Opposition dynamics and disagreement in non-democratic regimes

Abstract

To this day, political opposition remains an understudied subject. Even more so when looking at opposition in non-democratic regimes. This is in spite of the important pro-democratic mobilizations and challenges to non-democratic regimes that questioned their authority through a broad array of practices and claims, in different spaces of contestation, and in collaboration with a multiplicity of political and socio-economic actors. Yet, the weakness of the rule of law, the constraints to electoral competition, and the limits to traditional arenas for contestation existing in democratic polities complicate the study of opposition actors and contestation dynamics. Where overtly political demands are restricted, regimes target oppositions actors variably, often through exclusion-inclusion dynamics and extending their reach to control physical and digital spaces. In turn, this complicates the identification of who this opposition is, which claims are contested, and through which means and spaces they are expressed. While acknowledging the important contributions made to this area of study (Schapiro, 1972; Linz, 1973; Blondel, 1997; Levitsky and Way, 2010, among many others), institutional or structural approaches, or rigid categories, often fail to apprehend the multiple facets through which opposition is expressed. The dynamic and changing nature of this opposition substantially complicates this task. Thus, this panel argues for a broad approach to opposition, which acknowledges the fluid and dynamic nature of expressions of discontent, its ambivalence towards the system, the shifting nature of its claims and the strategies adopted by the actors that support them. This panel aims at discussing novel theoretical and analytical approaches that study opposition in non-democratic regimes. In doing so, it aims at answering questions such as: what are the conditions to identify actors as opposition? Which repertoire of practices or spaces are used to express discontent? Through which claims is discontent expressed? By non-democratic regimes, this panel understands an all-encompassing classification of political regimes which don’t comply with the basic democratic premises (thus including a wide array of categories, from illiberal democracies to liberal authoritarianisms, semi-authoritarian regimes or straight-up dictatorships) (Brooker, 2009). Likewise, a sensu largo approach to opposition refers to all organized forms of disagreement against political decisions or political practices, the constitutional framework, or political authorities (Kubat, 2010). With a broad approach to all geographical areas, this panel looks for both theoretical contributions and specific case studies which delve on the understanding of opposition in non-democratic regimes. By seeing both analytical and empirical contributions, this panel has the ambition to provide a more comprehensive understanding of opposition and expressions of discontent and hence widen the academic debate on opposition in non-democratic regimes.

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