Official media in authoritarian regimes typically supports pro-government narratives, yet it also reports on high-ranking officials after corruption investigations into them, despite risking public criticism and offering little new information to central leaders. Why does this occur? I argue that such reporting functions as intra-elite signaling. The central media’s selective focus on certain disgraced officials helps autocrats signal power consolidation, while local media imitation allows local elites to display loyalty. Using an original dataset of news reports on high-ranking officials investigated during China’s anti-corruption campaign (2012–2017), I find that central media disproportionately targeted “big tigers” linked to the top leader’s political rivals. Local media largely mirrored this pattern, highlighting the strategic role of official media in managing relations between autocrats and other elites.
This article explains when and why high courts in new democracies engage in post-decision monitoring to secure compliance with their rulings. We develop a theory of strategic monitoring in which judges, lacking enforcement capacity, selectively deploy oversight mechanisms in response to reputational risks generated by social pressure. Leveraging an original dataset of 6,093 decisions from Ecuador’s Constitutional Court (2015–2024), we show that the presence and intensity of amicus curiae participation significantly increase the likelihood of monitoring, while budgetary resources and political salience do not. These findings indicate that courts engage in institutional triage, prioritizing cases where non-compliance is most likely to generate public scrutiny. The article advances a large-N perspective on post-decision enforcement highlighting the pivotal role of civil-society participation in strengthening judicial compliance.
The colonial origins of development paradigm have generated important explanations for unequal development in the Global South. Through a review of four recently published books, I critique the colonial origins framework to highlight its limitations. I first critique the colonial origins paradigm for its empirical focus on variation among formerly colonized countries, which obscures the large-scale and enduring inequalities between states in the Global South and the Global North. Secondly, I critique the colonial logic of "development," which centers the epistemic and material dominance of the Global North and marginalizes the ways of knowing and social organization of indigenous and internally colonized subjects. I conclude by discussing the implications of these critiques for how we understand global inequality and alternative solutions articulated from the Global South.
Amid rising illiberal anti-LGBTQI backlash, some opposition politicians fear that resisting it is a political trap that could jeopardize their electoral fortunes. We evaluate this concern in Hungary, where Viktor Orb & aacute;n's Fidesz government passed a law banning Pride marches. The leading opposition figure, P & eacute;ter Magyar of Tisza, initially avoided opposing the law, ostensibly to protect his party's future electoral prospects. In a May 2025 survey experiment, we find that this "avoidance" strategy reduces Magyar's approval while failing to increase support for his party. Theoretically, we conceptualize a value-credibility cost mechanism through which elite silence diminishes moral authority, cedes issue ownership, and weakens support for LGBTQI rights. Our results, buttressed by interviews with LGBTQI organizers, contribute to a literature on the costs and benefits of minority rights inclusion in electoral strategy.
Political corruption is a leading governance challenge, yet governments often lack the will to tackle it and may use anti-corruption to undermine democracy. This dilemma has given rise to international anti-corruption commissions (IACCs), which rely on partnerships between international experts and domestic personnel. Why are some IACCs granted independence, while others are politically subordinate? Focusing on northern Central America, this article argues that where coalitions comprised of government insiders and domestic activists maintain a seat at the negotiating table, they use their agenda-setting capacities, expertise, and ability to raise the audience costs of incumbent maneuvers to dilute anti-corruption to ensure greater IACC independence. Additionally, struggles over IACC autonomy are influenced by transnational dynamics, as political leaders learn from one another how to limit anti-corruption enforcement.
Why can support for cash transfers decrease among beneficiaries when poverty is growing? This article argues that support for redistributive policies is dynamic and shaped by citizens' evaluations of policy results. When beneficiaries feel cash transfers help them cope with hardship, support can increase. However, if recipients perceive these policies as insufficient in offsetting their economic situation, they may view them as ineffective in consistently alleviating poverty. Consequently, recipients may oppose expanding cash transfers while continuing to support deeper redistributive policies-such as education and job-training programs-that offer long-term economic improvement. Using a multi-method design that combines weighted difference-in-differences estimations, machine learning models, focus groups, and a novel faceto-face survey in Argentina, the findings show how preferences for redistribution can change in different contexts.
Research on social movements has illuminated when and how they influence policy formulation, but less is known about what shapes the durability of those policies once adopted. Why do some victories endure while others erode? Drawing on the process-tracing of seventeen movements around mining conflicts in Ecuador and Peru during the 2000s commodity boom, we argue that post-adoption politics are critical. Policy durability requires movements to sustain pressure both from civil society and the state. Beyond sustained mobilization power, durable full gains hinge on two strategic objectives: leveraging a decision point in regulatory agencies and securing a favorable ruling from a higher-level authority such as the presidency or high courts. Movements achieving only the former attain temporary partial gains; lacking both leads to defeat.
