Institutions for Coopting Opposition
All regimes face the problem of an opposition which might oust them from
power. The difference in an authoritarian regime as compared to a democracy is that
power is expected to rotate regularly in a democracy, and therefore, when a party or a
president loses, he or she accepts the result. In an authoritarian state, the opposition
is more threatening because one of the characteristics of an authoritarian state is
irregular or rare rotations of power. To blunt the force of an opposition, or even vocal
critics with a following, a regime might invest in institutions which have the appearance
of democratic representation. These include rigged elections, legislatures, courts, and
the like. These institutions are actually “window dressing” or façades for a tightly
controlled political system. Judiciaries in these systems are not independent, nor do
they provide a meaningful check on the authority of rulers. Many authoritarian regimes
have legislatures, but these legislatures lack authority to veto measures passed by
those in power. Examples abound in the highly authoritarian Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea. North Korea has been ruled since the
1950s by a single Supreme Leader, yet formally it has a unicameral legislature. This
Supreme People’s Assembly comprises nearly 700 deputies and in theory confers
authority on the Supreme Leader. However, DPRK’s Supreme Leader makes all
governance decisions for the country and does not face any threat of veto by this
unicameral legislature.
Opposition parties or critics of the regime might agree to sit on such bodies as
a means to have access to and possibly influence political leaders. They may also
benefit materially from legislative or judicial seats, like drawing a salary or receiving
other perks of office such as a chauffeured car or swanky office. Note that co-opting
opposition through such institutions can serve the ruling regime in multiple ways. It
can boost the legitimacy of the rulers in the eyes of the public. It also allows rulers to
more closely monitor the positions and ideas of the opposition, which might then be
countered or even adopted as appropriate.
Patronage Networks
All politics hinge on relationships and the flow of resources. Patronage networks
are relationships within political systems in which one party with access to resources
distributes those resources to those within their network. Within a patronage network
are reciprocal bonds that unite members of the network. A leader might take a portion
of oil revenues and distribute those monies to their deputies scattered throughout the
provinces; those deputies make sure that the leader’s posters are prominently
displayed in every local government office. Patronage networks may be organized via
many different kinds of organizations or social groups. Political parties are one way to
distribute public resources in exchange for political obedience. Other major state
organizations, such as the military or state-owned businesses are also sites for
building patronage networks. Non-state organizations may be part of patronage
networks, such as businesses or business associations. Identity groups, including
those bound by ethnicity or tribe, may be the basis of patronage networks. The latter
is evident in Syria, where major institutions of the state are controlled by the Alawite
minority, a Shia Muslim group that is less than one-fifth of Sunni Muslim-dominated
Syria. Alawite networks support the ruling al-Assad family.
Broad-based Clientelism
Related to but separate from patronage networks are institutions that promote
clientelism on a broad scale. Clients are those who rely on a patron for resources;
clientelism is a strategy whereby rulers seek to buy off the loyalties of broad swaths of
the population. To do so, rulers may invest in social programs in which they clearly
mark their sponsorship of these programs to the masses. Such broad-based
distribution of resources has the effect of turning significant parts of a country’s
population into clients, or dependents, of the regime. If the economic theory of
democratization is at least partly correct, then clientelism helps us understand how
authoritarian regimes stay in power. By distributing resources in exchange for loyalty,
populations get access to programs that increase their quality of life, but to the point
where they feel like they are empowered enough to demand more rights.
One place where we see this kind of broad-based clientelism was in Mexico
under the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (or Partido Revolucionario
Institucional, PRI) during much of the twentieth century. PRI was in power in Mexico
from 1929 to 2000. Under the PRI presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-
1994), social programs were consolidated under a new government organization
called Pronasol. Pronasol distributed government funds to poor communities to build
public works such as schools, health clinics, water treatment facilities, and electric
grids. This organization reflected the national ambitions and reach of PRI: at its height,
there were nearly 250,000 Pronasol committees at the grassroots level to carry out
community projects in collaboration with community leaders. The results are
impressive: renovations of 130,000 schools, creation of 1,000 rural medical units, and
plumbing access for 16 million Mexican residents (Merrill and Miró eds. 1996). Looking
back on this ambitious program, it represented a broad-based means to build support
for PRI rule throughout the country and especially in the countryside.
