Remodeling Authoritarianism: Conceptual Approaches with Empirical Foundations

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

All scholars of authoritarianism confront thorny methodological problems. The “endemic uncertainty” (Schedler 2013)—secrecy, obscurity, preference falsification, and more—that characterizes authoritarian politics foils most standard approaches to collecting and analyzing data. To sidestep these challenges, many political scientists have turned to formal modeling to imagine what might be happening within impenetrable elite circles or in the heads of frightened masses. Paradigmatic works in this vein have guided resurgent authoritarianism research for two decades (e.g. Wintrobe 1998, Boix 2003, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, Acemoglu and Robinson 2005, Gandhi 2008, Magaloni 2008, Svolik 2012).

Although formal-theoretic models are not supposed to describe actual processes, only to predict outcomes (Friedman 1953), there is increasing slippage between assumptions as requirements of a predictive model and assumptions as descriptions of fact. Moreover, rigorous case research often reveals dynamics that formal modeling approaches would not predict. Rulers can accurately gauge mass preferences without elections (Dimitrov 2022), distribute resources rather than hoarding wealth (Alberta’s et al. 2018, Eibl 2020), take risky paths to advance interests beyond just staying in power (Jones 2015; Carothers 2022). Authoritarian subjects, meanwhile, agree to co-optation for non-material reasons (Fenner 2023), influence elite power dynamics through mass opposition (Aksoy el al. 2015, Brooks and White 2022), mobilize in support of incumbents absent clientelistic exchange (Ekiert, Perry, & Yan 2020; Schmidt-Feuerheerd 2022), and not only tolerate but actively cheer on repression (LaChapelle 2022). Our conceptual models of authoritarianism need to be updated—updated with evidence collected directly from the cases we study despite authoritarian restrictions.

The papers that make up this panel engage with predictions made by formal models. they explore how such models lead us astray, and offer concepts and theories that better account for empirical outcomes. In examining an influential case of a failed democratic transition in Egypt, Sofia Fenner provides a framework for observing threat perceptions—a powerful causal variable in mainstream literature that is almost never empirically documented. Matt Reichert further argues for the role of individual-level views in shaping trajectories of democracy and autocracy against a prevailing focus on the distribution of economic or coercive within class or other social structures. Through comparisons of post-Soviet regimes, he documents the ways that new leaders’ ideological attachments to nationalism augured poorly for establishing democratic constraints. Zooming out, Andrew Leber reimagines the authoritarian coalition—a concept that too often conflates elite power rivalries with mass support. By disaggregating “leadership” and “supporting” coalitions in Saudi Arabia, he accounts for otherwise inexplicable labor policy choices. Yipeng Zhang takes this disaggregation even further by examining how authoritarian regimes develop institutions to categorize society into politically useful groupings, making it easier to form coalitions of support and hindering the formation of coalitions in opposition. In examining Chinese politics during the revolutionary and communist eras, he demonstrates that regimes do not simply contend with prefabricated “building blocks” of social groups, but rather actively produce group categories to advance the interests of regime maintenance.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• "We’ll Choose Military Fascism": Threats and Alternatives in Revolutionary Egypt - Sofia Fenner, Colorado College

• The Origins of Post-Soviet Autocracy in the University and Creative Union - Matthew J Reichert, Harvard University

• What's in a Coalition? Conceptualizing Authoritarian Rule in Saudi Arabia - Andrew Leber, Tulane University

• Ruling by Shortcut: Categorization in Authoritarian Co-optation and Repression - Yipeng Zhang, Tulane University

Chair

• Andrew Leber Tulane University

Discussant

• Bruno Schmidt-Feuerheerd University of Cambridge