Electoral Authoritarianism

This book proposes a significant reassessment of the history of Iraq, documenting democratic experiences from ancient Mesopotamia through to the US occupation. Such an analysis takes to task claims that the 'West' has a uniquely democratic history and a responsibility to spread democracy across the world. It also reveals that Iraq has a democratic history all of its own, from ancient Middle Eastern assemblies and classical Islamic theology and philosophy, through to the myriad political parties, newspapers and protest movements of more recent times. This book argues that the democratic history of Iraq could serve as a powerful political and discursive tool where the Iraqi people may come to feel a sense of ownership over democracy and take pride in endorsing it. This could go a long way towards mitigating the current conflicts across the nation and in stabilizing and legitimating its troubled democracy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and referring to some of the most influential critical theorists to question ideological assumptions about democracy and its history, this book will be useful to those interested in political and legal history, human rights and democracy.Reviews: 'This book is a serious and in-depth reading of Iraqi political history. Isakhan's argument, bolstered by an impressive array of source material, is a direct affront to the use of violence to impose a wholesale American "democracy" on a society that has its own rich history of egalitarian and collective forms of governance.' Muhsin Al-Musawi, Columbia University, USA 'Democracy in Iraq expertly excavates democratic traditions that have long been buried in Western Orientalism and Bathist totalitarianism. In demonstrating that a will towards collective and participatory governance has existed over the centuries, Benjamin Isakhan rescues assessments for Iraqi democratisation from the kind of negative determinism, deracinated from history and local culture, that has dominated scholarly and policy debates.' James Piscatori, Durham University, UK

After toppling the 61-year dominant Barisan Nasional through a historic election victory in May 2018, expectations are high for the new ruling government led by Mahathir Mohamad and the Pakatan Harapan to fulfil their promises for socio-economic reforms and regime change in Malaysia. But what have been the institutions of the prevailing regime that need to be reformed and changed? This article offers a critical review of the evolving development agendas since the 1990s of the successive governments of Mahathir Mohamad, Abdullah Badawi, and Najib Razak, each couched in different catchphrases: Wawasan 2020, Islam Hadhari, and 1Malaysia. A close reading of these programs suggests that their substance articulates two persistent logics: the ruling elite’s constant requirement for political stability enforced by a strong state; and, the need to adapt to the demands and opportunities of accumulation in specific phases of Malaysia’s capitalist development in the context of globalization. The analysis reveals the attempts at maintaining authoritarian neoliberalism, or a neoliberal economy embedded in an authoritarian polity, as the de facto social regime in contemporary Malaysia. By examining policy documents, speeches, and news reports, the article discloses how this regime had been enunciated or reified in public discourses, policies, and actions of the respective administrations.

The hybrid regime framework provides a useful approach for analysis of (post-)Third wave political regimes, yet there has not been sufficient effort to develop adequate systematic measure of ‘mixed’ regimes. Several measures that exist suffer from various measurement validity problems. This article introduces an alternative method and demonstrates how it can be used to classify post-Soviet regimes in the 1991-2005 period. Future research can employ this new classification to explore the question of change and stability of hybrid regimes in post-communist Eurasia as well as to study causes and consequences of regime change and democratisation in comparative perspective.

This chapter argues that one key legacy of the US effort to bring democracy to Iraq has been that many elements within Iraq’s Shia Arab political elite have viewed democracy through the lens of a cynical majoritarianism and manipulated it to catapult themselves to power. This has had a further legacy, enabling the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to utilise his incumbency to maintain the veneer of democracy while becoming increasingly dictatorial and authoritarian. Although Maliki has been widely criticised for deploying a host of authoritarian strategies to retain power – including blatant sectarianism, undermining key state institutions, the creation of a shadow state loyal to himself, and the concentration of military and political power in his own hands – this chapter focuses on his less well-known efforts to shatter the unity of his Shia Arab political opponents. It focuses on his first two terms in power and examines the ways in which he has been able to systematically fracture the Shia political elite to such an extent that once tenuously united factions now stand bitterly divided. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the reasoning behind such an approach and the prospects of Iraq’s democracy moving beyond the blatant power grab of the Maliki government.

