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The New Competitive Authoritarianism
... We may learn a lot from the academic discussion about the importance of the electoral, executive and legislative, and judicial spheres for the survival of hybrid regimes. The public's part is also noticeable, but it is largely underappreciated in the literature (Levitsky and Way, 2002). ...
... Elections are held regularly and without undue fraud, even if tainted by state manipulation and abuse, such as media bias and opposition candidate harassment. Thus, incumbents must respect elections (Levitsky and Way, 2002). ...
... Hybrid regimes have poor rule of law, as the government often subordinates the court, the third arena. Bribery, extortion, and appointing and firing judges and officials are used to do this (Levitsky and Way, 2002). Hybrid regimes combine judicial independence with partial executive power. ...
There are antecedents to the modern Pakistani judicial system that date back to the Middle Ages. Nothing appears to be more important to the stability and development of a nation than a robust judicial system. A robust, fair, and externally-independent judiciary is essential for stability and Political System. The primary goal of this paper is to assess and investigate the nature and magnitude of the judiciary's contribution to systematic intrusion into Pakistan's political structure. Because the SCP interprets the constitution in order to make decisions based on the rules and institutions established by the constitution, the paper emphasizes the significance of a new descriptor of hybrid regimes, namely institutional supremacy. In the framework of his pursuit to demonstrate a "science of moral facts," This research applies a descriptive analysis of the goals of the judiciary's involvement in Pakistani politics.
... 3 The consequences have been dramatic: Hungary, once heralded as a poster child for successful democratic transition in Eastern Europe, has regressed, becoming an electoral-authoritarian regime in 2019 -the first nondemocratic member of the European Union. 4 The public legitimation strategies of Orbán that focused on his personal qualities as a guardian of the people's will and on "religious conservatism and nationalism" 5 were an important discursive step and indeed a warning signal for the ensuing reduction of judicial and legislative checks on the executive. To what extent is the Hungarian case typical? ...
... This includes almost all long-standing democracies, which lie more than one standard deviation above the long-term global average of V-Dem's Polyarchy measure, such as most EU member states, or other prominent democracies like Table 1. Fixed-effects models for judicial constraints (1)(2)(3)(4) and legislative constraints (5)(6)(7)(8). Cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses; Significance levels: * 0.05, ** 0.01, *** 0.001; All time-varying variables lagged by one year. ...
In the face of current democratic backsliding and autocratization processes, research has rediscovered issues of autocratic legitimation. However, the question of whether rulers’ personalist rhetoric to bolster their legitimacy is followed by congruent political action remains underspecified. Using new expert-coded measures for 164 countries from the Varieties of Democracy project, we examine the political rhetoric–action link using using fixed effects models. The results confirm that shifts towards personalist legitimacy claims are no cheap talk but oftentimes important warning signals for a substantial deterioration of democratic quality, manifested in weaker judicial and legislative oversight of the executive branch. However, in contrast to much current concern, we show that liberal democracies seem to largely escape the negative repercussions of government discourses that increasingly stress the uniqueness of the ruler.
... 20 Drawing on the work of Levitsky and Way about competitive authoritarian regimes, Turkish scholars started to classify Turkey in this category after the June 2015 elections. 21 The Gezi Park protests that occurred in May 2013 were the reaction, of especially the university youth, against not only an urban project but also against the centralization of power, cronyism, and authoritarianism. 22 The protestors also decried the intolerant attitude of the AKP government regarding different lifestyles, and top-down Islamization attempts. ...
“Your political hegemony ended; your cultural hegemony, too, will end.”
... 44 Moreover, studies have shown that Serbia, together with Turkey and Brazil, belongs to a group of countries with the greatest levels of democratic decline. 45 As predicted by the model developed by Levitsky and Way, 46 the SNS generated a plebiscitarian majority using populist polarizing tactics based on an anti-corruption campaign. As previous governments had failed to establish strong democratic institutions, 47 it took the SNS only a few years to limit institutional capacities and subordinate institutions through the deployment of loyal personnel. ...
Recent literature suggests that the competitive authoritarian regimes emerging in the twenty-first century are more subtle and nuanced in comparison to the old regimes of the 1990s. Aiming to understand these differences in greater depth, this article explores how new competitive authoritarian regimes react to mass protests. The article focuses on the case of Serbia, a country where protests have been
widespread both during the old regime of the 1990s and the current regime. Analysing five protests waves in the past decade, we were able to identify three dominant strategic interactions of the regime with the protests, all of which contrast significantly with those employed by the old regime. First, in contrast to protest bans and oppression mechanisms used by the old regime, the new regime
tends to allow, and strategically ignore protests. Second, while in the past police violence was widespread, there is an apparent police absence from the protests nowadays. Finally, there is a clear difference in the ways the two regimes portray the “Others”. While in the 1990s the international enemies were clearly identified and explicitly evoked, the new regime tends to make vague and contradictory claims about diverse but unspecific international and regional enemies behind protests.
... This research brings to the fore the questions of the role of international and global forces in supporting democracy and how they can provide effective assistance to democratic agents in authoritarian regimes. As conventional efforts to promote democracy have created a backlash and given rise to strong anti-Western sentiments in many countries, international democratic forces no longer have the power or willingness to engage in democracy promotion (Levitsky and Way 2020). Populist-authoritarian leaders such as Erdoğan and Orbán have a long tradition of inflaming nationalist sentiments by accusing opposition forces of allying with international 'enemies'. ...
Despite a growing body of literature on the advancement of autocratic tactics and toolkits in competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs), we lack sufficient knowledge on the strategies that the opposition builds against populist-authoritarian governments. Using two top autocratizing cases – Turkey and Hungary – this article singles out ‘transnationalization’ as one such novel strategy. ‘Transnationalization’ is defined as a strategy through which opposition-led subnational executives transform local and global boundaries by consciously forming a link with the liberal-democratic world in order to expand their space for manoeuvre. Conducting a qualitative content analysis of the Istanbul and Budapest mayors' international Twitter accounts and using evidence from elite interviews with officials from Istanbul and Budapest municipalities, we demonstrate the material, symbolic and political means of this strategy and the rationalist and normative motivations behind it. By discussing the what, how and why of a transnationalization strategy, we fill an important gap in the scholarship regarding opposition strategies in CARs.
