Translated material
What to expect from autocracy
Or why elections will not ensure regime change, explains Professor Grigory Golosov
By political regime we will understand the mechanism of acquisition, retention and transfer of political power. Modern empirically oriented classifications of authoritarian political regimes (also called autocracies or dictatorships) distinguish four main varieties - monarchical, military, party and electoral regimes - as well as, as a residual category used to describe historical phenomena, traditional regimes.
It is generally accepted that today electoral authoritarianism is the numerically dominant form. And indeed, we can count a dozen monarchies, half a dozen party regimes, and no more than four military dictatorships. If we consider that authoritarian regimes currently exist in approximately 40% of the world's countries, the numerical superiority of electoral authoritarian regimes is obvious. Thus, the prospects for democratization in the world are associated primarily with the possibility of changing electoral authoritarian regimes.
What happens to the leader of an electoral authoritarian regime who cancels an election? Most likely nothing. He will remain in power, and if he ever loses it, it will not be because of the cancellation of elections
Lost in translation
The terminological shell of the classification presented above contains significant ambiguity, consisting in the fact that the electoral component can be present in all four types included in it. It would seem that this ambiguity can be easily eliminated if we clarify that under conditions of electoral authoritarianism, elections are the main institutional mechanism ensuring the acquisition and retention of power by its bearers, while in other regimes there are other main mechanisms for its acquisition (inheritance, forceful seizure, party usurpation) and their corresponding retention mechanisms. In reality, however, ambiguity remains, since beyond this clarification the key question remains - about the mechanisms of transfer of power.
If we take this problem to a more fundamental theoretical level, then we can say that each of the three less common regimes today has its own method of primary institutionalization, but at the same time can use elections as a secondary method, while for electoral authoritarianism this method is the only one accessible. The paradox is that it remains secondary, insignificant.
To illustrate this point, we can ask a series of hypothetical questions. Will a monarch who abolishes the monarchy retain power? Or the leader of the party regime who dissolved his party? Or the head of the military junta who ordered the army to return to the barracks? Of course, political development is diverse, and therefore individual examples can be cited to confirm a positive answer to these questions. But we still have to admit, firstly, that negative answers are much more plausible, and secondly, that by deciding on this, the leader of the regime will significantly change the basic modality of its functioning. But what happens to the leader of an electoral authoritarian regime who cancels the elections? Most likely nothing. He will remain in power, and if he ever loses it, it will not be because of the cancellation of elections, but because of political vulnerability.
Guarantees for an autocrat
Elections perform a number of functions useful for any authoritarian regime: legitimation, co-optation, information support of the regime, increasing its reputation. Therefore, monarchies, party and military regimes allow elections, but can do without them. In other words, these regimes may contain an electoral component, but for them it is not mandatory.
For electoral authoritarianism, on the contrary, elections act as a necessary condition, but even here they cannot ensure a change of power. Only the current president, if he participates in them, or the ruling party can win elections. The list of mechanisms by which autocrats ensure victory in elections is extensive. Among them:
- the elimination of all somewhat competitive opponents from the political arena through repression or “legal” restrictions;
- external control over the opposition, as a result of which it nominates only weak candidates who do not seriously aspire to power;
- a monopoly on public media that prevents the opposition from communicating its ideas to voters;
- administrative or economic coercion of voters to vote for candidates representing the current government and parties supporting it;
- manipulation of the electoral system;
- outright falsification of election results.
It follows that, unlike other authoritarian regimes, electoral authoritarianism is deprived of its own, organic method of institutionalization. And since the paired category to the concept of institutionalization is personalism, the conclusion follows that electoral authoritarian regimes are, by their nature, not only under-institutionalized, but also personalist. By personalism we understand the concentration of power in the hands of the leader of the regime, whose decisions are not constrained by significant institutional restrictions.
Of course, any authoritarian regime (as, indeed, the vast majority of democracies) contains a share of personalism. Sometimes this share grows. Then the regime - monarchical, party or military - loses its main institutional characteristics and becomes personalistic. Similar dynamics could be observed, for example, in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. However, in these three types of regimes, personalization (and associated deinstitutionalization) are not inevitable outcomes, while electoral authoritarian regimes become personalist by definition, due to their own nature.
Because the leader of a personalist dictatorship usually avoids determining the succession to power, rightly believing that any officially recognized heir becomes a plausible contender for taking over power, members of the ruling group may be inclined to democratize as a way to avoid the risks of political infighting after his death.
Prospects for transformation
A number of important consequences for understanding the prospects for their transformation follow from the personalistic nature of electoral authoritarian regimes. First of all, it is obvious that a low level of institutionalization reduces the longevity of the regime. The idea that the stability of authoritarian regimes is directly determined by the level of their institutionalization was first expressed by Samuel Huntington back in the 1960s. Huntington considered monarchies and communist regimes as institutionalized ones, and he, for obvious reasons, refused to grant this quality to military regimes. The thesis of a positive relationship between the level of institutionalization and the durability of authoritarianism has been repeatedly subjected to empirical testing and, in general, has withstood such testing.