This article investigates how hybrid regimes supply governance by examining a series of dilemmas (involving elections, the mass media, and state institutions) that their rulers face. The authors demonstrate how regime responses to these dilemmas -typically efforts to maintain control while avoiding outright repression and societal backlash -have negative outcomes, including a weakening of formal institutions, proliferation of "substitutions" (e.g., substitutes for institutions), and increasing centralization and personalization of control. Efforts by Russian leaders to disengage society from the sphere of decision-making entail a significant risk of systemic breakdown in unexpected ways. More specifically, given significantly weakened institutions for interest representation and negotiated compromise, policy-making in the Russian system often amounts to the leadership's best guess (ad hoc manual policy adjustments) as to precisely what society will accept and what it will not, with a significant possibility of miscalculation. Three case studies of the policy-making process are presented: the 2005 cash-for-benefits reform, plans for the development of the Khimki Forest, and changes leading up to and following major public protests in 2011-2012.

Like Weimar Germany, contemporary Russia is home to fascist actors and widespread nationalism. But unlike interwar Germany, the party system in post-Soviet Russia is heavily manipulated and civil society remains underdeveloped. This means that fascists have not had a chance to use elections or to penetrate civil society in order to build up political support. The continuing presence of a resolutely authoritarian, yet non-fascist “national leader” (Vladimir Putin) keeps the country from becoming a liberal democracy but it also, for now, makes it less likely that the regime will become fascist.

Why do authoritarian legislatures support regime durability? Existing literature utilizes country-level or case study data, but lacks detailed, within-country evidence on rent distribution to citizens which is needed to understand why authoritarian legislatures support regime durability. Drawing on original surveys from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan conducted 2007-2014, this paper shows that institutional setting and resource endowments systematically shape parliamentarian-citizen linkages and have implications for regime stability. Socially-embedded, personalistic linkages are more common in monarchies and oil rich economies than resource-poor and single-party dominant regimes. Yet, non-personalistic linkages are less effective than personalistic linkages in fostering government satisfaction. By empirically demonstrating variation in the social embeddedness of rent distribution and its impact on citizens’ attitudes, this paper extends literature on political clientelism, authoritarian institutions, and regime breakdown and helps explain why resource-poor, single-party dominant regimes (i.e., Tunisia, Egypt) were vulnerable to regime challenges during the Arab spring.

In this paper, I claim that Turkey is moving out of its tutelary democratic regime and is moving towards a populist competitive authoritarian regime. A tutelary regime is a form of defective democracy that aims to normalize a certain level of non-elected supervision (by the military, the high courts, etc.) over the elected representatives. Turkey is transiting out of this tutelary system, but rather than transiting into a consolidated democracy as many expected, the move is towards electoral/competitive authoritarianism: a regime that advocates democracy and competitive elections, but practices populist majoritarianism and treats elections as mere confirmations of the government's rule.

The emergence of India as a fascist nation ruled by the BJP with Modi as its figurehead is no surprise considering the origins of the BJP. Nor is it a surprise considering the identity of those unmarried, fanatically devoted party workers and their army of youngsters who provide the BJP’s infrastructural base. Nor is it a surprise considering the history of Modi himself.

This paper looks at the special case of military-guided electoral authoritarianism in Myanmar. Examining why electoral authoritarianism crumbled so easily, it looks into the historical importance of elections, the formation of the electoral authoritarian regime under military guidance, and its demise. This article identifies the strong charisma of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the increasing struggles within the ruling party and the incumbent government's promise to the international community to hold free and fair elections as the main triggers of the downfall of electoral authoritarianism. This demise, however, did not bring an end to the dominant position of the military, which retains ultimate veto power for all far-reaching changes in the country.

The paper shows that sustained popular protest is a recurrent feature in many authoritarian regimes and that a regime type strongly shapes its characteristics. Popular protest often leads to important changes in the personal composition and policies of elites, which considerably affect the structure and operation of authoritarian regimes, and at times produce regime change. Evidence is provided from authoritarianism in Poland and Yugoslavia, in which sustained protests contributed to the fall of communism, and from competitive authoritarian regimes in post-communist Serbia and Ukraine, which were repeatedly undermined by protest waves and brought to an end by pressure ‘from below’.

This chapter examines the tensions between the governance networks of the former regime (Mubarak), the Muslim Brotherhood and the people who drove the revolution. It argues that resolving this tension will be central to any prospect of a democratic Egypt.

This article explains how the electoral one-party state of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in Malaysia is maintained through constituency delimitation. It examines how the means of inter-state malapportionment, intra-state malapportionment, gerrymandering, pre-delimitation boundary changes and seat increase are used in the on-going delimitation exercises. Malapportionment and gerrymandering in the last cycle of delimitation exercises in 2003–5 had secured Prime Minister Najib Razak a comfortable 60% parliamentary majority in 2013 despite winning only 47% of popular votes. While Razak may sufer greater attrition of votes due to his global fnancial scandal involving Malaysia’s state sovereign fund, 1MDB, he may still win a bigger parliamentary majority in the upcoming election, which must be held latest by August 2018. The article questions if the First- Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system, which is not only susceptible to manipulations, but also very winner-takes-all in nature, suits Malaysia’s plural society.

