Legitimation Through Innovation - A Comparison of Innovation Policy in Brazil and Mexico

For a long time both policy analysis and research on authoritarianism have neglected that authoritarian regimes develop differentiated policy strategies to gain regime legitimation. It is but recently that there is a growing literature that systematically researches the policy strategies of authoritarian regimes and their implications for legitimacy. In this paper we chose the field of innovation policy that has been identified by the literature on developmental states as an important source for output legitimacy. This finding stands in contrast to studies on innovation policies that are based on the implicit assumption that innovation processes go hand in hand with a democratic regime type. The argument of this literature is that innovation needs an air of scientific autonomy, intellectual openness and creativity and a reliable institutional framework. Authoritarian regimes are often associated with a lack of freedom of speech and civil liberties as well as a rather despotic tyranny. In the following we show that authoritarian states engage in innovation policy and draw legitimacy out of it. We also find that policymaking is tied to different legitimation strategies that differ between regime types. The argument is based on the selectorate literature that shows that different regime types builds on different winning coalitions. The type of policy based legitimation strategy therefore depends on the size and the type of the winning coalition. We will elaborate this argument based on a comparison of military dictatorship in Brazil and party authoritarianism in Mexico. During both regimes innovation policies played an important role for regime legitimacy, but in a very different way. The paper is based on historical analysis of innovation policy under military dictatorship in Brazil and party authoritarianism in Mexico.