... That said, we consider a clearcut delineation of regime periods to be somewhat misleading. Although the degree of political openness certainly increased after 1997, recent research has acknowledged the persistently undemocratic nature of the DPS' rule, classifying Montenegro as a competitive authoritarian regime even beyond 1997 (Levitsky and Way 2021). Thus, this article aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the DPS' three decades of predominance, shedding light on sources of power that tend to be disregarded in the literature on dominant parties in (electoral) democracies. ...
This article analyses the mechanisms that contributed to the 30-year predominance of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) in Montenegro. The authors pay particular attention to the DPS’ programmatic flexibility, use of co-optation, repression and control, as well as clientelism, examining their role in shaping state–society relations and party competition over time. In doing so, the article also seeks to explain the DPS’ setback in the 2020 elections and the ongoing transition from a dominant party system towards a more competitive multiparty system.
... Hybrid or illiberal regimes both feature key procedural characteristics of democracy (such as regular elections), and attributes associated with authoritarian regimes (from the repression of the free press to infringements of civil rights). These regimes and their trajectories have been variously labelled as democratic backsliding (Haggard and Kaufman, 2021), competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way, 2002), electoral authoritarianism (Schedler, 2015) and illiberal democracy (Zakaria, 1997). Overall, these tendencies were summarised as 'a state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy' (Bermeo, 2016). ...
The article examines the concept of legislative backsliding and offers a measurement strategy for its empirical analysis. Legislative backsliding is defined as a move away from liberal democracy in four critical dimensions of legislative quality, its public policy; legal-constitutional-formal; procedural; and stability aspects. We operationalise each of these dimensions with their separate indices relying on components such as stakeholder consultations, time passed between bill introduction and passing the law as well as results of constitutional reviews. We use qualitative mini case studies from Hungary, widely considered from 2010 on to be a poster child for democratic backsliding, to illustrate the viability of the proposed measurement strategy. We find that laws which show deficiencies in terms of legislative quality exhibit them in not just but several dimensions. Based on the case studies we offer insights into scaling up the law-level analysis to the level of legislative cycles and show how the legislative quality index can be used to measure macro-level legislative backsliding.
... At the time of Chávez's 2006 reelection, the government's authoritarian ambitions became evident as it began frequently and seriously to challenge democratic rule; it punished opponents, persecuted and silenced media and activists, undermined the autonomy of key institutions, and indulged in numerous electoral irregularities (Bull & Rosales, 2020;Corrales, 2020;Hawkins, 2016;Levitsky & Loxton, 2013). During this time, consensus emerged among political scientists that Venezuela had evolved into a hybrid regime, with scholars classifying it as an "electoral autocracy" (Corrales, 2010) or "competitive authoritarianism" (Levitsky & Loxton, 2013;Mainwaring, 2012), describing a system with frequent elections but limited checks on power, where the political rulers have significantly swayed the playing field to their advantage (Levitsky & Way, 2002). ...
Since 2015, Venezuela has been home to numerous protests, instigated mostly by people's discontent with the government and its public services. Despite the seriousness of these protests, limited studies have examined the Venezuelans' evaluation of their government and democracy, and only a few of these studies have used quantitative analysis. To fill this gap, this article offers a snapshot of the ongoing crisis using the Americas Barometer survey data collected between 2016 and 2017. We first identified Venezuelans' three main concerns during this time-shortage of food and necessities, economic crisis, and crime-and examined their relationships with the respondents' trust in government and satisfaction with democracy. We found that shortages of food and necessities and increasing crime were negatively associated with Venezuelans' trust in their government (although shortages were a more significant factor than crime). The long-standing problem of economic crisis was not a significant factor in people's trust in the government. Furthermore, these three factors were not directly linked to Venezuelans' satisfaction with democracy, but people who showed low levels of trust in government tended to have low satisfaction levels with Venezuelan democracy. Our results invite future studies to compare different times and contexts in Venezuela's ever-changing political landscape.
... In fact, gains in legitimacy and rents, as well as a more hospitable and enabling external environment, are likely to strengthen political stability. In this connection, our paper also contributes to the wider debate on the trend and process of autocratization [12][13][14][15][16], especially the conditions that facilitate the success or failure of "autocratic hardening" [17] in authoritarian states. This is because our findings imply that there may be no correlation between renewable energy uptake and democratic governance [18]. ...
The six Gulf monarchies—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE)—are more politically stable than their peers in the Middle East and North Africa. Explanations for governance resilience range from repression to neopatrimonial and instrumental legitimacy, hydrocarbon-based rentierism, and permissive regional and international environments. This paper considers, in view of the proliferation and uptake of renewable energy in the Gulf, how governance resilience may be affected as a result of changes in state-society relations during the energy transition away from a fossil-fuel-based energy system. It offers a qualitative analysis of the impact of renewable energy deployment in the Gulf, supported by a rich array of secondary literature and data. It also offers a deep, if brief, dive to highlight intra-regional nuances. The authors conclude that in the short term, renewable energy deployment has a very modest impact given its limited share of power generation. In the longer term, even assuming that stated ambitions for renewable energy are fulfilled, no negative impact on monarchial resilience is expected thanks to gains in legitimacy and revenue streams, as well as purposeful alignment with an external environment supportive of renewable power in developing countries.
... Second, the aim was to cover the period of democratic stability with the highest inclusion of minorities and pluralism of minority views. Since 2014 Serbia is again not considered a democratic country but rather a competitive authoritarian and the space for minority representatives has shrunk significantly (Levitsky and Way, 2020). Third, the selected case was the only full 4-year term parliament during the decade long and fragile parliamentary democracy in Serbia. ...
