Authoritarian rule persists internationally. This paper aims to elaborate an answer to the question if a single authoritarian state might be conditioned/stimulated to continue being authoritarian by the escalation of authoritarian rule internationally. Can it be assumed that some already authoritarian states might feel more secure if granted support from authoritarian states internationally?
The paper attempts to answer this question by examining the effect of international authoritarianism on single states with different historic background, authoritarian regime type and from different world regions - Belarus and North Korea. The choice proves its applicability on the grounds of a single criterion – the authoritarian regime characteristics in these states. Comparison of these cases is of complex nature, as political systems of countries are of multilevel character by definition. So, the study often carries a qualitative, but not a quantitative, connotation.
Through the scrutiny of two geographically diverse countries, we discover a number of unifying particularities that may be grouped into several blocks of key features, which may be applicable for the study of common political and economic characteristics.
The main focus of the paper is on external influence that helps continuity of the studied cases. The study preliminarily concludes that international support by their similar helps to overcome the disadvantages of being “on the sidelines” of international processes. We conclude that international effects of authoritarian rule are a valuable instrument for comparative case studies. The main question of this study can be answered affirmatively.
