Inclusion and State Capacity in Authoritarian Regimes

Research on authoritarian regimes has moved to the forefront in comparative politics. This is due not only to the persisting number of such regimes, but also to the variation in non-democratic performance. While some authoritarian regimes, such as Singapore, show remarkable stability and provide high standards of living for their citizens, others fail to deliver basic public goods. Performance, however, is considered to be a crucial factor conducive to regime persistence. Recent research stresses the impact of performance on popular support and regime legitimacy, which in turn promotes persistence. Nevertheless, a systematic analysis of non-democratic performance is still pending. Most studies account for the variation in persistence and performance by assessing the impact of broad regime types, such as monarchies, military and civilian regimes. The role of more fine-grained institutions, however, has been largely neglected. This paper aims to contribute to new insights by proposing and empirically testing a theoretical framework for analyzing authoritarian regimes. Differences in performance and persistence are expected to be systematically linked to configurations along two institutional dimensions: inclusion and state capacity. This paper argues that institutions that simultaneously promote the inclusion of broad societal interests (representative and consultative mechanisms) and high state capacity (via authoritative decision-making procedures and an effective bureaucracy) yield the best policy performance and regime persistence. Inclusion and state capacity are conducive to political support in a twofold way: first, inclusionary institutions channel societal interests, thus promoting policy responsiveness and increasing popular support. Second, while inclusion pushes public goods onto the policy agenda, state capacity fosters their enforcement and triggers higher performance, thus bolstering popular consent and regime persistence.