Decentralisation and the Problem of Authoritarian Control: Tracing Subnational Variation in Regime Strategy in Tanzania

Existing understandings of how regimes maintain political control in non-democracies presuppose that a regime can exert its authority uniformly across space. These theories trace variation in institutional control and resources at the centre over time but rarely across space. Conceiving of the regime as akin to a central planner, a unitary actor implementing a strategy across the country, studies of regime strategies assess when and how regimes target resources, when and how they regimes repress their citizens. In reality, incumbent governments in non-democracies face subnational constraints on their ability to act. I contend that the wave of decentralisation of the 1990s and 2000s fundamentally changed the problem of authoritarian control because these reforms forced regimes to abdicate control of the levers of reward and sanction to lower levels. When these institutions fall under the control of opposition parties, the regime becomes more constrained in how it can respond to dissent and opposition parties and those who support them. Administrative decentralisation cedes powers to lower levels. Hence the regime’s ability to use these powers as electoral tools is contingent on their control of subnational levels. In a context where control of local government is elected (i.e. where there is political decentralisation), control of local government can be assumed by opposition parties. Political decentralisation can therefore undermine the monopoly of power that the regime holds and lead to variation in a regime’s power to reward and sanction. What implications does this have for regime strategy? How does the experience of opposition voters and politicians in authoritarian countries vary from region to region, community to community depending on who controls local office and hence the clientelist levers of the regime? this paper, I traces these variations in Tanzania, an electoral authoritarian country in East Africa. Based on interviews with voters and local politicians in three regions in Tanzania, I explore how opposition control at the community and district level influences the regime’s ability to sanction opposition support and how the regime responds to these constraints.