To Discipline or Empower? Explaining Varieties of Autocratic Youth Governance

• In Event: Mixed Methods in Comparative Politics

Abstract

Why do authoritarian regimes sometimes govern youth through discipline and coercion and sometimes through empowerment and civic engagement? From the perspective of the autocratic incumbent, generational transformations present a perennial threat as new subject-citizens – who invariably come of age under dynamically shifting political and economic conditions – must be socialized and co-opted into stable state-society relations. Therefore, autocrats have always paid special attention to youth by devising special organizations to enlist them and particular tactics to demobilize them.
Yet, the particular modes of authoritarian youth governance vary widely. Some autocracies govern through discipline and loyalty, rewarding compliance with upward mobility in ruling parties, youth organizations, and the broader society and economy. In contrast, other autocracies govern youth by empowering them. Today, in autocracies like Russia, UAE, Ethiopia, and Malaysia, to name a few, autocracies address youth at the site of their independence as entrepreneurs, civic activists, and empowered citizens. To explain such variation, this paper examines the case of Jordan. I leverage a within-case, longitudinal comparative research design. Drawing on data from archival research, ethnography, and interviews, I compare the Jordanian regime’s disciplinary-coercive youth governance from 1952 to 1990 with its empowering-entrepreneurial governance of today.
I find that modes of youth governance depend on regimes’ capacity to co-opt youth economically. When regimes can materially co-opt youth – i.e., letting them replace older generations in established economic and political institutions – authoritarian youth governance emphasizes continuity, seeking to embed youth in established symbolic and discursive models of national citizenship. In contrast, when the material means of co-optation and attendant life chances for youth are limited, regimes instead emphasize discontinuity, disembedding youth from existing social and political institutions by highlighting autonomy, empowerment, and self-reliance. This form of empowering-entrepreneurial youth governance focuses on shifting responsibility and risk towards individuals to alleviate a sense of marginalization and economic superfluity among youth vis-á-vis older generations.
These findings offer a framework through which to explain the sometimes puzzling varieties of youth governance. On a more general level, it contributes to the literature on state-mobilized movements (SMM) in autocracies, helping to explain why regimes mobilize citizens in different ways at different times, forwarding a political-economy-centered perspective to explain why citizens are sometimes mobilized through highly centralized mechanisms and sometimes through more de-centralized processes.

Author

• Adam Almqvist, Lund University