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Authoritarianism Beyond the State

Participation
Institutions
WS02
Marlies Glasius
University of Amsterdam
David Lewis
University of Exeter

The research gap Political science has struggled to adequately understand and conceptualise the rise of authoritarianism in global politics in the first decades of the 21st century. Academic research continues to focus primarily on regime type, perceived primarily through the lens of the nation-state. The most basic divide has been between authoritarian states, associated with lack of accountability and high levels of coercion, and democratic states which have adequate accountability mechanisms and allow political life to take shape by way of freedom of association and freedom of expression. Simply focusing on regime type, however, has become increasingly unproductive for contemporary political scientists. In this workshop we open up the research agenda on comparative authoritarianism by addressing authoritarianism in ways that are no longer confined by the ‘territorial trap’ (Agnew, 1994) of the modern state. Since the early 2000s, political scientists have shown a renewed interest in the endurance of authoritarianism, but the orientation has been overwhelmingly domestic and comparative. While there is increasing attention to how states influence each other (Brownlee, 2012; Levitsky & Way, 2010; Tansey, 2016), the contemporaneous research on consequences of globalization has been largely ignored in this new authoritarianism literature. In the twenty-first century, empirical realities increasingly reveal these methodological nationalist (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002; Beck & Sznaider, 2006) approaches to authoritarianism to be inadequate in a number of ways. First, processes of globalization have undermined the degree to which states, including authoritarian states, can be understood as closed and clearly bounded systems. The literature on globalisation, focusing on the transformation of state sovereignty from largely autonomous rule to embedding in systems of multi-level governance has concentrated on developed western democracies (Castells, 1996; Held & McGrew, 1999; Sassen, 2006; Scholte, 2000;) and to a lesser extent, fragile states and conflict zones (Kaldor, 1999; Duffield, 2001), but has neglected the authoritarian state. Authoritarian rule has proved durable, but its twenty-first century character is typified not by autarkic North Korea, but rather by relatively open, globalized states such as China, Qatar, or Turkey. New research is emerging, especially in the form of case studies, on how authoritarian rule is sustaining itself, but also being transformed, by these circumstances. In recent years we have seen studies on how authoritarian states have responded to population mobility (Brand, 2006; Dalmasso, 2017; Glasius, 2017; Lewis, 2015; Michaelsen, 2016; Moss, 2016), economic andfinancial globalization (Wong, 2012; Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017; Logvinenko, forthcoming), the rise of internet and social media (Anceschi, 2015; Deibert, 2015; Gunitsky, 2015; King, Pan & Roberts, 2013; Lynch, 2011; MacKinnon, 2011) and the spread of international education (Koch, 2014; 2016; Del Sordi, 2017) . But these studies mostly concern individual states, or they remain embedded in regional studies debates. Findings are yet to be more systematically compared or theorized. Second, the pairing between ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ can be less than ever taken for granted. No reader of political commentary in recent years could fail to notice a concern, perhaps even a panic, about a global tide of illiberalism that may now be affecting even established democracies. The commitments of democratically elected leaders such as Filippino President Duterte, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, Indian Prime Minister Modi and of course US president Trump to liberal rights is clearly problematic. But regime type classifications only tell us that leaders such as Duterte, Modi, Orban or Trump were all (relatively) freely and fairly elected, and unless they dissolve parliament or steal elections, the respective regimes are not formally classed as authoritarian. New regime categories such as ‘illiberal democracy’ (Zakaria, 1997), ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (Schedler, 2006), ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky & Way, 2010) or ‘delegative democracy’ (O’Donnell, 1994) only partially clarify these apparent contradictions. Recent publications on ‘backsliding’ (Lust & Waldner, 2015; Bermeo, 2016) and ‘authoritarian values’ among the electorate (Inglehart and Norris, 2017) attempt to understand these developments, but remain separated from insights from authoritarianism studies, for instance on legitimation (Burnell 2006; Gerschewski 2013; Dukalskis & Gerschewski, eds. 2017) or nationalist discourses (Kolstø & Blakkisrud, eds. 2016; Weiss, 2013). Finally, the worldwide trend towards more decentralized governance has created opportunities for the emergence of subnational regimes, which often differ markedly from the national regime. Empirically, we observe subnational authoritarian regimes within formally