The constructivist approach to political representation has shown that descriptive representation cannot be reduced to passive presence. Descriptive representatives rather actively contribute to the construction of constituencies’ identities. Nevertheless, the existing empirical literature still dominantly operationalizes descriptive representation as mere presence of group members in the representative institutions. This article adds to the previous efforts of rethinking descriptive representation in the more constructivist terms by defining it as consisting of two necessary elements: 1) construction of a representative through activation of claim-maker’s ethnicity, and 2) portrayals of ethnic constituency. The article argues that descriptive representation is performed through the use of diverse boundary mechanisms. In the process of positioning themselves and portraying their constituency, representatives work with and around ethnic boundaries. Using the case of ethnic minority representation in Serbia, the article demonstrates how resemblance or group membership is not necessarily transparent and self-evident. Instead, representatives first need to activate and deploy ethnic boundaries to be perceived as group’s descriptive representatives. In doing so, they also tell stories about ethnic groups, which are consequential upon the ways group members perceive themselves and relations within and across the boundaries.
... Even if these exceptional regimes are allegedly temporary and confined to crises, as post-coup Turkey illustrates, once adopted, it often becomes difficult to repeal emergency legislation and powers. Moreover, the rise of modular emergencies has coincided with the global upsurge of authoritarian populism (Levitsky and Way 2020;Moffitt 2016) and hybrid regimes that provide aspiring autocrats with opportunities to consolidate power 'under the veneer of constitutional legitimacy' (Lührmann and Rooney 2021, 618). Turkey's modular emergency rule of the Kurdish issue is not an exception to this trend. ...
Minorities are particularly vulnerable during times of emergency, particularly those that challenge the state. However, it is not understood how minorities can be targeted through emergency decrees despite the government agreeing they had nothing to do with the reasons for declaring the state of emergency. The Turkish emergency in 2016 highlights this little-understood tendency where the government constructed an emergency around a threat from coup plotters, but then much of the subsequent extraordinary legislation targeted the Kurdish minority. We argue that this was possible because the Turkish government engaged in modular emergency rule. Modular emergency rule combines modes of ordinary rule with emergency powers, thus blurring the boundaries between the two. Emergency measures were laid on top of already existing policies that sought to restrict Kurdish politics in public life. In this way, modular emergency rule became more than just a transient form of government.
... However, in practice executive-legislative relations tends to operate much closer to a presidential system, with the President remaining the primary locus of political power. Kyrgyzstan is generally regarded as being more democratic than its neighbour, and as having a significantly stronger legislature, but growing repression means thatlike Kazakhstanit is often described as a competitive-authoritarian state (Levitsky & Way, 2020). The comparative leverage offered by these paired comparisons is reinforced by within-case analysis in the form of process-tracing. ...
Many civil society organizations (CSOs) are fighting for survival as governments introduce legislation to curtail their activities. This article examines how domestic civil society campaigns can persuade parliamentarians to reject ‘anti-CSO’ legislation. We employ pairwise comparisons in two regions – East Africa and Central Asia – as well as process-tracing within four cases: two successful campaigns waged by CSO coalitions against repressive legislation in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan, and two unsuccessful campaigns in Uganda and Kazakhstan. We find that traditional structural explanations – most notably the degree of international linkage and leverage and the quality of democracy – play an important role in creating greater opportunities for domestic actors, but are not determinative. CSOs also need to take advantage of the more conducive environment to defend democracy. Doing so is more likely when campaigns: are pre-emptive and sustained, frame the issue in a manner that resonates with the electoral incentives facing parliamentarians, coordinate with influential international actors, and engage pragmatically with both the informal political rules that shape legislators’ behaviour and the formal procedural ‘mechanics’ of legislatures. The article therefore demonstrates the significance of both political structure and agency, and of international actors using their influence to create space for domestic groups, ‘leading from behind’.
... According to Western researchers of hybrid political regimes Levitsky and Way (2002), there are three basic factors that guide a regime of this type: 1. leverage, that is, the influence of the closest trade and financial partner, its democratic or authoritarian state; 2. linkage, that is, involvement, when the regime is either open to the other world with a wide range of connections, or is a closed and isolated type; 3. the internal organizational structure, i.e. the efforts of the political regime to build a system of democratic institutions within itself. In this sense, such an effort can be successful or fail. ...
The purpose of the article is to study the peculiarities of the transformation of the political regime in Ukraine at different historical stages of its independence. The subject of the study is the political regime of independent Ukraine. The research methodology includes the following methods: transitological, normative and value, sociological, comparative, systemic, structural and functional, neo-institutional. Results of the research. The approaches to the concept of political regime and its varieties are analyzed. The stages of its transformation in Ukraine are highlighted and it is determined that they are “tied” to the person of the president. The peculiarities of political regime of the times of independence during the passage of each of the cycles are established. Practical meaning. Based on the features of the political regime in independent Ukraine during the periods of rules of different presidents and in various stages, we conclude that the political regime in our country has all the signs of a hybrid one, and Ukraine is a "partially free country". Value/originality. It is proven that the decentralization of management in Ukraine multiplied by the intensification of political competition, the implementation of European values and the improvement of legal awareness and culture of our citizens could become a reliable foundation for the formation of a democratic Ukrainian society.
... The regression of democratic quality and the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes have been among the main political phenomena across the globe over the past 20 years (Levitksy & Way, 2020). There is, however, a large variance in the severity of de-democratization between regions and countries as international indices of democratic quality attest (Coppedge et al., 2022;Repucci, 2020). ...
This editorial introduces readers to the thematic issue on organized interests in the context of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe.
... Milošević have often been seen as regimes with competitive authoritarianism (Kearns 1998;Levitsky & Way 2002;Howard & Roessler 2006). In competitive authoritarianism regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. ...
The matter of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans has become overshadowed by pressing issues such as
Brexit, the rise of the radical right and international terrorism. Notwithstanding the pressure to address these
issues accordingly, increasing tensions and ethnic outbursts across the Western Balkan region are reason
enough for the European Union to devote significant attention to accession talks. This article addresses the
Western Balkan countries’ Europeanization process with consideration of Russia as an external actor. By
assessing the candidate countries’ progress amid EU negotiations, the article suggests that the countries’
bilateral ties with Russia have an impact on the Europeanization process which is particularly visible in
Chapter 31 Foreign, security, and defence policy of the acquis communautaire. The broader geopolitical
framework that comprises the multifaceted relationship between the EU and Russia is crucial for
understanding the dynamics of EU-Western Balkans-Russia triangle.