Lebanese state institutions have shown increasing signs of fragility and unreliability in recent years. Considering that prominent political elites have been in office for decades, it is fair to hold them responsible for the state’s failures and poor governance, and one would imagine that Lebanese people would want to hold them accountable. Nonetheless, despite their poor performance, Lebanese citizens continue to re-elect these same parties and leaders. This thesis seeks to examine why is that so, and why political activists and progressive opposition groups who try to challenge the situation have been failing to undermine elite control over state power in the postwar period. By combining findings from past scholarship on sectarian dynamics with interviews with Lebanese activists, I argue that dominant patterns in voting behavior are a result of complementary and self-enforcing institutional and repressive mechanisms that thwart the emergence of alternative political forces. The institutional structures of the sectarian system are first explored to underscore the social and political realities characterizing citizens’ relationship with the state. The lived experiences of secular and cross-sectarian alternatives to the political and ideological rule of traditional elites are then highlighted and include insights from the electoral campaigns of Beirut Madinati (2016) and Kulluna Watani (2018). This thesis concludes with a discussion on the future of progressive anti-sectarian resistance in the country.

Jack Goldstone proposes three predictors for acute social and political destabilization during the revolutionary wave of 2013-2014: (a) an intermediate level of per capita GDP, (b) a high level of corruption, and (c) a transitional type of political regime. After testing this theory on a broader sample, this study suggests and finds support for another predictor— " center-periphery dissonance " for the destabilization of the 2013-2014 wave. The emergence of this factor is common in the process of modernization, and is due to the heterogeneity of modernization processes, when a system's central elements (" capitals ") are almost always modernized faster than its periphery. Identification of this factor is of considerable interest because accounting for this factor could significantly improve our capability to predict risks of sociopolitical destabilization of modernizing social systems.

The electoral authoritarian regime of Singapore has experienced two very different general elections in 2011 and 2015. The first was a watershed election that allowed the opposition to capture the largest number of seats ever, including a group representative constituency, which was once believed to be impossible. It had also fielded the most candidates ever, running in all but one constituencies. The latter, however, was a major setback for the opposition which had to suffer a significant reduction in the share of popular vote. As the ruling party won in a landslide, the opposition Workers' Party even lost one seat that it had gained in a by-election in 2013. Opposition supporters , who had hoped to make additional gains, were devastated. Observers even saw in the election result a clear victory for the soft-authoritarian regime. This paper, however, argues that Singapore, in spite of the 2015 election, continues to be on the path to a fundamental political transformation. The majority of Singaporeans still wants a responsive government with sufficient checks on arbitrary power. The ruling party now has to be much more responsive to popular desires and quirks than in the past and can no longer act according to what it claims to be the long-term interests of the country. In addition, it is important to recognize that the 2015 election was conducted under extremely favorable conditions for the ruling party including Sin-gapore's 50 year celebrations and the death of the «founding father» Lee Kuan Yew. Overall, this demonstrates that the ruling party's hegemonic position is in decline while it remains to be seen how the ruling party will fare in the upcoming leadership transition amid growing challenges and the lack of a clear successor.

and Keywords Considering incidents that make headline news internationally, given the modern information and communication technology revolution, the facility of citizens to rapidly mobilize represents a considerable threat to autocratic survival. While the speed with which popular movements emerge has increased exponentially, and the news of their existence spreads faster and farther, civil unrest has threatened the stability and survival of dictators for centuries. The paranoia and machinations of dictators depicted in films, such as the portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, while sensationalized, capture the astounding array of threats with which unelected leaders must concern themselves. On the one hand, they must worry about insider threats to their standing, such as conspiratorial plots from people within the dictator's own circle or mutiny among government soldiers. On the other hand, dictators also must monitor threats originating from non-regime actors, such as new alliances forming among once-fragmented opposition groups or the possibility of sustained insurgency or a popular revolution. From force to finesse, autocratic leaders have developed a broad and evolving range of tactics and tools to diminish both internal and external domestic threats to their reign. The success of dictators' endeavors to insulate their regimes from forces that might challenge them depends on accurate and reliable information, a resource that can be as valuable to the leader as would a large armory and loyal soldiers. Dictators invest significant resources (monetary as well as human capital) to try to gather useful information about their existing and potential opponents, while also trying to control and shape information emitted by the regime before it reaches the public. New information and communication technologies (ICTs), which have drawn a great deal of scholarly attention since the beginning of the 21st century—present both risks and rewards for dictators; inversely they also create new opportunities and hazards for citizens who might utilize them to mobilize people opposed to the regime. While civil unrest could encompass the full range of domestic, nonmilitary actors, there also needs to be a specific focus on various forms of mass mobilization. Historically, more dictators have been forced from office by elite-initiated overthrows via coups d'état than have fallen to revolution or fled

See p 63-81.

