regimes
are defined by an FH value of more than two or a Polity IV score of less than six and
the election winner receiving 70 per cent or more (Howard & Roessler, 2006, p. 368),
11
whereas competitive authoritarian regimes are characterized by the same FH or Polity
IV scores, with the incumbent receiving less than 70 per cent in national elections.
Finally, electoral democracies hold elections that are generally free and fair, but pluralism,
freedom and the rule of law are not fully guaranteed. Put differently, these regimes have
an FH value of at least two or a Polity IV score of six or higher (see Table 3).
12
As a robust-
ness check, we have controlled the results for this differentiation between types of author-
itarianism with four groups of authoritarian regimes that are based simply on their
combined FH and Polity IV scores (Hadenius & Teorell, 2007; Wahman et al., 2013, see
Online Appendix D).
Results: the importance of identity, procedures and performance
Before disentangling the diverging legitimation strategies of non-democratic regimes, we
report on the averaged RLES expert assessments regarding the six different dimensions
across all countries to shed light on their relative importance on a global scale (see
Table 4 below). Two legitimation strategies are invoked most strongly: the average for pro-
cedure- and performance-based claims to legitimacy is 3.46 and 3.36, respectively, on a
scale from zero to five.
13
In contrast, most non-democratic regimes appear not to stress
their international engagement in a pronounced fashion, something which is illustrated
by an average of 1.96 across all countries. The identity-based strategies emphasizing a
regime’s foundational myth, ideology or the leader’s extraordinary charisma and capabili-
ties are applied neither in an extraordinarily pronounced nor a particularly weak fashion,
with average assessments of 3.01, 2.77, and 2.84. Hence, ideology has not lost its importance
as a source of legitimacy since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Dimitrov, 2013; Holbig, 2013;
Mayer, 2001) but it does not constitute the single most important cornerstone either.
In order to move beyond the average values and to provide a more nuanced, yet still
descriptive, picture of the legitimation strategies employed by different regimes with
democratic deficits, we combine the assessments and comments provided by the
survey experts
14
with insights from the secondary literature. A multivariate analysis
Table 3. Operationalizing authoritarian regimes.
Regime type Measurement criteria
Closed authoritarianism No multi-candidate national elections for selection of executive
Hegemonic authoritarianism FH ≥2 and Polity IV < 6 and winner received ≥70% of the vote or seats in previous
elections
Competitive
authoritarianism
FH ≥2 and Polity IV < 6 and winner received < 70% of the vote or seats in previous
elections
Electoral democracy FH < 2 or Polity ≥6
Source: Adapted from Roessler and Howard (2009, p. 112).
10 C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
incorporating further factors might be conducted in the future. As our first finding, the
explorative analysis suggests that the focus on procedure-based legitimation strategies
is fundamentally stronger in electoral authoritarian than in closed authoritarian regimes
(expectation 1) (see Table 5). In this context, it is important to stress that the experts
clearly distinguished (a) between claims and their acceptance as well as (b) between pre-
conditions –such as the mere existence of regular elections –and the extent to which
these were incorporated into a regime’s legitimation strategy. First insights drawn from
the RLES show that hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes not only possess
key characteristics for claiming procedure-based legitimacy, as they regularly hold elec-
tions, but also take advantage of these preconditions in crafting their legitimation strat-
egies. In Rwanda, for example, the regime referred to the 2001 local elections as an
important step on its alleged road to democracy. More generally, the notion of consensual
democracy has become a cornerstone of the party’s legitimation strategy (Reyntjens,
2004). Hence, in a systematic manner, the RLES provides initial empirical evidence of Sche-
dler’s(2006, p. 13) proposition that, irrespective of electoral fraud, ‘[b]y opening the peaks
of state power to multiparty elections, electoral authoritarian regimes establish the
primacy of democratic legitimation’.
