The electronic face of authoritarianism: E-government as a tool for gaining legitimacy in competitive and non-competitive regimes

Diffusion of e‐government and e‐participation in Democracies and Autocracies

“…Thus, when comparing Russia's e‐government performance with those from Central Asian autocratic regimes, it becomes clear that Russia does play a pioneer role because both competitive and non‐competitive regimes do copy the (professional) structure and design of the Russia's e‐government portal. In addition, when comparing services and especially e‐participation components, among Post‐Soviet Union regimes, it appears that personalistic regimes, such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, direct their sophisticated e‐portals towards an international audience with few substantial services for citizens whereas Russia and Kazakhstan offer a broad range of interactive tools which are frequently used by their respective citizens (Maerz, ).…”

Simulating pluralism: the language of democracy in hegemonic authoritarianism

“…Adams 2010). In the age of the Internet, an increasing number of authoritarian regimes translate these speeches into English and publish them on shiny official websites to further strengthen their legitimacy (Maerz 2016). While the uploaded speeches are a highly diverse selection of transcripts from all kind of national and international occasions (economic summits, jubilees, national holidays, diplomatic receptions, etc.…”

“…This article studies the language of autocrats by looking at their publicly delivered speeches. A growing number of autocratic regimes sets up official e-government websites to propagate modernity and thereby gain national and international legitimacy (Maerz 2016). The case selection for the analysis is guided, first, by the installation of such websites and second, by the number of the uploaded and officially translated English speeches of the regimes' current leaders.…”

“…One problem, for example, could be that it is only certain types of regimes, countries or leaders that install such websites and upload their speeches in English. However, as Maerz (2016) illustrates, the habit of maintaining professional websites to gain internal and external legitimacy is not a Table A2 in the Supplemental Material provides the sources of the speeches. c The cases of Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan include also several speeches of the new leaders since 2015 and 2016 because leadership succession was not followed by regime change.…”

What Is Beyond the Façade? Research Program of E-Participation in Non-Democracies

“…Новый этап развития этой гипотезы заключается в поиске различий в стратегиях легитимации уже внутри группы авторитарных стран. И такие различия находятся: если закрытые гегемонистские режимы действительно склонны создавать порталы «на экспорт», то соревновательные автократии используют э-участие и для внутренней легитимации [58]. Более того, как показывает исследование М. Кнойера и С. Харниша, различия в мотивации связаны с типом режима (так, охотнее всего э-участие внедряют монархии), а также с отдельными «кризисами легитимности», вроде финансового кризиса 2008 г. и Арабской весны [50].…”