In the last decade, studies have documented how autocrats use elections as a way of legitimising and stabilising their regimes. Simultaneously, a literature on negative external actors (also known as ‘black knights’) has developed, emphasising how various international actors use anti‐democracy promotion strategies to undergird authoritarian regimes. In this article, these two literatures are fused in an attempt to shed light on the external dimension of authoritarian elections and what is termed ‘black knight election bolstering’. First, five mechanisms are elucidated, through which external assistance increases the chances of ‘winning’ elections in authoritarian settings (signaling invincibility, deterring elite defection, undermining opposition activities, dealing with popular protests, and countervailing pressure from foreign democracy promoters). Second, it is argued that external actors are most likely to offer election bolstering when they face a particularly acquiescent partner or when electoral defeat is perceived to lead to radical and undesired regime change. The relevance of both factors is augmented when uncertainty of the electoral outcome is high. Finally, four cases of Russian intervention during elections in three authoritarian neighbour countries (Ukraine in 2004, Belarus in 2006, and Moldova in 2005 and 2009) are analysed. The case studies corroborate the theoretical arguments: not only does Russia engage in all five types of black knight election bolstering, but it does so only when one or more of the three explanatory factors are present.
The literature on transition and democratization was for long dominated by internal explanatory factors such as economic performance, civil society, institutions, etc. Only recently have external actors' democratizing effortslike those of the US and the EU -been systematically incorporated. But the perspective remains too constrained, since only 'positive' external actors are considered, while possible 'negative' actors are left aside. This article attempts to rectify some of the imbalance. First, an analytical framework that can be used to analyse both positive and negative external actors is proposed. Then, the framework is put into use through an analysis of the negative effects of Russia's foreign policy in the so-called 'Near Abroad'. It is argued that two general effects take shape: the 'policy of managed stability' and the 'policy of managed instability'. Both are weakening the democratic perspectives in the post-Soviet area, so I argue that Russia's foreign policy in the 'Near Abroad' is a, hitherto, underestimated and badly understood 'negative' factor in the literature on transition and democratization in the post-Soviet space.
When autocrats face threats of non-violent mass mobilization, they are likely to respond with repression. However, when will the autocrat initiate, step up, or downscale repressive behavior during such protest events? We propose that signals of support from great power patrons play a pivotal role in emboldening rulers to engage in and intensify repressive behavior. To probe this hypothesis, we analyze how supportive and non-supportive actions and statements of the great powers in the United Nations Security Council shape the repressive behavior of authoritarian regimes during three recent, and similar, cases of protest events: Burma 2007, Zimbabwe 2008, and Burkina Faso 2014. The cases show that the more unequivocal and consistent patron support for the besieged regime is the firmer and more violent are the responses to the domestic challengers.
With the recent proliferation of comparative authoritarianism studies, a new research agenda on authoritarian diffusion has emerged. Authoritarian diffusion concerns the study of how events, institutions, and strategies relevant for autocratic political systems travel between them. So far, scholars have strived towards proving that authoritarian diffusion is real and is happening across a wide range of contexts. Now the time has come for the field to develop further. This involves improving our understanding of how important diffusion effects really are (the effect size), how diffusion effects come about (the mechanisms), and how contextual factors shape these two (diffusion's conditional nature). To do this, more methodological reflection and rigor is needed. The aim of this paper is to push qualitative researchers of authoritarian diffusion to reflect more upon the methodological issues and challenges associated with examining diffusion in autocratic contexts. Based on a survey of the existing qualitative literature, we show that insufficient attention to issues such as case-selection, causal mechanisms and evidentiary requirements, restrictions on data availability, process-tracing methods, and alternative explanations is holding back the emergent research field on authoritarian diffusion. We provide researchers involved in this research agenda with guidance on both potential pitfalls and feasible solutions, and where possible we draw on best-practice examples from within the field itself and the wider diffusion literature. Authoritarian diffusion is a challenging topic to study; only conscious, analytical stringency and serious methodological reflection will pave the way for its further advancement.
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