Legitimation and Policy Performance in Autocracies

Abstract

The legitimation of power is an important resource that political leaders attempt to cultivate to make their rule durable. Failure to craft an adequate legitimating formula can fatally weaken a political regime. David Beetham called the legitimation of power “the central issue in social and political theory”. There are good reasons to argue that the legitimation of power is the “foundation of […] governmental power” (Sternberger 1972: 244), it largely “contributes in both constituting and defining it” (Barker 2001: 30). A key element of political legitimation is policy performance. Since at least some autocracies like China are able to achieve impressive results in terms of economic, social or security governance the decades-old discussion whether autocratic governance models might outperform democracies in the process of development has gained renewed attention (Wu 2012; Schmidt 2013; Knutsen 2011; McGuire 2013; Kailitz 2013b; Wurster 2013; Stockemer 2013). Research on legitimation and policy performance has risen over recent years. However, the research field is still young and many research questions remain understudied. The Section aims to broaden and deepen the debate on legitimation and policy performance in autocracies by distinguishing between different types of autocracy and examining the relationship between regime legitimation, policy performance and change. Therefore we think it is timely to ask the following questions and find an answer to it: How do autocracies justify their rule? How do they shield their legitimating messages from scrutiny via censorship and media control? What performance results do different autocracies achieve in major policy fields like economic, social, environmental or security policy? How are legitimation strategies and policy performance of autocratic regimes linked to each other? What kinds of legitimation of power do autocrats provide and what effect do these legitimations of power have on policy performance? Does a bad policy performance trigger a change in the legitimation strategy of political regimes and under what circumstances does this lead to regime breakdown? How do legitimation strategies interact with other means of reproducing autocracies such as repression and the allocation of material rewards? What factors account for the specific mix of strategies pursued by autocracies to sustain their rule? The answers to some basic questions in the research field like the following still lie at the moment completely in the dark: Does the normative legitimation of regime structures contribute to a measurable rise of empirical support in autocracies? How does the legitimation of a previous regime impact on the legitimation options available to its successor? Does policy performance contribute to a measurable rise of empirical support in autocracies? It is of specific interest under which conditions specific kinds of normative legitimation of regime structures and policy performance lead to regime change.

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