Dictatorship: An independent country that fails to satisfy at least one of the following criteria for democracy: (1) free and competitive legislative elections and (2) an executive elected either directly in free and competitive presidential elections or indirectly by a legislature in parliamentary systems.
The problem of Authoritarian power-sharing: Authoritarian power-sharing refers to the sharing of the spoils from joint rule between the dictator and his allies. An obstacle to successful power-sharing is the dictator’s desire and opportunity to acquire more power at his allies’ expense.
–Ruling Coalition: A set of individuals who support a dictator and jointly with him, hold enough power to guarantee a regime’s survival
–Allies rebellions: Elite-driven attempts to remove an authoritarian leader
–Contested autocracy: A system in which the allies can use the threat of rebellion to check the dictator’s opportunism
–Established autocracy: A system in which the dictator has monopolized the power and can no longer credibly threatened by the allies.
The problem of Authoritarian Control: An issue occurs between the authoritarian elites in power and the masses that are excluded from power (Protests, riots). Leaders deal with this problem using two mechanisms: Repression and Co-option (“sticks and carrots”).
–Perfect political control: In this case, mass threats to the regime are small. The dictators do not heavily rely on their militaries for internal repression. They maintain full (political) control over the military.
–Military Tutelage: In this case, mass threats are the greatest, and dictators have no choice but to concede resources to their militaries. The heavy reliance on the military for the regime’s survival grant them leverage over the government; they can extract concessions (economic and political) from the dictator.
–Brinkmanship bargaining: When the magnitude of mass threats is between two extremes (low and high), both the military and the government resort to “rocking the boat.” The military has an incentive to exaggerate its demands while the government has an incentive to test the military’s resolve to intervene.
–Military dictatorships emerge when the push and shove for influence between the military and the government described above escalates into an overt military intervention.
Hi Amy,
I think you do an excellent job of highlighting the core concepts that Svolik outlines in The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. The notion of Authoritarian Power-sharing and allyship between the executive and military leadership was particularly striking to me. I did not have any vision of the executive in a dictatorship as having political allies, but it seems very common sense that generals and commanders would need to be kept close for fear of contestation (a point that you acknowledge in your concept definitions). This work led me to wonder – why is democracy the measure by which authoritarian regimes are measured, and vice versa? It is the case that these two governance forms are legitimately the opposite ends of a spectrum?
I also have been thinking about how Slovik and many others present dictatorships as being the complete opposite of democracy. As if they are diametrically opposed. I believe it depends on the parameters you are analyzing. For example, if you define democracy as the presence of free elections we can easily conclude that they are opposed. But if you look at democracy solely as the presence of institutions that can constraint behaviors then perhaps they share some similarities.