Second, the explorative analysis of the RLES demonstrates that competitive authoritar-
ian regimes are characterized by an even more pronounced emphasis on procedural
claims to legitimacy than hegemonic ones (expectation 2). For example, elections consti-
tuted the main reference point for claiming procedure-based legitimacy in Mexico during
the rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (RLES), with some authors suggesting
that they were in fact ‘instituted to bolster the [regime’s] questionable legitimacy’(Solinger,
2001, p. 31 emphasis added). Hegemonic authoritarian regimes, in contrast, appear to
leverage their procedure-related legitimacy claims more carefully because they –given
the severe nature of democratic infringements –are aware of the pitfalls of such a legit-
imation strategy. One way of dealing with this challenge is to integrate procedure-based
claims into a broader narrative. In Kazakhstan, where ‘every move toward autocracy was
covered by procedural mechanisms’(RLES), this narrative was underpinned by a wider dis-
course promoting a ‘Kazakhstani way’of democratization.
Table 4. Average importance of legitimation dimensions.
Foundational
myth Ideology Personalism Procedures Performance
International
engagement
Average RLES
assessment
3.01 2.77 2.84 3.46 3.36 1.96
Table 5. Different authoritarian regimes and legitimation strategies.
Closed
authoritarian
Hegemonic
authoritarian
Competitive
authoritarian
Electoral
democracy
Foundational myth 3.65 3.18 2.59 2.84
Ideology 3.38 2.91 2.55 2.27
Personalism 3.14 3.41 2.70 2.15
Procedures 2.98 3.52 3.75 3.41
Performance 3.48 3.71 3.35 3.01
International
engagement
2.17 2.50 1.79 1.45
N22 regime spells 19 regime spells 37 regime spells 20 regime spells
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 11
Electoral democracies also refer to procedure-based legitimacy claims in a rather pro-
nounced fashion, as Table 5 shows. In contrast to our expectations, however, their pro-
cedural legitimation strategies are –on average –slightly weaker than those of
electoral authoritarian regimes. One explanation for this surprising outcome of the RLES
could be that electoral democracies, which come closest to liberal democracies, do not
stress their procedural credentials as much as competitive autocracies because these
are questioned less extensively (see Bunce & Wolchik, 2010, p. 59 on the particular vulner-
ability of competitive authoritarian regimes). However, this aspect warrants further sys-
tematic research.
Third, we find tentative evidence that closed authoritarian regimes focus heavily on
identity-based claims to legitimacy (expectation 3). For instance, North Korea’s communist
regime strongly invokes ‘[a]nti-Japanese, anti-US, ‘anti-traitorous’South Koreans’senti-
ments as a foundational myth and propagates its ‘Juche and ‘military-first’ideology’
(RLES). Moreover, its leaders Kim Il Sung (1948–1994), Kim Jong Il (1994–2011) and Kim
Jong Un (since 2001) have always been central pillars of the regime’s legitimation strategy.
This combination of foundational myth, ideology and –to a lesser degree –personalism is
also invoked by the Syrian regime. Its claim to legitimacy is directly linked to a founda-
tional myth: the Ba’th revolution of 1963 and the Corrective Movement, i.e. Hafiz al-
Assad’s takeover of power to become president in 1970 (RLES). In terms of ideology, the
ruling Ba’th Party has moved from promoting its own version of Arab socialism to a dom-
inating ‘anti-posture against Israeli and Western domination of the Middle East’(RLES). The
omnipresent personality cult developed under Hafiz al-Assad in the 1980s and 1990s
(Wedeen, 1999) was subsequently replaced by the –somewhat less central –portrayal
of Bashar al-Assad as a ‘more modern and somewhat more accessible leader’(RLES).
This varying importance of personalism is also reflected by the survey, according to
which personalism is actually invoked in a slightly more pronounced fashion by hegemo-
nic rather than closed authoritarian regimes (see Table 5 above).