democratic states, where authoritarian practices characterize politics and the national government is either unable or unwilling to guarantee the democratic rights of citizens. The emerging literature on subnational authoritarianism (Gervasoni, 2010; Gibson, 2013; Giraudy, 2010; Harbers and Ingram, 2014; McMann, 2006; Sidel, 2016; with antecedents in Key, 1949; O’Donnell, 1993) helps to overcome the methodological nationalist bias in authoritarianism studies, but has been focused largely on the Latin American region, and overwhelmingly on electoral mechanisms. These variegated spaces are particularly notable where states face internal insurgencies: formal democracies such as Israel, Pakistan or Sri Lanka create non-democratic spaces as an essential element in modern counterinsurgency (Lewis, Heathershaw and Megoran, 2018). The national and especially transnational embedding of subnational authoritarianism remains undertheorized. why it matters Transcending the regime type approach, and judging the ‘authoritarianness’ of governments not solely by how they came to power, but also by what they do once there, and developing new understandings of the specific features of authoritarianism in a global age are important from an analytical as well from a normative perspective. Better understandings of what sustains authoritarian practices can help to advocate against them, and draw attention to populations who suffer from such practices. Secondly, when it comes to illiberalism in democratic contexts, we currently lack the tools to distinguish between tangible threats to democracy and interpretations imbued by left-liberal prejudice, because we have failed to define or operationalize ‘authoritarianism’ in ways that go beyond the national level and the fairness of elections. Turning our gaze on our own societies, we can come understand how authoritarian and illiberal practices unfold and evolve within democracies, and in transnational settings, and begin to see in what circumstances they thrive, and how they are best countered. research directions for the workshop The overall purpose of this workshop is to engage with the current research on comparative authoritarianism, while moving beyond exclusively statist approaches to authoritarianism. Over-arching questions we aim to address are how and to what extent the character of authoritarianism has changed over time, how and to what extent it is also manifested at sites other than the national state; and whether it is possible and fruitful to think in terms of authoritarian or illiberal practices in democratic contexts . The workshops envisages exploring such phenomena as extraterritorial authoritarianism, transnational authoritarianism, subnational authoritarianism, or public-private authoritarian partnerships. Empirical research and conceptual innovation along such lines will allow us to better understand the interactions between different forms of authoritarianism, and instances where different actors may engage in authoritarian practices together, ‘co-constituting authoritarianism’ (Brownlee, 2012, 4). Expected outcomes of the Workshop The intention of the workshop convenors is to sow seeds for new areas of empirical research and new theoretical and methodological approaches to authoritarianism and illiberalism. Rather than collecting the papers presented in a specific edited volume or special issue of a journal, they hope more broadly to inspire new avenues of research within and across different subfields of political science and adjacent disciplines. References Agnew, John (1994). ‘The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of international relations theory’. Review of international political economy, 1(1): 53-80. Anceschi, Luca (2015). ‘The Persistence of Media Control under Consolidated Authoritarianism: Containing Kazakhstan’s Digital Media’. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 23(3): 277-295. Beck, Ulrich and Nathan Sznaider (2006). Beck, U. and N. Sznaider (2006). ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda’, British Journal of Sociology 57(1): 1-23. Bermeo, Nancy (2016). ‘On Democratic Backsliding’, Journal of Democracy, 27(1): 5-19. Brand, Laurie (2006). Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Brownlee, Jason (2012). Democracy Prevention: the Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burnell, Peter (2006). ‘Autocratic Opening to Democracy: Why Legitimacy Matters’, Third World Quarterly, 27: 545-562. Castells, Manuel (1996). The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell). Cooley, Alexander and John Heathershaw (2017). Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dalmasso, Emanuela (2017). ‘Participation without representation: Moroccans abroad at a time of unstable authoritarian rule’. Globalizations Special Issue on Authoritarian Rule of Populations Abroad, online first. Deibert, Ronald (2015). ‘Cyberspace Under Siege’. Journal of Democracy 26(3): 64-78. Del Sordi, Adele (2017). ‘Sponsoring Student Mobility for Development and Authoritarian Stability: Kazakhstan's Bolashak programme’. Globalizations Special Issue on Authoritarian Rule of Populations Abroad, online first. Duffield, Mark (2001). Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security. London: Zed Books. Dukalskis, Alexander and Johannes Gerschewski, eds. (2017). Special issue: Legitimation in Autocracies. Contemporary Politics, 23(3). Gerschewski, Johannes (2013). ‘The Three Pillars of Stability: legitimation, repression, and co-optation in autocratic regimes’, Democratization 20.1: 13-38. Gervasoni, Carlos (2010). ‘A Rentier Theory of Subnational Regimes: Fiscal federalism, democracy, and authoritarianism in the Argentine provinces’. World Politics, 62(2): 302-340. Gibson, Edward (2005). ‘Boundary Control: subnational authoritarianism in democratic countries’. World Politics, 58(1): 101-132. Giraudy, Agustina (2010). The Politics of Subnational Undemocratic Regime Reproduction in Argentina and Mexico. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2(2): 53-84. Glasius, Marlies (2017). ‘Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices: a framework’. Globalizations Special Issue on Authoritarian Rule of Populations Abroad, online first. Gunitsky, Seva (2015). ‘Corrupting the Cyber-Commons: social media as a tool of autocratic stability’. Perspective on Politics, 13(1): 42-54. Harbers, Imke and Matt Ingram (2014). Democratic Institutions Beyond the Nation State: measuring institutional dissimilarity in federal countries. Government and Opposition, 49(1), 24-46. Held, David and Anthony McGrew, et al. (1999). Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press). Inglehart, Ronald and Pippa Norris (2017). ‘Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: the silent revolution in reverse’, Perspectives on Politics, 15(2): 443-454. Kaldor, Mary (1999). New Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press). Key, V. O. Jr. (1949, reprinted 1981). Southern Politics in State and Nation. (New York: Alfred Knopf). King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, Margaret Roberts (2013). How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression, American Political Science Review, 107(2): 326-343. Koch, Nathalie (2014). ‘The Shifting Geopolitics of Higher Education: Inter/nationalizing elite universities in Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and beyond’. Geoforum 56: 46-54. Koch, Nathalie (2016). ‘We Entrepreneurial Academics: governing globalized higher education in 'illiberal'states’. Territory, Politics, Governance 4(4): 438-452. Kolstø, Pål, and Helge Blakkisrud, eds. (2016). The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000-15. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way (2010), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lewis, David (2015). “Illiberal Spaces:” Uzbekistan's extraterritorial security practices and the spatial politics of contemporary authoritarianism. Nationalities Papers, 43(1): 140-159. Lewis, David, John Heathershaw and Nick Megoran (2018), ‘Illiberal Peace? Authoritarian Modes of Conflict Management’, Conflict and Cooperation (in press). Logvinenko, Igor (forthcoming). Open Economies, Closed Polities: Financial Openness and Authoritarianism with Evidence from Russia and China. Lust, Ellen and David Waldner (2015). Unwelcome Change: Understanding, Evaluating, and Extending Theories of Democratic Backsliding, USAID. Lynch, Marc (2011). ‘After Egypt: The Limits and Promise of Online Challenges to the Authoritarian Arab State’. Perspectives on Politics. 9(2): 301-310. MacKinnon, Rebecca (2011). ‘China’s “Networked Authoritarianism’. Journal of Democracy, 22(2): 32-46. McMann, Kelly (2006). Economic Autonomy and Democracy: hybrid regimes in Russia and Kyrgyzstan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Michaelsen, Marcus (2016). ‘Exit and Voice in a Digital Age: Iran’s exiled activists and the authoritarian state’. Globalizations. Special Issue on Authoritarian Rule of Populations Abroad, online first. Moss, Dana (2016). ‘Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of the Arab Spring’. Social Problems 63(4): 480-498. O'Donnell, Guillermo (1993). ‘On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American view with glances at some post-communist countries’. World Development, 21(8): 1355-1369. O’Donnell, Guillermo (1994), ‘Delegative Democracy’, Journal of Democracy 5(1): 55–69. Sassen, Saskia (2006). Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Schedler, Andreas (2006) (ed) Electoral Authoritarianism: The dynamics of unfree competition (Lynne Rienner, Boulder). Scholte, Jan Aart (2000). Globalization: a Critical Introduction, London: St. Martin’s Press. Sidel, John (2014). ‘Economic Foundations of Subnational Authoritarianism: Insights and evidence from qualitative and quantitative research. Democratization, 21(1): 161-184. Tansey, Oisin (2016). The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Weiss, Jessica Chen (2013). ‘Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China’, International Organization 67: 1-35. Wimmer, Andreas and Nina Glick Schiller (2002). ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation–state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’ Global Networks (2)4: 301–334. Wong, Stan Hokwui (2012). ‘Authoritarian Co-optation in the Age of Globalisation: evidence from Hong Kong’ Journal of Contemporary Asia 42(2): 182-209. Zakaria, Fareed (1997). ‘Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs 76(6): 22-43.