Clientelism used to be considered a strategy used exclusively by authoritarian
regimes. However, more recent studies have shown that these sorts of programs are
also common in democracies as well. Some scholars have even begun to use the
word “patronage” democracies to describe states like Mexico, Ghana, Türkiye and
Indonesia (Berenschot & Aspinall, 2020). What distinguishes more democratic
clientelism from an authoritarian style is that the programs created by leaders are more
likely to stick beyond the length of that leader’s term and are not revoked if that district
fails to support the regime. In more authoritarian client-based networks, programs tend
to only last as long as the leader. Next, let’s turn to institutional sticks, or strategies of
repression. There are a variety of repressive means by which nondemocratic regimes
extract obedience from the population. These include the creation of domestic security
bureaucracies and paramilitary groups.
Domestic Security Apparatuses
Authoritarian regimes are the creators of the modern secret police, beginning
with the creation of the Cheka under Lenin, which became the NKVD – internal secret
police – under Stalin. It is now the KGB in today’s Russia. The Cheka was the model
for many other secret police that were created in Italy and Germany, to name some
familiar examples. These institutions can serve critical purposes, from collecting
intelligence on potential dissent within a country to terrorizing citizens. One
authoritarian state which has developed sophisticated means for surveilling its
population is China. Since 2010, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has spent more
on domestic security than external defense. A vast network of surveillance programs
exist throughout the country, including “Sharp Eyes” (xueliang) a project announced in
2015 that mandated video surveillance of all public spaces in the country by 2020.
Sharp Eyes included nonstop video feed of public squares, intersections of major
roads, public areas in residential neighborhoods, and transit stations, to name a few.
It also included monitoring of buildings such as the entry points of radio, TV, and
newspaper offices. This video capability is combined with additional technologies such
as facial recognition.
Paramilitaries
Another powerful instrument of repression are paramilitaries. These refer to
groups with access to military-grade weapons and training, yet they are not part of the
national military. They are “irregular armed organizations that carry out acts of violence
against civilians on behalf of a state” (Üngör, 2020). While there are often armed
groups in democracies (especially the United States), the difference between these
groups and those in authoritarian regimes is that armed groups in the latter often more
directly with the government as an additional layer of protection against opposition.
Armed groups in democracies are usually anti-government. For example, death
squads are one kind of paramilitary employed by governments to carry out extrajudicial
murders, usually of political enemies of the state. One tragic example of mass killing
carried out by death squads can be found in Indonesia. During the height of the Cold
War in the mid-1960s, Indonesian death squads were responsible for the murder of
hundreds of thousands of Indonesians believed to have leftist sympathies.
The use of paramilitary organizations can be risky, however, even in
authoritarian regimes with tight control over the government. Two recent examples
illustrate this. In April of 2023, a civil war broke out between the army and a paramilitary
group called the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF had been used by the country’s
former authoritarian dictator Omar al-Bashir to crush uprisings. Al-Bashir was
eventually ousted with the help of the RSF. Now the army-led government and the
RSF are engaged in a violent conflict for power that has displaced millions. Similarly,
the Wagner Group, a paramilitary group that Russia has used extensively in its
invasion of Ukraine, as well as other conflicts in which it is involved such as Syria,
revolted against the Russian military and marched on Moscow in June 2023. This
mutiny was quickly quelled, however, and civil war was avoided. Questions remain,
however, as to the stability of Putin’s Russia, who has been in power for 23 years.
Taken together, nondemocratic leaders possess a variety of means, both
persuasive and coercive, to enforce their rule. These include positive inducements that
can be narrow or broad in scope. Coercive institutions, such as secret police and
paramilitaries, offer an institutionalized means for nondemocratic leaders to maintain
their monopoly on the use of violence over their societies.
Cultural and Ideological Controls
Another powerful way to maintain authority is to convince people to believe in
the legitimacy of authoritarian rule. This is in some ways the most efficient way to stay
in power because it preempts resistance. Nondemocratic leaders thus invest in
creating strong ideational foundations for their rule. These ideas may derive selectively
from deeper cultural traditions in a society – including those linked to faith traditions –
or from the dissemination of nondemocratic ideologies to the masses. Many
authoritarian rulers will use cultural or religious traditions to convince the people that
the current regime is a continuation of an ancient ideal. A more narrow tool employed
by nondemocratic leaders to remain in power is the creation of a cult of personality. A
cult of personality occurs when a state leverages all aspects of a leader’s real and
exaggerated traits to solidify the leader’s power. Drawing upon institutions such as
propaganda bureaus and state control of media channels, a cult of personality creates
the illusion of mass support for – even adulation of – the ruler. Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin was famous for creating such a cult around his personal rule, and this was taken
to new heights by other twentieth century rulers such as China’s Mao Zedong and
Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu. Fanning a cult of personality is a powerful way to
create emotional links between citizens and ruler. A cult of personality also creates the
appearance of invincibility on the part of the ruler, which can serve to stave off
challenges to their rule.