Finally, performance-based legitimation strategies seem to be particularly important for
all authoritarian regimes (expectation 4). The 10 regimes with the most pronounced per-
formance claims include closed, hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes as well
as electoral democracies (see Online Appendix A). In other words, regimes as diverse as
hegemonic Uzbekistan, the electoral democracy Malawi and the one-party regime in
China have all focused strongly on their allegedly positive socio-economic and political
performance in order to substantiate their rule (RLES). Again, real-world accomplishments
in these areas make it easier for regimes to rely on this legitimation strategy, but ‘success-
ful economic performance can translate into claims for legitimacy only when the regime is
framed as being in the pivotal role to having achieved this success’(RLES on China). Con-
versely, regimes do refer to their performance despite questionable records. Turkmenistan,
for example, is presented as the only country in the world to provide its people with water
and electricity free of charge, even though these services are rationed, i.e. not available on
a regular basis (Schmitz, 2004, p. 74). Such output-based legitimation strategies are not
limited to growth and development. Non-democratic regimes also ground their legitima-
tion narratives in their performance with regard to securing political stability (Bunce &
Wolchik, 2010,p. 61). Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, for instance, frame their countries as
islands of stability and emphasize the regimes’abilities to secure peace and stability
(RLES).
12 C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
How authoritarian regimes systematically differ in their claims to
legitimacy
In this article, we have conceptually differentiated claims to legitimacy from the broader
and more commonly used notion of legitimacy. In addition, we have introduced a novel
expert survey which we used to systematically assess whether different authoritarian
regimes are particularly likely to rely on specific legitimation strategies. This systematic
approach towards claims to legitimacy provides new insights into the –different –
inner workings of authoritarian regimes.
Most fundamentally, closed authoritarian regimes, which constitute almost a quarter of
the overall sample, rely predominantly on identity-based legitimation strategies –namely,
references to the regime’s ideology, its foundational myth and/or the person of the ruler –
in constructing the mix of legitimation dimensions they draw on. This calls into question
previous research suggesting that –with a few notorious exceptions such as China, North
Korea and Vietnam –modern autocracies hardly claim ideology-based legitimacy (Crois-
sant & Wurster, 2013, p. 7).
15
Second, the RLES corroborates the proposition that insti-
tutions, and most importantly elections, are more than window dressing for
authoritarian regimes. In addition to serving as a key device for co-optation (e.g. Gandhi
& Przeworski, 2006), the regular holding of elections also fundamentally affects the
basis on which authoritarian regimes claim legitimacy. According to the survey, pro-
cedure-based legitimation strategies are particularly relevant for electoral authoritarian
regimes. This finding underscores the value of systematically disaggregating non-demo-
cratic regimes with respect to their claims to legitimacy.
Third, the RLES supports and further specifies previous research on the importance of
output legitimacy for authoritarian regimes (Croissant & Wurster, 2013). Without running
into the problems that research on the performance of autocracies has encountered as a
result of missing or imprecise data (Roller, 2001), the RLES results show that performance-
related claims are of great importance to all authoritarian regimes. Effectively, this legiti-
mation strategy displays the least variation in strength across the different authoritarian
subtypes.
The explorative analysis of the expert survey on claims to legitimacy provides new
insights into how rule is exercised in non-democratic regimes. For such regimes, claims
of legitimacy are a double-edged sword: On the one hand, they enable the exercise of
power. Yet on the other hand, they also restrain it, as such claims make a regime vulner-
able when the disjuncture to reality becomes too stark and adjustment fails (Krastev,
2011). Procedure-based legitimacy claims, for example, may spur demands for real demo-
cratic change, because ‘if leaders use the forms of democracy, publics come to expect the
substance’(interview, cited in Bunce & Wolchik, 2010, p. 59). Whether and how claims to
legitimacy are successfully adjusted to such real-world challenges should be explored
further.
