The New Illiberalism? 21st Century Technologies of Repression and Retrenchment

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In an era of widespread democratic decline, scholars face the urgent question of how autocrats and aspiring autocrats capture social institutions and stifle counter-mobilization. This panel asks: what are the principle techniques and strategies of illiberal governance in the 21st century? To what extent do these repressive technologies converge and diffuse across borders? And how do they compare with strategies of coercion and control from earlier, less globalized eras of retrenchment? These papers draw on novel data across multiple world regions – East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe – to identify a number of key coercive strategies and to unpack implications for pro-democracy mobilization.

Fu and Dirks study China’s program of transnational repression, unpacking similarities between China’s strategies and those of fellow illiberal governments, including Russia, Iran, Turkey, and India under Modi. Khani and Kadivar study pro-government mobilization, using unique data from Iran to argue that – contrary to common assumptions about students acting as dissidents – universities may prove particularly fertile grounds for state-led movements emphasizing a regime’s legitimacy. Earl investigates the increasingly common use of private repressive agents, noting that even when private repressors are contracted to act on behalf of a government, these actors may also pursue their own violent agendas. Siegel develops a novel approach to measuring news media freedom and news media capture, using large-scale text analysis of media from Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco. Ruparelia studies democratic retrenchment in India, using a temporal comparison between the rule of Indira Gandhi and the rule of Narendra Modi to explore how particular forms of democratic breakdown shape prospects for counter-mobilization and efforts to restore liberal democracy in their aftermath.

This panel connects strongly with the APSA 2024 theme of “Retrenchment, Renovation, and Reimagination.” Though our papers focus empirically on the “retrenchment” phase, their implications for scholarship and policy extend to questions of democratic regeneration and resiliency. We propose that thorough study of the “new illiberalism” will help to generate strategies for combating the wave of autocratization upon us. The panel includes both faculty and grad students representing an array of institutions, both public and private, in the U.S. and Canada.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• Repressing across Borders: Is China Distinctive? - Diana Fu, University of Toronto; Emile Bernard Dirks, University of Toronto

• Compliance on Campus: Universities and Pro-government Mobilization in Autocracies - Saber Khani, Boston College; Ali Kadivar, Boston College

• Governments Aren’t the Only Repressors: Thinking Broadly about Private Repression - Jennifer Earl, University of Delaware

• Can Backsliding Pose More Danger than Breakdown? India in Historical Perspective - Sanjay Ruparelia, Toronto Metropolitan University

Chair

• Chantal Berman Georgetown University

Discussant

• Elizabeth Plantan Stetson University