Accountability in Hybrid and Authoritarian Regimes

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

Accountability in authoritarian regimes involves formal and informal mechanisms, varied institutional pathways, and the state and citizens alike. Deliberate efforts by ruling elites to loosen institutional constraints on accountability, such as has recently occurred in Poland, may risk the loss of popular and electoral support. Evidence from Russia suggests that organized monitoring activities, in addition to elections and protest, provide an effective way for citizens to hold governments accountable. In China, accountability for many aspects of governance is formally devolved from the center to local governments; however, this may in fact lead to less responsibility when man-made disasters occur. Yet even when political power is highly centralized, such as during the Mao era, citizens can leverage existing institutions to voice their complaints and engage with the government. The papers on this panel reveal the variety of ways in which governments and citizens pursue accountability in communist and post-communist contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Can Authoritarian Government Be Held Accountable? Causal Evidence from China - Hui Zhou, University of Houston

• Monitoring the Russian State: Grassroots Oversight of the Russian Legal System - Lauren McCarthy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• New Socialist Men and Women? Communist Legacy and Political Engagement in China - Jing Xu; Tianguang Meng, Tsinghua University

• Favoring Democracy, Voting for Authoritarians: The Polish Electorate Since 2015 - Hubert Tworzecki, Emory University

Chair

• Katherine Geneya Crofts-Gibbons King's College London

Discussant

• Navid Mehrdad Columbia University