To be sure, claims to legitimacy related to identity, procedures and performance are
clearly not the only means to safeguard authoritarian rule. In addition to making use of
legitimation strategies, autocracies also rely on repression and co-optation to increase
their chances of staying in power (inter alia Gerschewski, 2013; Wintrobe, 1998). While
repression is costly, it has the potential to successfully contain regime-threatening
protest (DeNardo, 1985; Koopmans, 1997). Moreover, many regimes seek to ‘buy’
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS 13
support –either from key constituencies or from broader segments of society (e.g. Bueno
de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, & Morrow, 2003; Gandhi & Przeworski, 2006). How authori-
tarian regimes calibrate this mix of survival strategies could be assessed by systematic
research in the future.
Notes
1. We use the terms authoritarian, non-democratic and autocratic interchangeably throughout
this paper.
2. For better readability we use both terms interchangeably.
3. Compare Scharpf’s(1997,1999, chap. 1) understanding of input legitimacy as a core function
of democratic legitimacy that focuses on institutional arrangements and governing processes.
Relatedly, throughput legitimacy signifies the actual integration of people in decision-making
processes (Schmidt, 2013). We refer to such claims to legitimacy as procedure-based
(Beetham, 1991).
4. To be sure, Levitsky and Way (2010, p. 16) prefer the concept of competitive authoritarianism
to the broader notion of electoral authoritarianism. Schedler (2002, p. 47) himself subsumes
‘competitive’and ‘hegemonic’authoritarian regimes under the broad category of electoral
authoritarianism.
5. For want of a better term, we follow the terminology used by Diamond (2002), Howard and
Roessler (2006) and Freedom House. As Diamond (2002, p. 22) affirms, these electoral
regimes ‘fail to meet the substantive test’, particularly when it comes to safeguarding civil
liberties.
6. The Wahman et al. (2013) data set, used in this paper to separate authoritarian from liberal
democratic regimes, is also based on a broad understanding of authoritarianism and a high
threshold for liberal democratic regimes (they use a combined measure of Freedom House
and Polity IV).
7. For the identification of country experts based on their prior publication record with respect to
the countries and issue in question, we relied on the leading comparative politics journals,
including Comparative Politics, the Journal of Democracy, and Democratization. In addition,
we also searched the key area studies journals for each region.
8. We very much appreciate the invaluable responses of these experts as well as their extensive
and extremely helpful comments.
9. In earlier versions, Hadenius and Teorell (2005,2007) used a 7.5-point threshold.
10. The only exception is Singapore.
11. We work with the original thresholds of 2 and 6; in their 2009 version (Roessler & Howard,
2009), Howard and Roessler used thresholds of 3 and 5.
12. In contrast to Howard and Roessler, who examine authoritarian elections, our unit of analysis is
the regime spell. For details on all regime spells, see Online Appendix C.
13. The three dimensions are significantly correlated at p= 0.01 as follows: foundational myth–
ideology = 0,643380711, foundational myth–personalism = 0,410285827, ideology–personal-
ism = 0,360149604.
14. Only verbatim quotes and major points of information from the survey are explicitly referred
to as coming from the RLES. Due to the assessments’sensitive nature, the list of experts cannot
be made publicly available. Many experts only participated because their anonymity was
guaranteed.
15. Note again that we use a broad understanding of ideology.
Acknowledgements
Reverse alphabetical order, both authors contributed equally. We would like to thank André Bank,
Alexander Dukalskis, Johannes Gerschewski, Maria Josua and the participants of the 2016 ECPR
14 C.VONSOESTANDJ.GRAUVOGEL
Joint Sessions workshop ‘Legitimation in Non-Democracies: Concepts, Theories and Empirical Evi-
dence across Regime Subtypes’in Pisa for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung [grant number: 10.11.1.155].
Notes on contributors
Christian von Soest is a Lead Research Fellow and head of the Peace and Security Research Pro-
gramme at GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies. His research investigates international
sanctions and other foreign policy interventions, conflict processes, and the domestic and inter-
national politics of authoritarian regimes.
Julia Grauvogel is a Research Fellow at GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. Her work
focuses on domestic opposition movements in countries under sanctions and the legitimation strat-
egies of authoritarian regimes.
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