However, it should be emphasized that this dependence is observed only in a broad historical retrospective. It's not hard to see why this is so. The higher the level of personalization of the regime, the more serious the problem it faces as a result of the death of the leader, and the most significant cases are those when this death occurs for natural reasons not related to political circumstances. Because the leader of a personalist dictatorship usually avoids determining the succession to power, rightly believing that any officially recognized heir becomes a plausible contender for taking over power, members of the ruling group may be inclined to democratize as a way to avoid the risks of political infighting after his demise.
It has been empirically shown that the death of a leader significantly increases the chances of regime change, although it does not guarantee it. Therefore, personalist regimes are short-lived compared to those regimes where there are institutional mechanisms for the transfer of power. However, one must understand that this model ties the longevity of the regime to the personal longevity of the leader, which can be quite significant. Therefore, in the short term, personalism does not affect the prospects for regime survival. Only uncertainty about its long-term prospects is increasing.
If we evaluate the prospects for changing personalist regimes in abstraction from the longevity of their leaders, then several points can be highlighted. Firstly, the configuration of the ruling group plays an important role, that is, a phenomenon to describe which, since the time of “transitology,” the concept of “elite split” has been used. The basic conditions for a split among elites are the level of resource-based autonomy of individual members of the ruling group, as well as the level of risks associated with actions aimed at seizing power. If members of the ruling group owe their resources primarily to the favor of the autocrat, and participation in such actions involves serious risks, then the likelihood of elite split is reduced.
In addition, the likelihood of elite split increases in situations where an autocrat takes actions that are significantly divergent from the basic material interests of influential members of the ruling group.
Secondly, the level of control the autocrat has over his own security apparatus, that is, the armed forces, law enforcement and state security forces, plays a key role. Some authoritarian regimes coexist with relatively autonomous security forces that are capable of independent political action. However, in other cases, such structures are under the tight political control of the dictator and are unable to provide the complex coordination necessary for forceful regime change.
Thirdly, like any other regime, electoral authoritarianism becomes more vulnerable in conditions of economic crises and prolonged recessions. The literature has suggested that the level of this vulnerability is quite low, so that authoritarian regimes often survive economic difficulties without difficulty. When assessing this thesis, it should be taken into account that it concerns regimes that control mass behavior through developed clientelistic mechanisms. In most post-communist contexts such mechanisms are absent. However, they are gradually developing, with autocrat-controlled parties and elections playing a central role in their development.
From this it follows, fourthly, that the level of development of quasi-democratic institutions - even taking into account their secondary and surrogate nature - is generally positively related to the survival of personalist regimes. Simply put, they provide the autocrat with some kind of safety cushion, a shock-absorbing mechanism in case of crisis developments.
However, it should be noted that there is another aspect in the functioning of surrogate institutions that is more positive for the prospects of democratization. The fact is that these institutions provide the space in which the opposition to the regime retains opportunities for activities that are not associated with the immediate threat of repressive actions from the regime, primarily for mobilizing supporters and forming a political activist.
Any crisis development of the regime - whether it is associated with a split in the elite, the rise of security forces or economic difficulties - makes the regime vulnerable only if there is a clear political alternative
The role of the democratic opposition
The presence of a strong democratic opposition, outside the regime and not subject to full-scale co-optation, plays a key role in three senses. Firstly, any crisis development of the regime - whether it is associated with a split in the elites, the rise of security forces or economic difficulties - makes the regime vulnerable only if there is a clear political alternative.
Secondly, if we talk specifically about situations of elite splits and actions by security forces, the democratic opposition is a necessary non-systemic partner for the factions that oppose the autocrat. This is especially important if we consider that in both scenarios, the establishment of a new authoritarian regime, or even a slight reformatting of the old one, turns out to be the preferred option for a significant part of the main players.
Third, the ability of the democratic opposition to engage in short-term, mass mobilization of supporters is an important (in most cases, necessary) contextual factor in the process of change. If democratization does not meet with popular support, its chances of success are slim. However, since the population in the conditions of modern authoritarianism is subject to powerful ideological indoctrination and is located in a life world significantly shaped by the propaganda of the authorities, only the presence of an alternative – and quite loudly articulated – vision can provide such support.
Although the role of authoritarian institutions is ambiguous, in conclusion it should be emphasized once again that their main role is not to undermine the dictatorship, but to maintain it. Therefore, elections should be excluded from the set of possible causes of democratization. But they can become a way to change the regime in a situation where it has already been significantly weakened. Calculations by Professor Barbara Geddes (UCLA, USA) show that although the main way to end authoritarian regimes in a long historical retrospective is coups (35%), elections come in second place (25%). But if we talk about cause-and-effect relationships, then this figure is deceptive. “Overturning” elections are led by political processes of weakening the regime, which have only an indirect relation to these elections.
The text was prepared for the conference “Russian realities: state, society, civil society”, organized by the Sakharov Center, International Memorial and Levada Center (December 15-16, 2018)