Regime Learning under Authoritarianism

Abstract

Recent scholarship has increasingly examined the international dimensions of authoritarian rule, stressing that regime trajectories cannot be adequately accounted for from a solely ‘methodologically nationalist’ perspective. Among this emerging field of study, agency-oriented research on regime learning under authoritarianism is still in its infancy, even though strong anecdotal evidence from state elite behaviour in regional waves of contention (e.g. the “Arab uprisings” or the “Colour revolutions”) as well as during electoral contests or in the implementation of policy innovations suggest its broad, in some cases even decisive political relevance. This panel aims at addressing this lacunae in research of regime learning under authoritarianism. Following Jack Levy, it understands learning broadly as “the change of beliefs, skills, or procedures based on the observation and interpretation of experience” (1994: 296). In order to better capture the different facets of regime learning, it differentiates between its sources (temporally: past vs. present; spatially: at home vs. abroad), processes (who learns which contents) and effects (policy change vs. continuity). The panel brings together four papers studying regime learning in different world regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Middle East) and in different issue areas (term limits violations, NGO and terrorism legislation, election-rigging, legitimation of repression). The contributions are all based on strong qualitative evidence, a precondition to examine learning processes under the methodologically challenging conditions of often opaque authoritarianism.

Title	Details
Justifying term limit violations: How did the authoritarian regimes in Burundi and Rwanda learn from past regional successes and failures?	View Paper Details
Adopt and Adapt: Authoritarian Learning in post-Soviet Kazakhstan	View Paper Details
Learning to Rig Elections: Evidence from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan	View Paper Details
Authoritarian Learning, Regional Diffusion, and Domestic Factors: How Egypt and Uzbekistan Seek to Legitimize Repression	View Paper Details