This article contributes to the growing body of literature on opposition coordination within competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs). Defining oppositional unity as the ability of key opposition parties to select one joint candidate for elections, it introduces the concept of an intermediary party that facilitates such unity. An intermediary party is perceived less threatening by other opposition parties in their opportunistic and ideological conflicts and has the potential to offer a more agreeable joint candidate or a more conciliatory method of selecting the joint candidate within the opposition bloc. The article illustrates this argument by examining the Budapest and Istanbul mayoral elections held in 2019 in Hungary and Turkey. Drawing on data from 30 anonymized elite interviews and media statements of the opposition leaders in each country, the article demonstrates the significance of an intermediary party that facilitates oppositional unity in CARs, adding that the participation of intraparty actors with strong communication skills during the negotiations further reinforces this outcome.
This article describes the concept of electoral integrity, how it developed from previous ideas in the literature, so as discusses some methodological alternatives for its measurement. Additionally, it presents electoral integrity in close connection to the debate on electoral governance institutions, while incorporating political actors in the analyses. Furthermore, the article uses examples from Latin America to demonstrate the limits of perceptions data as measures of electoral integrity. As surveys to experts and voters show divergent perceptions, survey researchers and participants must consider its consequences.
The final chapter of this book summarizes the main findings and places them in the context of the current debate on electoral manipulation in hybrid regimes. In addition, space is devoted to outlining appropriate directions for future research in this area. Finally, the main findings are set in the context of the 2021 elections in Honduras and Nicaragua.KeywordsNicaraguaHondurasTransition to democracyMenu of manipulation
This chapter aims to explain the causes of pre-election and election manipulation. In pursuit of this goal, the chapter is divided into two parts. The first part introduces and verifies expectations about how incumbents in hybrid regimes choose between different electoral manipulation forms based on their direct and indirect costs. The second part then focuses on the structural causes of electoral manipulation. The results show that power holders in Latin America’s hybrid regimes only partially consider the costs of electoral manipulation. In addition, it turns out that long-term structural factors are not very useful in explaining the causes of the uneven playing field in Latin America.KeywordsFraudCosts of electoral manipulationUneven playing fieldElections
En Colombia las fuerzas militares han estado presentes en el escenario político durante mucho tiempo. Si bien en el país no hubo dictaduras militares que antepusieran el poder militar sobre el civil, la existencia de un conflicto armado que se ha prolongado más de 50 años ha ocasionado que el combate a grupos armados ilegales se haya convertido en una constante prioritaria, tanto en asuntos concernientes a la seguridad ciudadana como en aquellos que atañen a la seguridad nacional. Esta situación ha provocado que las fuerzas armadas se hayan posicionado como un actor con una enorme agencia y visibilidad, lo que “las ha llevado a estar en un lugar protagónico en el entorno ciudadano, impactando de diversas maneras la arena política” (Verdes-Montenegro, 2019).
La presencia permanente de fuerzas militares en varios escenarios de la vida social y política ha generado la militarización de la seguridad ciudadana y un reiterado recurso a medidas basadas en la mano dura y los “estados de excepción” como modo de responder a la persistencia de los conflictos y la criminalidad. Se trata de una securitización de problemas estructurales, al punto de que las protestas sociales, y la propia juventud, han quedado categorizadas como “enemigos”. Especialmente en casos como el Paro Nacional que será revisado en el siguiente artículo.
El estudio de la dinámica de la militarización y el militarismo en América Latina plantea interrogantes referidos al rol de los actores políticos en el con- texto de la crisis de los regímenes democráticos, y a la evolución de las relaciones civiles y militares en la región. Una adecuada caracterización de la situación puede contribuir a la mejor comprensión del actual momento de “interregno” internacional, así como de los retos de la cooperación y el multilateralismo. Este libro pretende alimentar la reflexión sobre los desafíos que afrontan las relaciones cívico-militares en el siglo XXI, y sus repercusiones en la calidad de las democracias en América Latina.
This study focuses on the democratic development of Ukraine. Unlike most works devoted to this topic, the Ukrainian case is considered in the context of European (and global) political processes related to the crisis of democracy. This study also emphasizes the dynamics of Ukrainian democratic development. The comparative analysis of longitudinal studies of the level of democracy in Ukraine has demonstrated that an increase in crisis trends in democratic development followed the period of significant improvement in the situation with ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens to political participation. The manifestation of these crisis trends is the continuing high volatility of Ukrainian voters and the growth of absenteeism, as well as the search by citizens for non-institutional ways to influence the authorities. As argued in the article, the current crisis of democracy, the third time in a hundred years, is associated with the alienation of citizens from political decision-making and restrictions on the pluralism of opinions. This crisis is a consequence of the internal problems of the democratic model, which was formed in the second half of the 1970s under the influence of neoliberal politics and widespread skepticism about the effectiveness of majoritarian institutions in political governance. The post-Soviet states such as Ukraine have been integrated into global economic and political processes. On one hand, this integration has provided a powerful impetus to the democratic development of its political institutions. However, the democratic development was influenced by the same negative factors that had an impact on the political institutions of liberal democratic states.
На основе интервью с российскими политтехнологами, представителями бизнеса и власти реконструируется процесс эволюции избирательных технологий в современной России. Используя эмпирические данные, автор исследует особенности формирования рынка избирательных услуг и то, какое влияние на избирательные кампании оказали представители власти, бизнеса, а также политтехнологи. Анализ избирательных технологий, реконструируемых из нарративов экспертов, показал, что они, как правило, эволюционируют вместе с общими политическими практиками в стране. Открывшийся в 1990-е годы рынок избирательных услуг стал отражением повышенного спроса на политику, отличную от советской, причем со стороны не только российского электората, но и новых политических деятелей, представителей бизнеса. В ходе проведенного эмпирического исследования выявлено, что в результате эволюции рынка избирательных услуг в России политические технологии подверглись значительной трансформации. Прошедшие выборные кампании показали, что применение административного ресурса часто имеет непредсказуемые последствия и потому сейчас активно применяются новые избирательные практики, которые резко технологизируют избирательный процесс и повышают точность в подсчете голосов. Традиционные методы ведения избирательной кампании в сочетании с цифровыми технологиями не только становятся новым способом коммуникации между кандидатом и электоратом, но и расширяют возможности участия в большой политике рядового гражданина и развития цифровой демократии в целом. В роли архитекторов цифровых продуктов выступают не только профессионалы избирательного рынка — политтехнологи, журналисты, представители политических партий и общественных движений, — но также разработчики и обычные пользователи.
