The Dictator’s Foreign Friends: Foreign Support and Authoritarian Power Sharing

• In Event: Power Sharing, Elite Dynamics, and Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Abstract

Rulers cannot govern by themselves, including in an autocratic regime, but can foreign allies replace domestic support in times of conflict? Literature on power sharing has focused more on democratic contexts rather than non-democracies. However, whether during times of peace or conflict, dictators must strike a delicate balance between asserting total control and making sure those in power with them are satisfied, or else their house of cards comes crashing down. Moreover, foreign intervention affects the regime stability of dictatorships undergoing periods of civil unrest and conflict and the increasing economic interdependence of a multipolar world indicates that these interventions are no longer considered simple shocks to the authoritarian environment. Throughout the tenure of autocratic regimes, we see that dictators will manage their ruling coalition through co-optation using economic benefits or they will choose to expropriate elites within their inner circle to consolidate power. Although authoritarian leaders will always need some level of domestic support for their regime maintenance, what explains their diminishing reliance on their elites, reduced concessions towards the ruling coalition, and increasing levels of expropriation? Considering elite expropriations by the dictator reveals their risk tolerance to this potential form of instability if the presence of foreign support reinforces their regime as a substitute for domestic support.
This paper investigates patterns of state-society relations within an authoritarian country experiencing large-scale foreign intervention in the relative aftermath of a civil war. My study seeks to evaluate the distribution of power between the dictator and the ruling coalition through the expropriation of elite assets and businesses. The outcome of elite expropriations is based on large-scale regime reconfiguration efforts through the transformation of power dynamics in their patronage system. Focusing on the case of Syria, I seek to examine whether Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war has led to a shift in domestic elite power sharing through the analysis of expropriation of elite assets and the consolidation of financial investments directly linked to the dictator without meaningful distribution among the ruling coalition. I find that foreign support acts as a proxy for the distribution of power within a dictatorship because it can replace domestic sources of power, thus reducing a dictator’s need to complete power sharing arrangements or fulfill favorable distributions of wealth with allies. This is shown through the increasing expropriation of elites after the beginning of Russia’s military intervention in the Syrian war in 2015. My findings reveal that foreign intervention enables this shift in the composition of the business elite and an increasing consolidation of assets within the hands of the executive.

Author

• Sumaya Malas, University of Pennsylvania