Political leadership in Africa is changing. Evidence of this can be found in the Arab Spring, democratic elections on the continent and the rejection by the African Union (AU) of undemocratic and unconstitutional regime change on the continent. However, procedural rather than substantive democracies operate on the continent, often entrenching authoritarian regimes through elections. These elections show some signs of democratisation and democratic participation, but result predominantly in the extension of the competitive authoritarian regime. The AU subscribes to universally accepted democratic norms, which are often not realised in member states, or sanctioned by the AU. This tacit approval of electoral authoritarianism requires an investigation into the role, if any, of the AU in entrenching electoral authoritarianism on the continent. Applying Levitsky and Way’s (2002; 2010) analytical framework leads to the conclusion that the AU has exerted leverage over authoritarian presidents and their regimes in all but a few cases. However, the AU is not yet able to advance the democracy project on the continent, as linkages focus predominantly on socio-economic development and infrastructure expansion rather than the promotion of democracy per se.

In this article, we re-analyze the hypothesis that the relationship between the type of political regime and its political instability forms an inverted U shape. Following this logic, consistent democracies and autocracies are more stable regimes, whereas intermediate regimes (anocracies) display the lowest levels of political stability. We re-test this hypothesis using a data set that has not been previously used for this purpose, finding sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis pertaining to the aforementioned U-shaped relationship. Our analysis is specifically focused on the symmetry of this U shape, whereby our findings suggest that the U-shaped relationship between regime types and sociopolitical destabilization is typically characterized by an asymmetry, with consistently authoritarian regimes being generally less stable than consolidated democracies. We also find that the character of this asymmetry can change with time. In particular, our re-analysis suggests that U-shaped relationship experienced significant changes after the end of the Cold War. Before the end of the Cold War (1946-1991), the asymmetry

“Party hegemony” is a macro-level characteristic of party systems, which is a product of persistent and overwhelming electoral victories that leads to domination of the parliamentary system by a single party. Party hegemony
can only emerge through a collection of individual-level (albeit aggregated), lower-level structural, and macro-level institutional factors. This article intends to shed light on hegemonic party systems by incorporating all of these aspects. It analyses the case of the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) in Turkey as a hegemonic party in the making. Based on individual-level survey data as well as an original province-level dataset, the article examines the role of ideology, pork barrel politics, economic voting, demographics, and political institutions in AKP’s rising hegemony. The replicable nature of the dataset enables further testing of these findings in
comparable cases for generalizability.

This article explores the relationship between competitive authoritarianism and popular protest. Building upon comparative regime analysis and social movement research, it argues that this hybrid regime type facilitates popular protest by providing opposition forces with considerable institutional resources to organize themselves and confront regime elites, along with grievances that provide strong incentives for popular challenges. In turn, popular protest may trigger regime crisis and extract important concessions from regime incumbents. In the long run, popular politics strongly shapes the interests, identities and capacities of regime elites and opposition forces, as well as the regime’s formal and/or informal institutions, and may lead to government change and/or regime change. Evidence is provided from Serbia under Milošević, which experienced massive opposition protest campaigns in 1991, 1992, 1996-1997, 1999 and 2000, which resulted in regime change.

Caspian Energy Politics analyses the role of oil and gas in the development of the three main petroleum exporters in the Caspian region – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – and how energy resources influence interactions with Russia and China. Due to volatile commodity prices and competition for the resources in and around the Caspian Sea, the governments of these petroleum-exporters face a series of difficult decisions. These governments have sought to balance short-term incentives to spend oil revenues as a means to maintain power against the need for a long-term strategy for managing these assets, choices which have further implications for how these countries align themselves internationally. By illuminating important linkages between domestic and international dynamics in these states, the book provides a fresh perspective on energy politics and the impact of petroleum on the development of the Caspian petroleum producers. Expert contributors from Central Asia and the South Caucasus and international scholars provide context-specific insights into the incentives affecting decision-makers that can provide a foundation for strategies to help the countries in the region overcome the negative effects of reliance on oil and gas. As such, the book will be a valuable tool for business actors seeking to understand the role of Chinese and Russian companies in the region, as well as local and international policymakers and non-governmental organizations.