Under what conditions can repression, generally assumed to induce obedience through violence, consolidate authoritarian power in a non‐violent way? I propose a novel theory of the effects of repression, accounting for regional heterogeneity of state capacity. Failed centralization efforts during state‐building processes lead to the emergence of strong local power structures, fostering persistent resistance against autocratic cooptation strategies. Repression in such “restive” regions has downstream effects that complement autocrats’ cooptation policies by increasing the state’s extractive and informational capacities. To test these predictions, I leverage a legal change resulted in the replacement of pro‐Kurdish mayors with government‐appointed trustees in Turkey’s restive regions. Adopting two‐way‐fixed‐effects models, I demonstrate evidence supporting my theory. This article provides an alternative view about how repression generates favorable outcomes for autocrats.
Studies have discussed long-term effects of state-led violence on victims' political attitudes and behaviors, but less is known about its impacts on those who sided with the perpetrators. We develop a theory of authoritarian indoctrination and cognitive dissonance that explains variation in outgroup intolerance among the majority group, focusing on the ethnic violence against Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority. Drawing upon unique survey data, we find that proximity to anti-Chinese violence in 1996-1999 correlates with elevated outgroup animosity today, particularly among individuals who grew up during the autocratic era. We further demonstrate that such bias extends to political behavior, leading to support for right-wing politicians instigating outgroup prejudice. Findings highlight historical legacies of authoritarian-led ethnic violence as a source of political intolerance.
Autocracies have increasingly begun to clothe themselves in the guise of hybrid, semi-official institutions that exhibit a degree of autonomy from the state, such as Government-Organized NGOs (GONGOs), "zombie" election observers, regime-run think tanks, astroturfing, or semi-official state-mobilized movements (SMMs). Existing literature has analyzed hybrid institutions as products of their functions. Instead, by employing a historical-institutional analysis of the evolution of Jordanian youth GONGOs, I demonstrate that institutional hybridity often arises from institutional contradictions, particularly between the path dependence (vested interests, inertia, and inflexibility) of existing institutions and shifting regime objectives, which drive autocrats to establish parallel hybrid institutions to perform the job existing institutions cannot. These findings bridge scholarship on historical institutionalism and authoritarian institutions by emphasizing the centrality of contradictions in institutional change.
Labor unrest has become a salient feature of contentious politics around the globe. Yet, scholars disagree over the determinants of labor’s rise against the ruling elite in non-democracies. This article argues that emotional contagion explains a short-term spike in labor mobilization. Drawing on empirical evidence from Belarus, one of the most repressive political regimes in contemporary Europe, the study provides support for the argument. Utilizing original data from in-depth interviews with labor activists and industrial workers, empirical analysis demonstrates that a shared sense of outrage over the scale of police violence, along with the magnitude of electoral malpractices and the government’s neglect of citizens’ needs during a public health crisis, was a major catalyst for labor mobilization in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Despite the predominance of informality in Russian state-business relations (SBRs), regional administrations have established diverse institutionalized forms of cooperation with business actors. These include socio-economic development agreements, public-private partnerships, and consultation mechanisms. Utilizing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study systematically examines SBRs across all of Russia’s federal subjects, identifying varying degrees of institutionalization. The findings reveal that strongly institutionalized SBRs, found in fifty-nine out of eighty-three regions, result from four distinct configurations: a monopolistic economy, hegemonic authoritarian politics, personalist politics, and competitive authoritarian politics. The analysis demonstrates that institutionalized SBRs are beneficial for both business and state actors. It offers valuable insights into the rationale behind the formation of formal cooperation between state and businesses, thereby addressing key questions in comparative research on authoritarianism.
Under what conditions can repression, generally assumed to induce obedience through violence, consolidate authoritarian power in a non-violent way? I propose a novel theory of the effects of repression, accounting for regional heterogeneity of state capacity. Failed centralization efforts during state-building processes lead to the emergence of strong local power structures, fostering persistent resistance against autocratic cooptation strategies. Repression in such "restive" regions has downstream effects that complement autocrats' cooptation policies by increasing the state's extractive and informational capacities. To test these predictions, I leverage a legal change resulted in the replacement of pro-Kurdish mayors with government-appointed trustees in Turkey's restive regions. Adopting two-way-fixed-effects models, I demonstrate evidence supporting my theory. This article provides an alternative view about how repression generates favorable outcomes for autocrats.