This paper deals with the possible impact of the most recent international authoritarian populist tendencies on sub-Saharan African political systems. Contrary to the main currents of interpretation, this paper argues that we are not in face of a new international influence or role model being locally followed, but in face of the most recent example of a long political-historical path of selective assimilation of international trends to local political systems as structured after independence. We are not witnessing to poor local replicas of the most recent international wave of authoritarian populism of 2010s, but to another selective assimilation of political features to serve the existing and locally dominant systems. Through the analysis of the specific cases of Mozambique and Angola, this paper theoretically and historically discusses the nature of regimes and political systems through a critical approach on the most recent historical/political science discussions of so-called hybrid regimes, combining liberal and illiberal features, that resort to concepts such as illiberal democracies, façade democracies, electoral autocracies, semi-authoritarian states, competitive authoritarian regimes, post-neo-liberal States, or new competitive authoritarian regimes, among others.
Keywords:
new international authoritarianism populism in Africa; liberalism and illiberalism; Angola; Mozambique
In Latin America, recent processes of democratic backsliding have tested the robustness of the Inter-American democratic system (IADS). Based on theoretical frameworks of democracy promotion, hypotheses stemming from institutionalist and normative theories suffer from important limitations in explaining the liberal democracies’ motivations to act in the face of anti-democratic threats. Analyzing the cases of democratic regression in Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and the consequent responses from the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) liberal democracies vis-à-vis these autocracies, this article corroborates that democracy promotion responds to a materialistic-utilitarian hypothesis that prioritizes material cost-benefit calculations over democratic norms and institutions. The analysis reveals that the worrying but real prevalence of power politics over democratic principles challenges the solidity of the IADS.
This literature review unpacks the state of the art in Russian studies regarding regime dynamics and the functioning of authoritarian institutions. It covers three major fields of scientific debate in the discipline: 1) the role of structural and agency-driven factors in explaining failed democratization and complete autocratization in Russia; 2) the conceptualization of the Russian regime between electoral authoritarianism and personalist rule; 3) the development of authoritarian institutions under Vladimir Putin and the process of institutional degradation. It also outlines the promising research avenues of studying Russian authoritarianism, which can be relevant not only for the scientific community but also for the practitioners, especially in the context of the Russian war against Ukraine.
While the expectation is that electoral turnover spurred by change agents will translate to political reform and/or consolidation of reform, recent outcomes have been disappointing. Taking the example of Malaysia’s recent political change, we argue that carrying out political reform and consolidating them remain elusive because there are strong tendencies by all parties – change agents included – to stay invested to aspects of state’s institutional qualities. We explain that institutions ‘bite’; that change agents are not completely free agents because political reform remains highly dependent on existing institutional qualities, the so-called rules of the game. While new reform ideas hold promises of change, issues of path dependence, increasing returns, and dense institutional networks impose challenges to actors making them highly invested in existing institutional mixes resulting in a botched democratisation effort.
The first decades of 21st century are a difficult time for Latin America and the Caribbean. This is also evident in the area of democracy and its consolidation. Particularly recent years have brought significant problems and challenges in functioning of democratic regimes. As a consequence, it is justified to talk about the process called deconsolidation of democracy in this region. In the article, the present condition of democratic regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean is presented. It is followed by an analysis of basic challenges and finally explaining potential risks for the process of consolidation of democratic regimes in the region.
In 1989, the Algerian regime scrapped the single-party political system in place since independence. This move enabled the emergence of political opposition and competition between parties. Yet such democratization proved to be largely surface deep. Today, the Algerian regime is characterized by what is variously known as “electoral authoritarianism” (Schedler, 2006) and “competitive authoritarianism” (Levitsky, S, Way, L. 2002). It is a hybrid regime, one that mixes elements of democracy and authoritarianism. The introduction of pluralism replaced a monolithic façade with a pluralistic one, but this did not result in a significant change in the form of government (Roberts, 1999: 386). Rather than representing specific segments of society, several Algerian parties cater to the state's various factions, which retain control over their activities. Elections, rather than serving as a forum for political competition, are viewed by the regime as a means of legitimizing and re-legitimizing itself, a democratic alibi that comes in handy when it is accused of authoritarianism. The regime views political parties that are ostensibly opposed to it not as rivals, but rather as potential partners whom it might coerce into presenting Algeria to the world as a democracy. In this context, the outcomes of elections reflect the battles taking place at the heart of the state, more than in the public sphere (Addi, 2002).
In this article, taking Serbia as a case study, we address the issue of how social movements in illiberal democracies adapted to the effects of the pandemic and the governmental responses. We show that, contrary to expectations, these social movements have intensified their activities and visibility and adapted their agenda during the crisis. Our research studies two movements dealing with socio-economic issues – the right to housing and the right to food as particularly active during pandemics. While the pandemic further constrained the possibility for collective action, these social movements have quickly shifted their priorities towards solidarity with the most vulnerable groups, engaged directly with citizens, and pragmatically approached the polarized media environment, mobilizing broad public support. This finding indicates that social movements in illiberal democracies can exhibit resilience and adaptability to rapidly changing circumstances, even though questions about their sustainability and the attainability of their goals persist.
Kilka uwag o demokracji i autorytaryzmie w XXI w. 45 Grzegorz Ekiert Politolog, Harvard Kilka uwag o demokracji i autorytaryzmie w XXI w.