This article examines the historical evolution of Tunisia’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) from its beginnings in 1987, when President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali took power, until his ousting in 2011 when the party was outlawed. I argue that the RCD evolved from a political force with wide popular support during a short democratic era (1987–89) into a repressive interest group in the 1990s, when the regime cracked down on political dissidents and popular freedoms whilst rewarding party members with lucrative bene ts. In the 2000s the RCD adopted a quasi-ma osi structure that pro ted the Ben Ali family, which increasingly monopolized economic and political power. Tunisia’s transformation into a near dynasty marginalized many RCD members and its wider networks, a central dynamic to understand Ben Ali’s ousting in 2011.

Last year, independent and secular segments of civil society ran against the established traditional political parties in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections. While their campaign elicited much hope, the results were disappointing. Why did they fail in breaking through and what lessons can be drawn from the campaign?

In this article, I critically engage with the populism literature, and predicated on a conceptualization of modern democracy as a mixed regime (combining oligarchy and democracy), I provide a mechanism to connect populism-in-power to authoritarianism. As such, I elucidate a particular populist path to authoritarianism in a competitive setting by exploring two questions. First, what is the impact of populism-in-power on the modern democratic mixed regime? Second, what is the locus of populism in a modern democratic institutional framework? Utilizing the Turkish and Argentinean cases as illustrative examples of populism-in-power, I conclude that, first, unless a populist vision is accompanied by democratic institutions outside of the spectrum that modern democracy offers, when that vision which sacralizes and singularizes competitive elections becomes preponderant, it will lead to the opposite of its claim of making the people sovereign, and instead will make the rulers sovereign. Second, I argue that although there is no internal contradiction between modern democracy's liberal or constitutional and democratic elements, there is still a paradox surrounding modern democracy. This paradox is found between the sources of its imaginative appeal and its practice as a mixed regime, and this is where we should place the perennial potential of populism.

El principio de unicidad social y política rige el
discurso y la práctica del populismo chavista. Mas
la imposición de este principio ha encontrado
resistencias dentro del movimiento y en la sociedad
venezolana. Así, el régimen ha derivado hacia un
autoritarismo electoral que refleja las contradicciones
entre la aspiración a la hegemonía y la inevitable
diversidad consustancial a los sistemas políticos
pluralistas. Este autoritarismo electoral se aplica a
los actores opositores, percibidos como «enemigos»,
pero también se ejerce en el interior de las
organizaciones «amigas», es decir, leales al gobierno.
Estas prácticas intentan reducir la diversidad sin
lograrlo completamente, por lo que las tensiones
siguen presentes ante la coyuntura electoral y la
incertidumbre sobre la capacidad del presidente para
seguir ejerciendo sus funciones.

Abstract
The principle of social and political unity governs
the discourse and practices of Chavist populism.
But the imposition of this principle has found
resistance within the movement and in Venezuelan
society. Thus, the regime has drifted into an electoral
authoritarianism that reflects the contradictions
between the desire for hegemony and the inevitable
diversity inherent to pluralistic political systems.
The electoral authoritarianism is exercised against
opponents, perceived as «enemies», but also
within «friendly»– i.e., loyal to the government–
organizations. The combination of those practices
is meant to reduce diversity, whithout achieving its
goal: the tensions are still present in view of the
electoral circumstances and the uncertainty about the
president’s ability to perform his role.

Today, Ukraine has a coalitional-presidentialist political system that can best be categorized as a semi-managed democracy. This model has four main features: consolidation of power by President Petro Poroshenko, formation of a pro-presidential coalition in parliament, integration of former president Viktor Yanukovych’s oligarchic representatives, and a rise in the importance of sub-national politics. This political system confirms the end of the post-Euromaidan era of political diversity, even though a consolidation of presidential power remains uncertain and the regime will probably face new tests in the coming months.

had been anticipated by the PRD during the election campaign and denied by Medina. The president's popularity, however, remained high one year after the election: according to a May 2013 poll for the media group Corripio, three out of four Dominicans were satisfied or very satisfied with Medina's election (Newlink Research, 2013).

Since the opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny announced his plan to become president in 2018, his team has built one of the most extensive political campaigns in post-Soviet Russia. In the context of electoral authoritarianism, the competition takes place on a highly uneven playing ield. Although it remains unlikely that he will be allowed to run in the election, the campaign's central strategy— to turn obstacles into advantages—confronts Russia's political leadership with its irst real challenge in years.

