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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 2017 Full PDF here to Read in New Window
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
The current research on authoritarianism 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 differentiates 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 procedure-based legitimacy (Croissant & Wurster, 2013, p. 7) could be oversimplified, particularly 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.
Six claims to legitimacy: Types of claims
Identity-based:
- Foundational myth
- Ideology
- Personalism
- Procedures
- Performance
- International engagement