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This Introduction argues that Southeast Asian liberalisms have often been misrecognised – or even ignored – by scholars because liberals in the region do not conform to the expectations of ‘benchmark’ liberalism of the West. It points to efforts by liberal actors to promote a viable political discourse or to defend a liberal minimum in hostile environments, often leading localised pragmatic liberalisms to travel far from the ideals of benchmark liberalism. In seeking to advance the study of liberalism in Southeast Asian Studies it introduces the work of two major theorists, Duncan Bell and Michael Freeden, whose distinctive approaches offer an opportunity to think of liberalism in ways that enable its identification in Southeast Asian locations. It then provides brief summaries of each of the papers, which offer comparative or country-level analysis, bringing into view historical and contemporary manifestations of liberalism in the region. It concludes with comments about possible research paths.
In many European countries, a crisis of the democratic model of exercising power is noticeable today. This phenomenon is also noticeable in Poland. In the article, the author presents the Polish road to democratic shaping of one’s own, referring to historical experiences from the times of the II RP and PRL. It also draws attention to the moment of a specific breakthrough, which took place in 2015. Since then, the rulers have taken steps to overcome the constitutional mechanisms that inhibit the arbitrariness of exercising power and are striving to centralize governments within one political camp.
In an era of unprecedented numbers of migrants from the global south to the global north, nationalism has become synonymous with liberal states' ethnocentric, xenophobic, and racist immigration policies. The Trump administration's treatment of Central American refugees has been taken as a prime example. By focusing on liberal cultural nationalism, this paper demonstrates that these prevailing perceptions about nationalism are unfounded. Although liberal cultural nationalism has been accused of endorsing restrictive immigration policies, the degree to which liberal cultural nationalism's immigration policies are restrictive is context dependent; under certain circumstances, liberal nationalism may call for relaxing immigration policies to admit certain types of immigrants by invoking the idea of national responsibility. Consequently, liberal cultural nationalism offers one of the strongest liberal arguments for admitting certain kinds of migrants from the global south. The Central American refugee crisis at the U.S. southern border is analysed as a case study to illustrate this.
The Washington Agreement on Kosovo and Serbia economic normalisation (2020) is the subject of this enquiry, while its aim is to examine the role of news media in Serbia in the discourse on normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. The main hypothesis is that the Washington Agreement was manipulatively used for self-promotion of political elites that negotiated in Washington. The research relies on Critical Discourse Studies, instrumentalist approaches to secession, media framing and agenda-setting theories. We conclude that the issue of Serbia and Kosovo normalisation in Serbian media is mostly framed with aim to mobilises citizens’ support for executive authorities. The media thus reproduce political hegemony within Serbian society, while pluralism is obstructed in a manner characteristic for competitive authoritarianism.
Can the theory of autocracy promotion learn something from the most recent erosion
in democracy seen across the Western Balkans (WB)? The case of the WB is
interesting because it takes place within the context of the EU enlargement process,
which is a form of democratic promotion (dissemination). I argue that the current
version of the EU enlargement process is a form of hybrid regime enabling rather
than democracy dissemination. My major claim is that the significant driver for
autocratic tendencies and the authoritarian stability of these regimes comes from
within the EU enlargement process and only subsequently from these regimes’ internal
political dynamics and other autocracies’ influences. I offer several contributions
to the existing research on autocracy and democracy promotion. I model the
problem as a strategic bargaining game between the promoter and receiver. The EU
Commission is prepared to tolerate a certain level of authoritarianism in the WB
countries for two reasons: if the WB incumbent guarantees stability and accepts the
Euro-Atlantic policy, the outcome is a hybrid regime with less likelihood to transform
into some form of autocracy.
Desetak godina posle petooktobarskih promena, u Srbiji se, između dva ciklusa, izborima uglavnom bavila samo stručna javnost. Radilo se na novom setu zakona, predlozima izborne reforme i usklađivanju sa standardima u procesu približavanja Evropskoj uniji. Međutim, deceniju kasnije, izbori su postali predmet stalnih sukoba i osporavanja, a bavljenje izbornim uslovima postalo je deo uobičajenog političkog repertoara. Ovo nije iznenađenje, jer se kvalitet izbora nalazi u srži političkog režima koji se tih godina razvijao u Srbiji. Iako se formalna pravila koja uređuju način održavanja izbora nisu previše menjala, kvalitet izbornih uslova je s vremenom opadao. Smanjivalo se učešće na izborima, a stranke na vlasti počele su da ostvaruju toliku prednost da su izbori gubili suštinski takmičarski karakter. Istovremeno, dok se uloga izbora u obezbeđivanju predstavljanja različitih političkih opcija smanjivala, dolazilo je do promena koje su podsticale bolju deskriptivnu zastupljenost različitih grupa u parlamentu. Na prvi pogled može delovati kontradiktorno, ali veća zastupljenost različitih društvenih segmenata počela je da služi kao bogata ornamentacija na demokratskoj fasadi. Ovi procesi nisu se dešavali naglo, već se oni mogu trasirati kroz više izbornih procesa. Pad kvaliteta izbora uočljiv je u kasnijoj fazi, ali su sve slabosti bile prisutne i ranije. Nije bilo institucija i mehanizama koji bi sprečili i kaznili izborne zloupotrebe, koje na taj način postaju deo očekivanja učesnika 'trke prema dnu'. Specifičan izborni sistem koji stvara slabu vezu između birača i izabranih predstavnika, u kom ključnu posredujuću ulogu imaju političke partije, otežao je mogućnost da građani putem demokratskih mehanizama spreče ovu degradaciju.
This article examines the Albanian political regime, as a single case study, for the period 2013-2021, as part of the Western Balkans' experience of democratic backsliding, by investigating the framework of factors linked with the formidable challenge posed by the emergence of a hybrid regime of Albania in these years. For the first time in Albania’s post-communist history, the incumbent Socialist Party of Albania won for the third time in a row the parliamentary elections of April 2021, thus making the bid for the power of the leading opposition parties much harder. This paper uses country-expert statistical data from V-Dem and qualitative data analyses. The study reveals that the over-reliance on strong leaders, the growing government control over public life, fragmentation of the opposition, its lack of appeal, organization, and mobilization, the boycott of the parliamentary mandates, combined with the weakening role of media and distrust of the citizens in democratic institutions, led to the resurgence of the authoritarian mechanisms, making the liberal democratic transformation in Albania an increasingly challenging task.