The ambiguous conduct of the State Duma elections of the 4th of December 2011 and voters’ outrage provoked many scholarly debates over the prospects of civic movement and regime change in Russia. However recent developments coupled with an overall enfeeblement of the opposition and civic organizations seem to contradict the optimistic forecasts of civic protest and liberalization in Russia In this study we return to the post-electoral protests of 2011-12 and look into the specific mechanism and dynamics of elections as 'a transformative event' and one of the causes of the Movement For Fair Elections by using two types of empirical evidence: semi-structural interviews, collected during the protest campaigns of 2011-12 and quantitative analysis of protest frames drawing on PEPS dataset.  We argue that regime’s liberalization prepared the ground for increase in political participation, while perceived electoral malpractice by thousands of voters served as a sufficient condition for further protests.

Why do some Arab citizens regard democracy favourably but see it as unsuitable for their country? Modernization theory contends that economic development creates modern citizens who demand democracy. Cultural theories see Islam and democracy as incompatible. Government performance theories argue that citizens who perceive the current authoritarian government as acting in a transparent manner will demand greater democracy. I argue that attitudes toward democracy are shaped by beliefs about its political, economic, and religious consequences, including those related to sectarianism. I test this consequence-based theory using Arab Barometer data from six nations. Sixty percent hold favourable views of democracy generally and for their country, while 7% reject democracy. Twenty-seven percent support democracy generally but see it as unsuitable for their country. Beliefs that democracy will have negative consequences and perceptions of poor government performance are the most important predictors of democracy's unsuitability. Modernization theory receives support, but Islamic identity and beliefs do not consistently predict attitudes in the expected direction. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of Arab public opinion and suggest that concerns about the consequences of free elections affect support for democracy as much as assessments of the political and economic performance of the current authoritarian regime.

"Since the democratic elections held across Iraq in 2005 and again in 2010 much attention has understandably been paid to the machinations of the new Iraqi government. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and his ruling State of Law Coalition (SLC) are practising the type of governance referred to in the literature on other Arab states alternatively as ‘liberalised autocracy’ (Brumberg, 2002), ‘semi-authoritarianism’ (Ottaway, 2003) or ‘pluralised authoritarianism’ (Posusney & Angrist, 2005). That is to say, that the Maliki government is consolidating its incumbency while putting in place measures that can be considered more or less liberal. To do this, the regime actually utilises (and controls) nominally democratic mechanisms such as elections, media freedoms, political opposition and civil society as part of their strategy to retain power. This is perhaps best demonstrated via the nine month political stalemate that followed the March 2010 elections and Maliki’s refusal to step down despite having narrowly lost the election. Not surprisingly, the Iraqi people have become increasingly disillusioned with their political leaders and deeply critical of their ability to provide a robust and genuine democracy – hence the mass protests that have swept across Iraq in the context of the popular Arab Revolutions of 2010-11.However, these latest Iraqi protests – these mass displays of informal power - are only the most recent and overt sign of the hidden geographies that are agitating towards democracy in this deeply troubled and increasingly authoritarian state. Indeed, since the invasion of 2003 and the subsequent protracted occupation, a complex array of political, religious and ethno-sectarian factions have formed political parties and civil society movements; uncensored news has been enthusiastically produced and consumed across the nation; ordinary citizens have taken to the streets to protest key government decisions; and various local councils have been formed, deliberating and deciding on key decisions facing their immediate communities (Davis, 2004, 2007; Isakhan, 2008, 2011). Given this context, this chapter focuses on the specific case of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), Iraq’s largest and most powerful independent workers union. The IFOU has repeatedly taken the Iraqi government to task over their poor pay and the dangerous nature of their work, as well as the government’s initial kowtowing to US plans to privatise the entire Iraqi oil sector. To do this, the IFOU have utilised a variety of very democratic mechanisms including peaceful strikes and protests, media campaigns and political lobbying. But when such measures have failed to garner the desired results, the IFOU has gone as far as halting oil production and cutting off the supply of oil, kerosene and gas to the rest of the country. Such moves have met with mixed results in Baghdad – at times the central government has pandered to the requests of IFOU, at other times it has gone as far as issuing arrest warrants for the senior members of the union. It is for all of these reasons that the IFOU serve as an interesting example of informal power in Iraq and may well pose one of the greatest challenges to rising authoritarianism there."

