Authoritarian Political Control

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel examines various strategies that allow autocratic regimes to exercise political control. Such tactics include the cooptation and repression of critical social groups such as the business elite, ethnic minorities, and bureaucrats, the institutional design of coercive apparatuses, and the use of polarization by leveraging ethnic, societal, and political cleavages. The panel explores how such tactics affect autocratic durability, enable autocratic regimes to survive crises, prevent elite defection, and demobilize opponents. The papers leverage different methodologies to elucidate authoritarian political control across a range of spatial and temporal contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• Autocrats and Their Auxiliary Forces - Sabine C. Carey, University of Mannheim; Anita R. Gohdes, Hertie School; Neil J. Mitchell, University College London

• Taming a Paper Tiger? Polarization, Repression, and the Business Elite - Semuhi Sinanoglu, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

• The Survival of Minority-Dominated Autocracies - Salam Alsaadi, University of Toronto

• Regime Support and Gender Quotas in Autocracies - Yuree Noh, University of Utah; Sharan Grewal, American University; M. Tahir Kilavuz, Harvard Kennedy School, Marmara University

Chair

• Bryn Rosenfeld Cornell University

Discussants

• Daniel Mattingly Yale University

• Sofia Fenner Colorado College