Why Are Some Authoritarian Regimes More Likely to Fail? Parliamentary Clientelism and Regime Breakdown in the Arab World (original) (raw)
Related papers
2007
Most of the post-democratization literature claims that specific sets of domestic governance mechanisms and/or political institutions are sufficient to explain the survival of authoritarian regimes. This claim has been verified by the observation of large-n statistical research that the durability effect has been independent of consistent access to external oil rent revenues across time, even though higher degrees of natural resource revenues tend to prolong the durability of authoritarian regimes across countries. In short, oil bust periods created no trend toward regime crisis or instability in rent-prone states. However, this finding leaves open two important questions: First, apart from oil rent, are there other sources of revenue which have an impact on the life expectancy of political regimes? Second, when trying to explain regime survival using material legitimacy (patronage and material co-optation), why do we not concentrate on state expenditures rather than on state revenues? The paper conceptually highlights that authoritarian regimes have a multiplicity of external rent income to their disposal. It shows empirically, using four cases from the Middle East and North Africa, that state spending towards key social groups has been surprisingly stable even during times of fiscal scarcity.
Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East
Journal of Democracy, 2009
Authoritarian regimes often hold elections for decades without these contests contributing to a democratic transition. Even in countries with hegemonic authoritarian regimes-North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe, for example-voters have gone regularly to the polls, casting ballots for representatives at the local and national levels. Indeed, scholars have consistently found that authoritarian regimes that hold elections tend to last longer than those that do not. 1 It is only in "competitive authoritarian" regimes, which already exhibit some degree of political uncertainty and potential instability, that elections appear to increase the likelihood of a stable transition to democracy. 2 Why do elections often tend to reinforce rather than undermine authoritarian regimes, and under what conditions do they do so? Focusing on legislative elections in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this essay argues that elections provide elites and their supporters an opportunity to compete over special access to a limited set of state resources that they can then distribute to their clients-a process that I call "competitive clientelism." By doing so, elections aid ruling elites' ability to grant special privileges to local elites, creating among contending elites and their followers a belief that they will have access to state resources-if not today, then in the future-and establishing an incentive structure that tends to return proregime legislatures. Far from putting pressure on the regime to democratize, elections can provide a mechanism for the distribution of patronage that reduces demands for change. Citizens in the MENA region have long participated in elections. For decades, voters have gone to the polls and cast their ballots for a variety
IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS JOURNAL, 2021
During the Arab Spring the idea of the Middle East as an authoritarian exception appeared to be no longer valid. Yet the Gulf states seem to be safe from political turmoil. This paper examines the persistence of authoritarianism in the Gulf states. It has been suggested that various factors explain the resiliency of authoritarianism in the Gulf monarchies, the most prominent the rentier-state-system hypothesis. This paper examines whether the cultural and Islamic values of the Gulf states have led to the entrenchment of authoritarianism; it also seeks to understand whether high living standards and economic growth in the Gulf states have helped these regimes to maintain their authoritarian power and to avoid strong opposition. The paper argues that in the near future these states seem likely to survive and maintain popular consensus, unless they face substantial economic crisis or an external circumstance such as war or political pressure. However, the longer-term threat to the security of the Gulf states is their dependency on natural resources which are declining while their populations are growing rapidly. Hence, modifying the rentier system's social contract is essential to maintain stability in the long term.
Transformation of State Corporatism and Evolution of Authoritarianism in the Arab Region
The paper examines the transformation of state corporatism in the Arab region cross regionally. Gauging the continuous reproduction of state power in the Arab region requires dual focus on structural (economic variables) and conjuncture factors (electoral dynamics and party systems) factors to examine how they enabled the state to hone in on its strategic toolkit to debilitate social forces and ensure the autonomy of politics. I argue that the legacy of popular incorporation strategy of depoliticization and demobilization on the one hand, and continuity with the composition of the ruling elites on the other, precluded the emergence of independent forces that would seriously threaten the established patterns of political authority. The state –before the outbreak of the Arab uprisings– had delineated the basic contours of political action. The state prevented formation of independent opposition to articulate new demands and bring out new issues in social realm, rendering any challenging events largely erratic or callously suppressed. The statist party had remained the prime political agency. Changing the mode and scope of social integration and cooptation, counterintuitively, helped it to court segments of social groups (most notably working class and business associations) while vigorously suppressing others. The absence of autonomous intermediary organizations and lack of viable coalitional options (with the dominant party behaving as a cartel and opposition parties incapable of striking roots in society), the state perpetuated its autonomous position and produced a network of coopted and/or complicit forces that obviated creation of challenging social constituencies. I deploy comparative historical analysis to show how political variables of the legacy and the strategy of populist elites along with the lack of alternative political opposition in the Arab region enabled old military-technocratic elites to loosen up their control over society and maintain their grip on power. I examine the four republic regimes that ushered in state-led development policies but varied in degrees of state autonomy and societal subordination: Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria. I use process-tracing to identify opportunities and constraints that shaped elites’ political strategies and contributed to subsequent institutional configurations. I also use paired comparisons and put the Arab countries in cross-regional perspective with the two similar Latin American countries (Mexico and Peru) that had the same initial conditions but divergent pathways (with the demise of one-dominant party rule in Mexico and institutionalizing politics without predominant power in Peru).