This article examines the characteristics of the current political regime in Turkey in an attempt to classify it on the democracy-autocracy spectrum. Borrowing the definition of competitive authoritarian regimes from Levitsky and Way, three defining regime attributes are investigated: elections; protection of civil liberties; and a level playing field for the opposition. The main argument is that the current Turkish regime fits the definition of ‘electoral authoritarianism’ on multiple fronts, especially considering the lack of civil liberties protection and the uneven playing field for the political opposition. The prospects for further democratization also look bleak for the foreseeable future.

This working paper discusses four political challenges that the Kremlin will face from 2018 onwards. The first concerns the regime’s great dependency on Vladimir Putin, which has led to the deepening deterioration of formal political institutions. As a result, extremely low turnouts in elections are calling into the question the regime’s electoral authoritarian legitimacy. Second, it is unclear how the Kremlin’s ultrapatriotic course will manage to respond to the people’s everyday problems amid increasing socio-economic difficulties. At the same time, the decreased patriotic euphoria after the Crimean invasion indicates that the state has not managed to build any consensus for identity politics. The third challenge concerns the political potential of corruption
for the opposition. Alexei Navalny’s novel anti-corruption populism has demonstrated its potential in mobilizing people throughout Russia, while the regime’s capacity to counter his oppositional populism by means other than coercion is seemingly limited. Finally, growing expectations for change are apparent in popular opinion. It cannot be ruled out that oppositional anti-corruption mobilization indicates a demand for change that is also fuelling local and sectoral socio-economic protests, which have steadily multiplied throughout Russia.

In order to understand the functions of elections in non-democratic regimes, about 100 national elections between 1992 and 2012 in eleven successor states of the Soviet Union are examined. A comparative analysis of both presidential and parliamentary elections reveals systematic patterns according to regime subtype. The findings allow a detailed evaluation of the functions of “authoritarian elections”, which vary remarkably by regime (sub-)type, type of election, timing of the election and the existence or absence of a dominant “party of power”. On this basis, the paper contributes to the conceptual debate on regime classification. The dividing line between democracy and autocracy should be drawn by the criterion of whether the executive office, i.e. the presidency, is filled through contested elections or not. The competitiveness of parliamentary elections, in contrast, is a valuable criterion for distinguishing between non-democratic regime subtypes, i.e. electoral and closed autocracies.
Keywords: electoral authoritarianism; hybrid regimes; presidential and parliamentary elections; post-Soviet Eurasia

Elena Fell. The Instrumentalisation of Mass Media in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from Russia’s Presidential Election Campaigns of 2000 and 2008 European Journal of Communication Vol 32, Issue 4, pp. 381 - 383 First Published August 16, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323117718319

Il presente file, titolo: Republicanismvs Geopoliticvs Fontes Origenes et Via, contiene testi e link di Massimo Morigi sull’estetizzazione della politica e sul ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’. Il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’ è una dottrina politologica e filosofico-politica elaborata negli ultimi anni dall’ autore  in cui i sette paper copia-incollati nelle  pagine di questo file costituiscono l’elaborazione storico-filosofica che ha portato all’elaborazione finale del ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’,  di cui si potrà prendere visione cliccando nei link posti nella parte finale del file al termine dei sette paper copia-incollati nel file. In questi precedenti paper era stato messo a fuoco, fra le altre cose,  un nuovo tipo di repubblicanesimo profondamente debitore delle suggestioni dell’estetizzazione della politica, con le sue luci delle avanguardie artistiche e con le sue terribili ombre dei regimi totalitari, così come si era manifestata nel corso del Novecento (il numero della nota a piè di pagina che all’inizio di ogni nuovo paper non riparte da 1 ma aggiunge 1 all’ultimo numero di nota del precedente paper pur essendo dovuto ad un automatismo del copia-incolla è, se vogliamo, anche un accidente altamente simbolico del filo rosso, fra riflessioni sul repubblicanesimo e sulla estetizzazione della politica, che attraversa tutti questi interventi). Il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’ raccoglie queste suggestioni ed intende innestarle nel tronco della tradizione realista della Geopolitica. Un realismo politico quello del ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ che però, rinnovato dalla scuola costruttivista delle relazioni internazionali (Alexander Wendt), pone in primo piano una spazialità non solo geografica  ma anche di natura mentale, rappresentativa e culturale (in fondo la moderna noopolitik non è che una riscrittura postmoderna dell’estetizzazione della politica novecentesca)  e che, proprio perché strettamente vincolato in senso machiavelliano all’effettualità, rifiuta con irrisione tutte le ingenue, quando non interessate, visioni  liberal-neopositivistiche alla Popper e si riallaccia direttamente ai grandi pensatori dialettici Hegel e Marx (da questo punto di vista, il ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ si distacca drasticamente da tutte le vulgate neomarxiste: in primo luogo perché integralmente dialettico, in secondo luogo perché non cerca surrogati salvifici alla classe operaia ma individua, sulla scia di Gianfranco La Grassa, negli agenti strategici interni ed internazionali gli autentici operatori dell’evoluzione delle società capitalistiche – ma a differenza della versione lagrassiana del marxismo, il ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ si tiene ben stretta, ed intende sviluppare, la visione dialettica hegelo-marxiana della realtà). Possiamo così affermare che generare una profonda dialettica fra realismo politico e le mai sopite pulsioni verso l’estetizzazione della politica (impresa alla quale fu dedicata la vita del più grande rappresentante della filosofia politica del Novecento, Hannah Arendt, alla quale però fece sempre velo la sua formazione kantiana) sia il compito che si prefigge il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’. Un repubblicanesimo, quello geopolitico, che ha pertanto definitivamente abbandonato una visione della libertà intesa come non dominio che ha segnato – ed estenuato – le ormai  vecchie ed attardate  vulgate del neorepubblicaneismo e che è invece fermamente indirizzato alla realizzazione di una autentica, profonda ed intima Vita Activa.

