Citizen Engagement, Political Trust and Populist Nationalism in Autocratic Regimes

The presence of legitimation activities in autocratic settings suggests that autocracies care about public opinion even when its influence is not institutionalised. Presenting recent evidence from states in the Middle East, this paper shows that some autocratic states seek to directly engage citizens on the affective front to cultivate a ‘participant’ political culture. It argues that elements of Almond and Verba’s civic culture formulation can be observed in autocratic regimes as well as democracies. State-led conceptions of populist nationalism in Gulf States, for example, indicate that publics in autocracies are not imagined to be as depoliticised as is currently suggested by scholarship on autocratic legitimation. Instead, these publics are functionally mobilised and politicised with reference to a conception of socio-political trust that enhances state-society alignment and ultimately moderates systemic and structural change without recourse to institutions or elections.