State and Regime Capacity in Authoritarian Elections: Egypt before the Arab Spring
Scholarship on electoral authoritarianism has increasingly recognized state capacity as an element enhancing electoral control. Building on such arguments, I examine the interaction between state capacity and regime strength in authoritarian elections. Drawing on empirical evidence from Egyptian elections under Mubarak, I show that the degree to which official regime candidates were able to profit from state penetration depended on the strength of the ruling party. In urban settings where party structures were stronger, service provision by the state helped secure the dominance of the hegemonic National Democratic Party (NDP); in rural constituencies where the party was weak, by contrast, service provision strengthened local elites who often ran and won against the party's official candidates. This suggests that variation in regime capacity to channel political support needs to be taken into account when examining the relationship between state capacity and electoral control under authoritarianism.
‘Can’t buy me legitimacy’: the elusive stability of Mideast rentier regimes
Journal of International Relations and Development, 2017
This paper qualitatively revisits the thesis that rentier regimes can draw on their non-tax revenues to buy political legitimacy and stability. Exploring the material/moral interplay in Mideast rentier politics, I show why and how rents may provide for provisional, but not sustainable, stability for authoritarian rentier regimes. I propose distinguishing between negative and positive political legitimacy, the former being about 'what is legitimate' (liberty vs security), and the latter about 'who is the legitimator' (divine/hereditary right vs popular sovereignty). Sustainable stability is predicated on having both legitimacies. Rentier regimes, however, often draw exclusively on negative political legitimacy. These regimes can use rents to buy timethrough coercion and expediencycontriving an imagery of a lusty Leviathan. But due to the diversity of rents and the temporal shifts in their revenues, this social contract is materially contingent and morally frailrendering authoritarian rentier regimes, not least in the Middle East, more mortal than they, and many observers, are ready to admit.
Preserving Non-Democracies: Leaders and State Institutions in the Middle East
Middle Eastern Studies, 2010
After nearly two decades of studying the causes, processes and outcomes of transitions to democracy, scholars in recent years have again shown a growing interest in the study of the ways and means through which non-democracies maintain themselves in power. Dictators and dictatorships, of course, seldom lack creativity when it comes to staying power, and when creativity fails there is always brute force. Despite this recent proliferation of scholarship on the durability of dictatorships, insufficient attention has been paid to the dictators' manipulation of institutions as a way to deepen and solidify their hold on power. This article examines the relationship between state leaders and state institutions, focusing on the reasons for and the ways through which institutional change is used as a means to consolidate political power. Most explanations of the perseverance of authoritarianism point to the political consequences of rentierism, 1 or the strength of the ruling coalition in relation to potential political opponents, 2 or the 'robustness of the coercive apparatus' of the state. 3 This article posits an additional causal factor: dictators may inherit or create institutions, but then they actively guard against the institutions' independence. When and if these institutions demonstrate too much independence, or exhibit signs that they might actually become platforms for political opposition, then they are simply closed or disbanded by leaders. Especially in the Middle East, where political leaders have been able to maintain the upper hand in relation to institutions through control over the accrual and distribution of rent revenues, institutional tinkering, or wholesale institutional change, is often used to preempt the potential emergence of centres of political opposition. Deliberate institutional change is often used as a source of authoritarian sustenance. Using three case studies in the Middle East-Egypt, Kuwait, and Iran-the article argues that choices and bargains made early on by state leaders are critical determinants of the institutional make-up and features of the state. As time goes by and as institutions age, they tend to become more subject to path dependence, thus limiting the scope of decisions open to state actors. Things change, however, if and when state leaders determine that major institutional adjustments are needed in order for them to stay in power, at which time decisions outside of established institutional frameworks are taken in order to safeguard dictatorial prerogatives. In other words, dictators often resort to both 'rational choice' and 'path dependence' in order to maintain themselves in power.