POLS2010 Chap.10 Authoritarian Regimes and Russia
Authoritarian Regimes and Russia
This chapter explains how authoritarian regimes survive. It starts with how dictatorships are classified, by who rules or by how authoritarian they are, and with the evidence that most dictators who lose power are removed by insiders rather than crowds.
Svolik’s two problems of authoritarian rule, sharing power with allies and controlling the masses, organise the discussion of institutions, repression, co-optation through ruling parties and the conditions for credible power-sharing.
Studies of propaganda and purges in China show information control and its costs, and the Russian case applies the toolkit to the 2018 presidential election.
The chapter keeps returning to one question students often get wrong: whether institutions in a dictatorship are a sign of weakness or of strength.
The answer the course develops is that they are tools for survival, which explains why so many dictators hold elections and keep parties and legislatures.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Categorical and continuous classifications
- 02
Most dictators fall to insiders
- 03
The problem of power-sharing
- 04
The problem of control
- 05
Repression, co-optation and the ruling party
- 06
What makes power sharing credible
- 07
Information control and Russia’s elections
Worked example · free
Spoils transfer or power sharing?
- 1The first deal shares spoils, the cabinet posts, but reallocates no power because the ruler can withdraw them cheaply.
- 1That makes it a pure spoils transfer, not power sharing.
- 1The second deal both shares spoils and gives the faction guns, which makes reneging costly, so it counts as power sharing, though it carries the threat-enhancing risk of a coup.
Key terms
- Established autocracy
- A dictatorship in which the ruler has monopolised power so that allies can no longer credibly threaten removal.
- Co-optation
- The use of rewards such as jobs, subsidies or party membership to secure loyalty to an authoritarian regime.
- Power vertical
- The recentralised chain of command through which Russia’s federal centre controls its regions.
- Contested autocracy
- A dictatorship in which the ruler’s allies can still credibly check the ruler by threatening removal.
Authoritarian Regimes and Russia FAQ
How do most dictators lose power?
Through insiders. Of 303 leaders who left office by non-constitutional means between 1946 and 2008, 205 were removed by a coup or by regime insiders, compared with 32 removed by popular uprisings. That is why authoritarian politics is as much about managing allies as managing citizens.
Why do authoritarian regimes have ruling parties?
A party ties careers to the regime. Members give costly service early in exchange for later benefits, and that investment cannot be carried to a rival coalition, so they sink or swim with the regime. The party also lets the regime co-opt the capable and repress the rest.
Is Russia a democracy?
In the Regimes of the World scheme Russia is an electoral autocracy: it holds multi-party elections, but they are not free and fair. Its federal structure is also largely nominal because the centre controls the regions through the power vertical.
Why is repression called a double-edged sword?
A ruler who relies on the army to repress opponents becomes exposed to the army, as Obote was to Amin. A ruler who keeps the army small and out of politics becomes exposed to the masses, as Ben Ali found when Tunisian soldiers would not fire on protesters in 2011.
What did the study of China’s fabricated social media posts find?
Using leaked emails from one local propaganda office, King, Pan and Roberts identified 43,757 confirmed posts and estimated about 448 million fabricated posts a year nationally. The posts aimed to distract public attention rather than to argue with critics of the government.
Exam move
Organise this chapter around Svolik’s two problems and attach every concept to one of them: institutions and coups to power-sharing, repression, co-optation and propaganda to control. Learn the exit figures well enough to cite them, and prepare one historical example for each tool, such as Romania in 1989 or Tunisia in 2011. Practise the two-requirement test for power-sharing deals.
For Russia, be able to explain the 70/70 strategy and why turnout matters to an electoral autocracy, and link the case to Chapters 2 and 4. A timed drill that works well is to explain the fall of one dictator you know using the two problems: decide whether the threat came from allies or from the masses, which tools the ruler used, and why they failed.
Then repeat for a ruler who survived, so you can explain both outcomes with the same framework.
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