Complicated Dictatorships: Instruments and Mechanisms of Modern Non-Democracies

Abstract

A modern dictatorship cannot be characterized by a single trait since it uses a variety of instruments to adapt, maintain, and extend its power. While the classic literature on regime types suggests looking at power distribution, electoral fairness, or freedom of information, it's important to see what goes beyond the operationalization of regime types and to understand that the life cycle of dictatorship consists of different policies, decisions, and narratives, as well as certain preconditions and expectations of the population. Therefore, the papers of this panel suggest looking at authoritarian regimes as complex phenomena that require analysis from different angles. While the electoral component is one of the most crucial parts of holding on to power, what is often overlooked in discussions of elections in dictatorships is the variety and agility of the tricks necessary to balance between completely rigged elections and partially free and fair ones, as well the role they play in maintenance of autocracy besides “legitimation” and solving the “information asymmetry”. While elections in authoritarian regimes are commonly perceived as "totally rigged," they actually involve a much more complex and multilevel process of coordinating various actors with vested interests and limited administrative and financial capacities. Therefore, this panel presents two papers on elections in dictatorships. The first deals with local elections in Kazakhstan and the role they play in attributing responsibility for the national government’s failures. The second seeks to uncover the expectations underlying electoral choices in non-democratic settings. Another aspect that is not widely discussed in the study of non-democracies is the construction of narratives by the ruling elite to influence public opinion and increase support for political decisions or incumbents. By looking at how Russian political elites construct and use the concept of "Russkiy mir," the third paper presented at this panel opens a discussion about the influence of certain narratives in their impact on actual policy decisions in Russia. The final paper of this panel overviews the ideological legitimation used by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and provides insights on instrumental use of ideological claims in public speeches before and after the coup attempt. Overall, this panel seeks to make the discussion of dictatorships more complex and multifaceted, and to provide an overview of the variety of instruments used by modern autocrats, as well as public perceptions and interests in non-democracies.

Title	Details
Assessing Electoral Preferences of United Russia Voters	View Paper Details
Mobilizing the Russkiy Mir: Actors and Discursive Varieties of Russian Authoritarianism	View Paper Details
Assessing Legitimation Claims of Authoritarian Regimes vis- `a-vis Crises: Evidence from Turkey	View Paper Details