Authoritarian Consolidation and State Institutions

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

While comparative politics has focused its efforts on exploring and explaining democratization and the various institutions and practices that underpin it, the 21st century has demonstrated the equal importance of autocratization. The last two decades have seen authoritarian resurgence across the world, and scholars have taken note of the novel ways in which authoritarian rulers can subvert democratic processes and capture power. Less well studied are processes of autocratic consolidation: those by which authoritarian regimes stabilize, persist and even deepen their hold on power. Complicating the study of this topic is the diverse institutional landscape of the authoritarian world. Not only do autocratic regimes vary in their essential characteristics - such as whether or not they hold elections, how they generate legitimacy, and how they distribute power - but they co-exist with state institutions that differ greatly in their characteristics and potency, particularly in developing countries.


This panel focuses on autocratic consolidation and the role of institutions associated with the state in enabling the rise and persistence of the new authoritarianism. The papers in this panel study autocracies from across the world and survey a range of such institutions, from the secret police and the judiciary to mechanisms of public comment, to buttress authoritarian practice and shape its trajectories. James et al's paper examines the use of public referenda - an understudied institution - by authoritarian incumbents in post-Soviet Eurasia to strategically buttress their popular support. Chhibber and Naseemullah's paper examines the Indian case to study the factors shaping whether populist authoritarian leaders are able to consolidate new autocratic regimes, especially the role of state institutions such as judicial institutions and security forces. Handlin's paper examines the surprisingly active role of secret police in electoral authoritarian contestation in Venezuela, particularly how surveillance is used to tilt the playing field against opponents. Finally, Ostermann's paper look at the case of Pakistan to examine why a critical state institution in authoritarian contexts, the military, might strategically choose not to exert control over certain parts of a sovereign territory and allow civilian institutions to exercise power in critically sensitive areas.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Power to the People? Explaining Authoritarian Referendums in Post-Soviet Eurasia - Nicholas James, Oxford University; Jody Marie LaPorte, University of Oxford; Ben Noble, University College London

• State Institutions and Populist Authoritarian Failure in India - Adnan Naseemullah, King's College London; Pradeep Chhibber, University of California, Berkeley

• Authoritarian Forbearance? The Pakistani Military and Non-monopolization - Susan L Ostermann, University of Notre Dame

Chair

• Iza Ding Northwestern University

Discussant

• Iza Ding Northwestern University