Reconsidering Autocracy Promotion: The Development of Autocratic Assemblages and Recipient Agency

This paper explores the process of autocracy promotion. Autocracy promotion can be broadly defined as the policy of autocratic promoter states – such as China and Russia – deliberately supporting, encouraging, and bolstering authoritarian politics and governance amongst non-Western states. Prior research on autocracy promotion has focussed upon the motivations that autocracy promoters have in undertaking this process. Little research has centred upon the agency of recipient regimes, and in particular how recipient regimes utilise the process of autocracy promotion to improve their own image and resilience as authoritarian regimes. This paper emphasises the two-way process of autocracy promotion, and highlights how recipient regimes have frequently used their agency and leverage to gear the autocracy promotion process towards their own needs and desires in maintaining authoritarian rule. In elaborating upon this two-way process, this paper reconceptualises autocracy promotion as part of a broader two-way negotiation between authoritarian regimes, part of what is termed as an ‘autocratic assemblage’. To illustrate these processes, the paper explores how autocratic assemblages have operated in two comparative cases of sub-Saharan African states; Kenya and Ethiopia, both through the Cold War era and into the present day. The paper develops a systematic framework of agency-leveraging approaches recipient regimes in both states have utilised to improve their stability, legitimacy, and image they present to domestic and international audiences. The paper further utilises archival documents, alongside interviews with Kenyan and Ethiopian policymakers, journalists, and analysts based in Kenya and Ethiopia. This research covers the process through which regimes in Kenya and Ethiopia have engaged with autocracy promoters, and their desired outcomes and benefits these African regimes wished to gain from autocratic support, and through what mechanisms increased levels of support geared towards their desired outcomes were sought after and granted. In each case, it is noted that autocracy promotion has operated not only as a mechanism through which autocratic promoters can expand their influence, but crucially how recipient authoritarian regimes have utilised the process of autocracy promotion to further their aims and bolster their regime position and image, deflecting away from potential domestic, regional, and international crises and threats.