Legitimation, Policy Performance, and Political Change in Autocracies

The legitimation of power is an important resource that political leaders attempt to cultivate to make their rule durable. Failure to craft an adequate legitimating formula can fatally weaken a political regime. David Beetham called the legitimation of power “the central issue in social and political theory”. There are good reasons to argue that the legitimation of power is the “foundation of […] governmental power” (Sternberger 1972: 244), it largely “contributes in both constituting and defining it” (Barker 2001: 30). A key element of political legitimation is policy performance. Since at least some autocracies like China are able to achieve impressive results in terms of economic, social or security governance the decades-old discussion whether autocratic governance models might outperform democracies in the process of development has gained renewed attention (Wu 2012; Schmidt 2013; Knutsen 2011; McGuire 2013; Kailitz 2013b; Wurster 2013; Stockemer 2013). Research on legitimation and policy performance has risen over recent years. However, the research field is still young and many research questions remain understudied. The Section aims to broaden and deepen the debate on legitimation and policy performance in autocracies by distinguishing between different types of autocracy and examining the relationship between regime legitimation, policy performance and change. Therefore we think it is timely to ask the following questions and find an answer to it: How do autocracies justify their rule? How do they shield their legitimating messages from scrutiny via censorship and media control? What performance results do different autocracies achieve in major policy fields like economic, social, environmental or security policy? How are legitimation strategies and policy performance of autocratic regimes linked to each other? What kinds of legitimation of power do autocrats provide and what effect do these legitimations of power have on policy performance? Does a bad policy performance trigger a change in the legitimation strategy of political regimes and under what circumstances does this lead to regime breakdown? How do legitimation strategies interact with other means of reproducing autocracies such as repression and the allocation of material rewards? What factors account for the specific mix of strategies pursued by autocracies to sustain their rule? The answers to some basic questions in the research field like the following still lie at the moment completely in the dark: Does the normative legitimation of regime structures contribute to a measurable rise of empirical support in autocracies? How does the legitimation of a previous regime impact on the legitimation options available to its successor? Does policy performance contribute to a measurable rise of empirical support in autocracies? It is of specific interest under which conditions specific kinds of normative legitimation of regime structures and policy performance lead to regime change. Desired foci of Panels and Papers The Section seeks to assemble political scientists doing research on autocracies. It welcomes contributions from scholars who address the topic from a variety of perspectives, including (but not limited to) theoretical and conceptual analysis, empirical studies rooted in quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods, historical approaches, and experimental research designs. The Section should be particularly relevant to comparatists focussing on political regimes more generally or non-democracies in particular. The Section should however also draw the attention of both international relations and political economy specialists interested in the role of autocracies in global affairs and in the policy consequences of different types of political regimes, respectively. The Section co-chairs are especially looking for Panels and Papers providing comparative analyses of the legitimation and performance of autocracies, ranging from intra- and cross-regional small and medium-N comparisons to large-N cross-national studies. Single-case studies are of particular interest if they promise to generate new testable hypotheses or apply original new models. Panels and papers will be recruited through an open call for Panel and Paper proposals. Section convenors Stefan Wurster is Assistant Professor of Political Science (Policy Studies) at Trier University. In his research he focus on theoretical and empirical comparisons between democracy and autocracy, questions of sustainable development, forms and instruments of political control, as well as political field studies in the areas of education, research, environmental and energy policy. He is chairman of the working group "Vergleichende Diktatur- und Extremismusforschung" of the German Association of Political Science (DVPW) and coordinated a research training group about “Policy performance of autocratic and democratic regimes” at Heidelberg University. See more on wurster@uni-trier.de Steffen Kailitz is Senior Researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism at the Technological University of Dresden. He is one among three speakers of the “Comparative Politics” section of the German Political Science Association (GPSA) and a co-founder of the group on “Comparative Research on Autocracies and Political Extremism” in the GPSA. He has widely published on autocracies, including articles in Democratization, International Political Science Review and Politische Vierteljahresschrift. Mail: kailitz@hait.tu-dresden.de Alexander Dukalskis, Ph.D., is a lecturer at University College Dublin in the School of Politics & International Relations. His research has been published or is forthcoming in, among other outlets, Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, International Studies Review, Communist & Post-Communist Studies, and Europe-Asia Studies. At UCD he teaches about contemporary autocracies, human rights, Asian politics, and security studies and is the co-director of the European University Centre at Peking University.