Massimo Morigi – Ravenna, 8 ottobre 2014

In May 2018, the Malaysian opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan or Hope Alliance won the federal elections for the first time in the history of the country. The electoral authoritarian system is now in a state of transition. The electoral breakthrough was the result of longer-term socioeconomic transformations, but the formation of a strong pre-electoral coalition was ultimately decisive for the victory. The article compares various coalitions and their performance during seven elections since 1990. The structured, focused comparison analyses the coalitions during this period because prior to 1990 the opposition was fragmented. On the basis of a three-level concept regarding the strength of pre-electoral coalitions, the article argues that Pakatan Harapan was successful because the coalition was sufficiently comprehensive (as indicated by the number and the competitiveness of candidates), cohesive (concerning ideological proximity and behavioural routinization) and well-rooted in society (in terms of linkages to voters/supporters and to civil society networks or organizations).

This paper analyzes President Bakiyev’s post-revolutionary strategy of consolidating political power in Kyrgyzstan. Against the background of renewed elite conflict and political protest in 2006 and 2007, Bakiyev initiated a project of institutional reform that aimed at centralizing political power. The constitutional changes of 2007, the creation of Ak Zhol as a single pro-presidential “party of power,” and the early 2007 parliamentary elections are part of this project of authoritarian institution building. Ultimately, this policy aims at reducing the volatility of elite alignments in Kyrgyzstan by stabilizing a presidential support coalition in the form of Ak Zhol and monopolizing access to the formal political system.

Политические машины в регионах России, созданные губернаторами в середине 1990-х годов, оказались наиболее эффективными в национальных республиках. Этому способствовало несколько причин, среди которых плотность
патронажных сетей среди аграрного населения этнических меньшинств, экономическое наследие советской эпохи, политизация и институционализация этничности. Все это позволяло региональным элитам интегрировать этнические
меньшинства в структуру клиентелистского распределения символических и материальных благ в обмен на их электоральную поддержку. На современном этапе, однако, федеральные власти существенно сократили автономию национальных республик и лишили их многих преференций. Проведенный анализ электоральной статистики итогов президентских выборов 2018 г. дал автору возможность исследовать политические последствия перемен в отношениях между центром и регионами и изменения в функционировании региональных политических машин в условиях сокращения ресурсной и институциональной автономии губернаторов. В результате обнаружена диверсификация
электорального поведения этнических меньшинств в разных республиках. На основе сравнительного анализа пяти кейсов (Республики Башкортостан, Республики Татарстан, Республики Коми, Чувашской Республики и Республики Саха (Якутия)) представлено объяснение причин этой диверсификации.

Scholarship on electoral authoritarianism has increasingly recognized state capacity as an element enhancing electoral control. Building on such arguments, I examine the interaction between state capacity and regime strength in authoritarian elections. Drawing on empirical evidence from Egyptian elections under Mubarak, I show that the degree to which official regime candidates were able to profit from state penetration depended on the strength of the ruling party. In urban settings where party structures were stronger, service provision by the state helped secure the dominance of the hegemonic National Democratic Party (NDP); in rural constituencies where the party was weak, by contrast, service provision strengthened local elites who often ran and won against the party's official candidates. This suggests that variation in regime capacity to channel political support needs to be taken into account when examining the relationship between state capacity and electoral control under authoritarianism.