This study argues that the Schmittian exceptionalist view drawing on the norm/exception dichotomy is ill-equipped to grasp the nature and operation of current modular emergency regimes where normalcy and emergency coexist as different, yet intertwined modes of governance. These regimes are modular as they enable the interchangeable and simultaneous use of ordinary and extraordinary powers and legislation by executives. In modular emergencies, securitization plays a key role to create a “strategic ambiguity” where the distinction between the “normal” and the “exceptional” becomes untenable and invisible. In securitized political environments, it becomes increasingly difficult for societies to gauge if expanded executive powers and exceptionalist practices are justifiable, reasonable and proportional. Turkey was ruled under a nationwide state of emergency (SoE) for two years declared on 20 July 2016 soon after a failed coup attempt against the Turkish government. Even though the SoE was formally lifted in July 2018, the emergency powers and exceptionalist practices have become entrenched and institutionalized under the guise of the “presidential system of government” designed as a rule of modular emergency.
Most studies on transitions to democracy focus on macro-level factors, while Przeworski considers people as the most important factor and emphasizes looking at the ruling class and civil society. Softliners within the ruling class may aim to choose to open up the system to increase political stability and ensure the survival of the existing regime. The paper aims to test whether liberalization indeed increases political stability in the Central Asian context. By performing the empirical analyses, one can find out that liberalization results in political stability in Central Asia.
Why do some opposition parties in hybrid regimes escalate their strategies of contention from parliamentary to election boycotts, while others do not? Opposition parties in hybrid regimes engage with a repertoire of extra-institutional strategies, including protests, parliamentary, and election boycotts. These strategies challenge the authoritarian dimension of the regime and aim to level the electoral playing field, but the election boycotts strategy carries more risk than the others, as it can marginalize the opposition. I argue that the opposition parties in hybrid regimes are less likely to take part in elections when the expected incumbent’s electoral advantage is high, and when lower-risk extra-institutional strategies such as protests, and parliamentary boycotts are exhausted or not viable. The article presents evidence from Serbia, including data collected through interviews with the members of parliament and opinion polls, tracing the process that led the opposition parties to escalate the 2019 parliamentary boycott towards the 2020 boycott of the elections, despite being aware of the likely adverse effects. I also conduct a comparative analysis of opposition parties in similar contexts of North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania that boycotted the parliament but always took part in the elections. The article brings together the detached literature on parliamentary and electoral boycotts and contributes to a better understanding of opposition strategies in hybrid regimes.
The problem of social order is the question of what holds complex and diverse societies together. Today, this question has become increasingly urgent in the world. Yet our ability to ask and answer the question in a helpful way is constrained by the intellectual legacy through which the question has been handed down to us. In this impressive, erudite study, Henrik Enroth describes and analyzes how the problem of social order has shaped concept formation, theory, and normative arguments in political science. The book covers a broad range of influential thinkers and theories throughout the history of political science, from the early twentieth century onwards. Social order has long been a presupposition for inquiry in political science; now we face the challenge of turning it into an object of inquiry.
Chapter 6 analyzes the period of 2014–2019 when LGBT protest activity decreased in its intensity. In this period, all necessary conditions experienced negative developments (e.g., the increase in state repression on civil society, economic slowdown). That caused some activists to cease protesting and choose other tactics or even leave the LGBT movement. At the same time, all necessary conditions were on the edge without fully scaling down below the level necessary for protesting. Thus, some activists’ motivation continued manifesting in protesting.
Democracy in the developing world is generally outliving expectations, but not outperforming them. Democratic collapse has happily been a far rarer event thus far in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth. Yet it does not exactly ring true to say that most developing country democracies are consolidating. This review essay ventures the claim that political scientists need to transcend their rightful concerns with how and why young democracies collapse or consolidate, and devote more attention to theorizing how and why they careen. It defines democratic careening as political instability sparked by intense conflict between partisan actors deploying competing visions of democratic accountability. Careening occurs when actors who argue that democracy requires substantial inclusivity of the entire populace (vertical accountability) clash with rivals who defend democracy for its constraints against excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, particularly in the political executive (horizontal accountability). These arguments are elaborated through reviews of leading theoretical works on democratic break-down as well as detailed case studies of Thailand and taiwan.
Hungary’s 2010 election brought to power a Fidesz parliamentary supermajority led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In just two years, they have fundamentally changed the constitutional order of Hungary. The current government now has very few checks on its own power, but the new constitutional order permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, the Fidesz government has achieved a remarkable constitutional feat: giving themselves maximum room for maneuver while simultaneously entrenching their power, their policies and their people for the foreseeable future.
We live in a period of uncertainty about the fate of American global leadership and the future of international order. The 2016 election of Donald Trump led many to pronounce the death, or at least terminal decline, of liberal international order—the system of institutions, rules, and values associated with the American-dominated international system. But the truth is that the unraveling of American global order began over a decade earlier. Exit from Hegemony develops an integrated approach to understanding the rise and decline of hegemonic orders. It calls attention to three drivers of transformation in contemporary order. First, great powers, most notably Russia and China, contest existing norms and values while simultaneously building new spheres of international order through regional institutions. Second, the loss of the “patronage monopoly” once enjoyed by the United States and its allies allows weaker states to seek alternative providers of economic and military goods—providers who do not condition their support on compliance with liberal economic and political principles. Third, transnational counter-order movements, usually in the form of illiberal and right-wing nationalists, undermine support for liberal order and the American international system, including within the United States itself. Exit from Hegemony demonstrates that these broad sources of transformation—from above, below, and within—have transformed past international orders and undermine prior hegemonic powers. It provides evidence that all three are, in the present, mutually reinforcing one another and, therefore, that the texture of world politics may be facing major changes.
