Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that ...where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.
Focusing on regime trajectories across the former Soviet Union, Pluralism by Default posits that political competition in new democracies has often been grounded less in well-designed institutions, ...democratic leaders, or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Lucan Way contends that pluralism has persisted in many cases because autocrats lack the organization, authority, or coordination to steal elections, impose censorship, repress opposition, or keep allies in line.
Attention to the dynamics of this pluralism by default reveals a largely unrecognized contradiction in the transition process: the same factors that facilitate democratic and semi-democratic political competition may also thwart the development of stable, well-functioning democratic institutions. National divisions or weak states and parties—typically seen as impediments to democracy—can also stymie efforts to crack down on political opposition and concentrate control. Way demonstrates that the features that have made Ukraine the most democratic country in the former Soviet Union also contributed to the country’s extreme dysfunction and descent into war in 2014.
In recent years, observers have raised concerns about threats to democracy posed by external support for authoritarianism coming from regional powers such as Russia, China and Venezuela. This article ...assesses the efficacy of autocracy promotion through a close examination of Russian efforts to shape regime outcomes in the former Soviet Union. It finds that while Russian actions have periodically promoted instability and secessionist conflict, there is little evidence that such intervention has made post‐Soviet countries less democratic than they would have been otherwise. First, the Russian government has been inconsistent in its support for autocracy – supporting opposition and greater pluralism in countries where anti‐Russian governments are in power, and incumbent autocrats in cases where pro‐Russian politicians dominate. At the same time, the Russian government's narrow concentration on its own economic and geopolitical interests has significantly limited the country's influence, fostering a strong counter‐reaction in countries with strong anti‐Russian national identities. Finally, Russia's impact on democracy in the region has been restricted by the fact that post‐Soviet countries already have weak democratic prerequisites. This analysis suggests that, despite increasingly aggressive foreign policies by autocratic regional powers, autocracy promotion does not present a particularly serious threat to democracy in the world today.
What is the impact of repression on opposition to authoritarian rule? Studies of repression and dissent have yielded contradictory results. Some research suggests that repression reduces popular ...resistance while others show that it creates backlash and more dissent. In this article, we present an informational theory of repression to account for such divergent findings. We argue that the impact of repression hinges on the degree of censorship. Where alternative media is present, violence is more likely to increase support for opposition. By contrast, where alternative sources of information are limited, repression may reduce support for opposition and actually increase support for incumbents. We test and confirm these expectations with an original dataset that combines the results of a panel survey that spanned the authoritarian repression of electoral protests in Moldova in 2009 and geocoded data on the subnational variation in repression and alternative information availability. The hypothesized interaction between repression and censorship is corroborated in cross‐national analysis of repression, censorship, and government support (2005–16).
We explore the sources of durability of party-based authoritarian regimes in the face of crisis. Recent scholarship on authoritarianism suggests that ruling parties enhance elite cohesion—and ...consequently, regime durability—by providing institutionalized access the spoils of power. We argue, by contrast, that while elite access to power and spoils may ensure elite cooperation during normal times, it often fails to do so during crises. Instead, the identities, norms, and organizational structures forged during periods of sustained, violent, and ideologically-driven conflict are a critical source of cohesion—and durability—in party-based authoritarian regimes. Origins in violent conflict raise the cost of defection and provide leaders with additional (non-material) resources that can be critical to maintaining unity and discipline, even when a crisis threatens the party's hold on power. Hence, where ruling parties combine mechanisms of patronage distribution with the strong identities, solidarity ties, and discipline generated by violent origins, regimes should be most durable. We apply this argument to four party-based competitive authoritarian regimes in post-Cold War Africa: Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In each of these cases, an established single- or dominant-party regime faced heightened international pressure, economic crisis, and a strong opposition challenge after 1990. Yet whereas ruling parties in Kenya and Zambia were organized almost exclusively around patronage, those in Mozambique and Zimbabwe were liberation parties that came to power via violent struggle. This difference is critical to explaining diverging post-Cold War regime outcomes: whereas ruling parties in Zambia and Kenya imploded and eventually lost power in these face of crises, those in Mozambique and Zimbabwe remained intact and regimes survived.
This article explores the sources of regime competitiveness in the post-cold war era through a structured comparison of regime trajectories in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine, for the period ...1992–2004. An examination of these cases suggests the need for a fundamental rethinking of the commonly held view of the transition process—especially in countries that face relatively weak international democratizing pressures. Approaching these countries as unconsolidated autocracies rather than as simply emerging democracies draws attention to key sources of political competition that have largely been ignored in the literature on competitive regimes. Thus, competitive politics in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine were rooted less in robust civil societies, strong democratic institutions, or leadership than in the inability of incumbents to maintain power or concentrate political control by preserving elite unity, controlling elections, and/or using force against opponents. Such ”pluralism by default” has been the outgrowth of the strength of anti-incumbent national identity and incumbent weakness as defined by a lack of know-how, ineffective incumbent organization, and/or the weakness of certain dimensions of state power.
This article seeks to explain why Ukraine maintained a competitive electoral regime despite the dominance of authoritarian diaspora in the decades after the country became independent in 1991. The ...anti-democratic effect of the diaspora was significantly mitigated by the fact that it was not organized into a political party and split by longstanding regional divisions. Because of their disorganization and dispersion across the political spectrum, old Soviet elites possessed limited capacity to consolidate power. The result was "pluralism by default" in which democratic politics emerged out of authoritarian weakness. At the same time, variation in the (dis)organization of different authoritarian diaspora networks partially explains divergent levels of political competition between different Ukrainian governments in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In analyzing the international dimension of democratization, there are two sources of international influence: leverage, or governments' vulnerability to western pressure, and linkage, or the density ...of economic, political, organizational, social, and communication ties between particular countries and the West. Although both leverage and linkage raise the cost of authoritarianism, linkage contributes more consistently to democratization. Extensive linkage contributes to democratization even under unfavorable domestic conditions. Where linkage and leverage are low, external democratizing pressure is minimal, and domestic forces predominate. Where linkage is low but leverage high, external pressure is intermittent and partially effective. Slovakia, Mexico, Russia, and Zambia are examined.
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