Ben EBP #1

 Ben Mimms – EBP # 1 

The Politics of Authoritarian Rule – Milan W. Svolik

Chapters one and two of Svolik’s The politics of authoritarian rule outline the fundamental conflicts that shape authoritarian politics. Additionally, chapter two introduces Svolik’s definition of a dictatorship and their approach to the political organisation of Dictatorships. This article weighs the pros and cons of authoritarian classification and highlights problems within the existing methodology. 

The Two Problems of Authoritarian Rule 

Svolik argues that there are two conflicts that fundamentally shape authoritarian conflicts. 

(1)   The problem of authoritarian control 

(2)   The problem of authoritarian power-sharing

The former encompasses the threat dictators face from the masses which centres around the conflict between those who rule and those who are ruled. The latter describes the relationship between dictators and those they share power with. These two conflicts are shaped by two features of authoritarian politics. Firstly, dictatorships inherently lack an independent authority that can enforce agreements between political actors. Secondly, violence is a present threat in authoritarian politics. The interplay between the problems of control and power sharing and the conditions in which authoritarian politics occurs shapes the institutions, policies and survival of regimes and leaders. 

The conventional understanding of how dictatorships fall through popular uprising demonstrates the problem of authoritarian control. Svolik argues against this understanding that the main way dictatorships fall is through the problem of control. Only thirty-two leaders were removed via popular uprising between 1946-2008. However, the remaining 205 dictators from Svolik’s data who lost power unconstitutionally were removed by regime insiders. This demonstrates that in order to understand authoritarian politics, it is important to understand the problem of authoritarian power sharing. 

What is a dictatorship?

Based on the discussion in class in week one it is clear we cannot take countries at their word to figure out whether or not they are democratic. Many non-democratic regimes such as North Korea have constitutions the proclaim democratic values. Therefore, some kind of frame-work or definition is required to distinguish authoritarian and democratic regimes.

Svolik defines a dictatorship as an independent country that doesn’t satisfy at least one of the following two criteria of democracy:

(1)   Free and competitive legislative elections; and 

(2)   An executive that is elected either directly in free and competitive presidential elections or indirectly by a legislature in parliamentary systems. 

This type of classification creates a sharp dichotomy between dictatorship and democracy. Instead of placing regimes along a continuum or in a large number of categories they are either democratic or authoritarian. Svolik justifies this type of classification by drawing on what he discussed in chapter one. Namely, the lack of an independent authority to enforce mutual agreements and the constant threat of violence. Once the two criteria mentioned above no longer apply violence and repression become electoral rules. Therefore, Svolik argues, despite the competitive electoral features of many authoritarian regimes, they should not be seen as less perfect forms of democracy but rather dictatorships. It is a distinction of kind before it is one of degree.

Using this classification placing anything that does fit one of the two criteria as a dictatorship. This creates a large diversity among dictatorships and the different institutional forms they inhabit. Typically. Typologies have long been used to impose order on this diversity with terms such as, totalitarian, one-party, military, competitive and electoral. Svolik identifies this practice of classifying dictatorships into ideal types based on prominent characteristics as a flaw. This results in types that aren’t mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive and require difficult classification judgments. 

The Book’s approach to political organisation of dictatorships

Instead of focusing on ideal types and prominent descriptive features of regimes Svolik chooses to identify conceptual dimensions of authoritarian politics. These include, “military involvement in politics, restrictions on political parties, legislative selection, and executive selection.”  The conceptual dimensions are broken into multiple categories. For example, in restrictions on political parties Svolik distinguishes between none, one and multiple. This section of the chapter mainly outlines the approach and benefit of Svolik’s empirical strategy for measuring authoritarian institutions. One of the main benefits seemed to be the use of different categories within the conceptual frameworks which allowed them to be mutually exclusive. This raises important questions to think about when conducting out own regime classification exercise. Specifically, how to frame categories which allow for reliable and valid comparison groups. 

The diversity of institutions in authoritarian politics extends to leadership change. While Svolik analyses the country level data, they also look at leader level data. This focuses on how leaders enter and leave office. This demonstrates whether the institutions actually regulate who holds power. As demonstrated through authoritarian regimes constitutions this seems to go back to the point of not being able to trust what they say. How leaders actually come to power or lose it “speaks louder than official rules.”

Conclusions

One of the most helpful aspects of this article was the in-depth discussion on how to classify authoritarian regimes and the approach that is usually taken. This usually centres around describing what is democratic and any country that falls outside the definition is authoritarian. Additionally, it highlights some of the conflicts that occur within authoritarian politics and the lack of independent authority and violence that lurks in the background. While much of the first two chapters focused on what was to be discussed and discussion of the methodology to be used it gives a good definition of what is authoritarian.