After many countries that had embarked upon transitions in the 1980s and 1990s failed to become consolidated democracies, political scientists highlighted the widespread emergence of hybrid regimes, which combine authoritarian and democratic features. Scholars argued such regimes were stable, with some positing that quasi-democratic institutions actually strengthened authoritarianism. But an examination of competitive authoritarianism (CA)-the most prominent of these hybrid types-suggests instability is the norm. Of 35 regimes identified as having been CA between 1990 and 1995, most have either democratized or been replaced by new autocracies. Furthermore, quasi-democratic institutions often contributed to CA's breakdown. In short, hybrid regimes have not become a new form of stable nondemocratic rule. © 2018 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press.
This article analyzes voter identification laws in the United States and their effects on voter turnout. Theoretically, there are plausible reasons to hypothesize turnout lowering effects, though there are also reasons to hypothesize those effects might be minimal. Methodologically, there are research design hurdles to clear in order to produce effect estimates that may be attributed to voter identification laws. Empirically, a small number of studies have employed suitable research designs and generally find modest, if any, turnout effects of voter identification laws. This may indicate that voter identification laws have only minor effects on turnout, or it may be due to the fact that the type of voter identification law that may have the most significant effects—a strict photo identification law—is a relatively recent phenomenon. Future elections and the related additional data may make it possible to adjudicate among these possibilities. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science Volume 20 is May 11, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Although military rule disappeared in Latin America after 1990, other forms of authoritarianism persisted. Competitive authoritarianism, in which democratic institutions exist but incumbent abuse skews the playing field against opponents, emerged in Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador during the post-Cold War period. This article seeks to explain the emergence of competitive authoritarianism in the Andes. It argues that populism – the election of a personalistic outsider who mobilizes voters with an anti-establishment appeal – is a major catalyst for the emergence of competitive authoritarianism. Lacking experience with representative democratic institutions, possessing an electoral mandate to destroy the existing elite, and facing institutions of horizontal accountability controlled by that elite, populists have an incentive to launch plebiscitary attacks on institutions of horizontal accountability. Where they succeed, weak democracies almost invariably slide into competitive authoritarianism. The argument is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of all 14 elected presidents in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela between 1990 and 2010.
We use new data on coup d’états and elections to document a striking development: whereas the vast majority of successful coups before 1991 installed durable rules, the majority of coups after that have been followed by competitive elections. We argue that after the Cold War international pressure influenced the consequences of coups. In the post-Cold War era those countries that are most dependent on Western aid have been the first to embrace competitive elections after the coup. Our theory also sheds light on the pronounced decline in the number of coups since 1991. While the coup d’état has been and still is the single most important factor leading to the downfall of democratic government, our findings indicate that the new generation of coups has been far less harmful for democracy than their historical predecessors.
In recent years,new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore,notably competitive authoritarianism.Such regimes, though not democratic,feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can challenge,and even oust,authoritarian incumbents.
On the effects of the changing international environment see also Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage
- Nexon Cooley
Cooley and Nexon, Exit from Hegemony. On the effects of the changing international environment see also Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian
Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency (New York: Penguin Press, 2019).
Two other new competitive authoritarian cases, the Philippines and Turkey, are also characterized by extensive ties to the West
- These Are Haiti
- Honduras
- North Hungary
- Macedonia
- Serbia Montenegro
These are Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
Two other new competitive authoritarian cases, the Philippines and Turkey, are also characterized by extensive ties to the West.
Nikolay Marinov and Hein Goemans
- Steven Levitsky
- Lucan Way
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way
22. Nikolay Marinov and Hein Goemans, "Coups and Democracy," British Journal of
Political Science 44 (October 2014): 799-825.
Hungary's Illiberal Turn: How Things Went Wrong
- Scott Radnitz
Scott Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests
in Central Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 207.
25. Serhii Leshchenko, "Poroshenko i porozhnecha" [Poroshenko and the vacuum],
Ukra¦nska Pravda, 16 May 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/05/16/7025568.
26. Jacques Rupnik, "Hungary's Illiberal Turn: How Things Went Wrong," Journal of
Democracy 23 (July 2012): 132.
Eurobarometer : Support for EU at Record High, 60% of Hungarians Back Membership
- Alexandra Béni
Alexandra Béni, "Eurobarometer : Support for EU at Record High, 60% of Hungarians Back Membership," Daily News Hungary, 17 October 2018, https://dailynewshungary.com/eurobarometer-support-for-eu-at-record-high-60-of-hungarians-back-membership.
Hungary's Independent Media Struggle Against Economic Pressure, Intimidation
- Patrick Kingsley
- Benjamin Novak
Patrick Kingsley and Benjamin Novak, "The Website That Shows How a Free
Press Can Die," New York Times, 24 November 2018.
31. "Hungary's Independent Media Struggle Against Economic Pressure, Intimidation," Committee to Protect Journalists, 7 July 2014, https://cpj.org/blog/2014/07/hungarys-independent-media-struggle-against-econom.php#more.
32. See www.transparency.org/news/feature/hungarys_elections_free_but_not_fair;
Ejecting the Autocrat: The EPP Must Ditch Orbán to Salvage What Remains of Its Credibility
- Daniel Kelemen
- Laurent Pech
R. Daniel Kelemen and Laurent Pech, "Ejecting the Autocrat: The EPP Must Ditch
Orbán to Salvage What Remains of Its Credibility," Euronews, 8 March 2019, www.
euronews.com/2019/03/08/ejecting-the-autocrat-the-epp-must-ditch-orban-to-salvagewhat-remains-of-its-credibility.
34. "Poland's New Government Finds a Model in Orban's Hungary," Financial Times,
16 January 2016, www.ft.com/content/0a3c7d44-b48e-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.
35. "Austrian Leader Calls for Snap Elections After Far-Right Vice-Chancellor Resigns," New York Times, 18 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/world/europe/austria-strache-resigns-video.html.
Hungary's Illiberal Turn: How Things Went Wrong
- Serhii Leshchenko
Serhii Leshchenko, "Poroshenko i porozhnecha" [Poroshenko and the vacuum],
Ukra¦nska Pravda, 16 May 2014, www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/05/16/7025568.
26. Jacques Rupnik, "Hungary's Illiberal Turn: How Things Went Wrong," Journal of
Democracy 23 (July 2012): 132.