The global emergence of authoritarian capitalism warrants analysis of its features, economic pathways, and class basis. We argue that the timing of capitalism's establishment relative to authoritarianism affects the extent of state capture by business and the regime's stance towards labor. When capitalism preceded authoritarianism, autocracy arose from a "crisis of capitalism" in flawed democracies, either from fear of communist redistribution or backlash against neoliberalism in post-communist countries. These governments appealed to business and labor interests for electoral survival. Conversely, when authoritarianism preceded capitalism, late industrializing states with weak business and working classes pursued developmental agendas by exercising autonomy over capital and repressing labor. Understanding these historical pathways to authoritarian capitalism provides insight on contemporary democratic backsliding and right-wing populism in the U.S. and Europe.
Right-wing populism, notably Trumpism, has presented a formidable challenge to democracy. We explore the historical roots of Trumpism among the Chinese diaspora by analyzing nearly one million tweets from approximately 200 Chinese overseas opinion leaders between 2019 and early 2021. We develop a novel measure of authoritarian imprints, drawing on the usage of Leveraging computational text analysis, we identify both pro-Trump and anti-democratic stances in these tweets. Our analysis reveals that Chinese opinion leaders with strong authoritarian imprints are significantly more likely to support Trump and endorse anti-democratic actions, such as rejecting the 2020 presidential election result and advocating for unconstitutional means to overturn the result.
How are we to interpret the rising popularity of right-wing populist and outright authoritarian parties in European democracies? Commonly, elections are seen as handing a mandate to their winners. So, are such forces increasingly receiving a mandate from voters to carry out their policies? This article reviews three recent books ( Authoritarianism and the Evolution of West European Electoral Politics by Erik R. Tillman, Democracy Erodes from the Top by Larry M. Bartels, and Voters under Pressure by Ruth Dassonneville) and argues that the mandate interpretation strikes out. These books illustrate how politicians shape “mandates,” how “mandates” can be ignored by those in power, and how the party system and the electorate are not structured (anymore) in a way to allow for genuine mandates to emerge.
Prior research suggests that punitive transitional justice (TJ) may foster a sense of collective exoneration among members of perpetrator groups, potentially reducing support for remembrance of ingroup atrocities in the long-term. We employ a two-part empirical strategy to test this potential “hidden cost’’ of TJ in Germany: a vignette experiment manipulating perceptions of the extent of the denazification process and an observational analysis exploiting variance in denazification intensity across occupation zones. Our results reveal that while perceptions of comprehensive Nazi accountability translate into a belief that the entire German in-group has been held accountable, these perceptions do not affect attitudes towards ongoing commemoration or responsibility towards victim groups. Our robust nullfinding demonstrates that perceptions of justice being served do not undermine support for historical closure on mass violence. These results contribute to the broader literature on TJ’s long-term attitudinal impacts and the determinants of support for historical remembrance, emphasizing the enduring importance of moral over legal perceptions of accountability.
Autocracies have increasingly begun to clothe themselves in the guise of hybrid, semi-official institutions that exhibit a degree of autonomy from the state, such as Government-Organized NGOs (GONGOs), “zombie” election observers, regime-run think tanks, astroturfing, or semi-official state-mobilized movements (SMMs). Existing literature has analyzed hybrid institutions as products of their functions. Instead, by employing a historical-institutional analysis of the evolution of Jordanian youth GONGOs, I demonstrate that institutional hybridity often arises from institutional contradictions, particularly between the path dependence (vested interests, inertia, and inflexibility) of existing institutions and shifting regime objectives, which drive autocrats to establish parallel hybrid institutions to perform the job existing institutions cannot. These findings bridge scholarship on historical institutionalism and authoritarian institutions by emphasizing the centrality of contradictions in institutional change.
For a long time, qualitative scholars found it hard not to talk about KKV. Designing Social Inquiry and its authors Gary (K)ing, Robert (K)eohane, and Sidney (V)erba galvanized an earlier generation of qualitative methodologists to write a number of important rejoinders contesting the meanings of terms and defending the very use of these methods. The authors of Doing Good Qualitative Research, Qualitative Literacy , and Integrated Inferences represent a new generation, one that has eschewed the shopworn debates of the past and is interested solely in developing and improving qualitative methods. These books constitute part of a larger and ongoing qualitative metamorphosis : the emergence of a new qualitative methodology that is more confident, inclusive, and one that is no longer willing to play by quantitative rules.