The workshop aims to bring together insights from different regional and country studies, and from different sub-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and methodological traditions, such as comparative politics, political geography, area studies, international relations and political theory, to innovate and theorize our understandings of authoritarianism and illiberalism. Specifically, we envisage papers on: - extraterritorial aspects of authoritarianism: how, and by what political actors, is control over populations beyond authoritarian state borders exercised? - authoritarian norm diffusion: what kinds of norms and practices could be considered ‘authoritarian’, and by what actors, in what kinds of settings, are they taught and learned? - corporate involvement in authoritarian sustainability: what kinds of transnational collaborations between states and private sector companies help to sustain authoritarian rule? - authoritarian practices in democratic settings: can particular political practices in democratic settings be characterized as ‘authoritarian’? What are these practices, and what would be the analytic gain from such a move? - digital authoritarian practices: how do digital communication technologies constrain and enable authoritarian rule, and how is the political architecture of the Internet being shaped? - conceptualizations of authoritarianism: moving away from authoritarianism as a residual and statist concept, how can authoritarianism be (re-)theorized?

Title Details
Autocratic Immigration Policymaking Beyond Autocracies View Paper Details
The Practice of Freedom as a ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Authoritarian Stability View Paper Details
Authoritarian States and the Politics of Extraterritorial Image Management View Paper Details
Challenges, Opportunities and Legitimacy Narratives: Muslim Brotherhood Counter-Hegemonic Mobilisation in Turkey and the United Kingdom View Paper Details
Dispensing with Political Parties in Egypt: Emergence of Disorganised Authoritarianism Under Al-Sisi View Paper Details
Multilateral Financial Flows and Moroccan State-Business Relations View Paper Details
When Democracies Support Authoritarian Regimes: Tunisia and the Democratic Peace Theory Revisited View Paper Details
Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices View Paper Details
How Do Illiberal Practices Spread in Political Institutions? The Case of Turkish Media View Paper Details
Authoritarian Information Control and Surveillance Across Borders: Digital Threats Against Activists from Egypt, Syria and Iran View Paper Details
Decentralisation Strategies in Morocco and Jordan: Local Empowerment or Authoritarian Upgrading? View Paper Details
Crisis, Economic Dissatisfaction and Challenges to Liberal Political Order in Central and Eastern Europe View Paper Details
Illiberal Ideas and Global Authoritarianism View Paper Details
Reflections on Political Change Processes after the Arab Uprising: Representation, Opposition and Authoritarian Resilience – Reconsidering Theoretical Perspectives in the Analysis of Political Change Processes View Paper Details
The Geopolitics of Authoritarian Survival and Change in the MENA View Paper Details
Military Cooperation Between Democracies and Autocracies in the MENA: The Rise of Authoritarian Interventionism? View Paper Details
Globalised Authoritarianism, Transnational Repression and International Security View Paper Details
Authoritarian Legacies and their Effect on Political Attitude Formation View Paper Details
A Granulated Universe: the Effect of Informal Networks of Authority on Democratic State Building View Paper Details
Undemocratic Democrats? Power, Patrimonialism, and Contention in Opposition Parties View Paper Details