Reassessing the Links between Regime Type and Economic Performance: Why Some Authoritarian Regimes Show Stable Growth and Others Do Not

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siddharth Chandra ◽  
Nita Rudra
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Decentralized Decision Making ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Stable Growth

This analysis challenges claims that regime type determines national economic performance, and hypothesizes that the level of public deliberation, rather than broad categories of regime type, is the driver of national economic performance across political systems; specifically, that negotiations, disagreements, and compromises between decentralized decision-making partisans (e.g., citizens, business representatives, professional associations, labor, and public administrators) are the underlying causal mechanism explaining the non-monotonic relationship between different types of political system and economic performance. Countries with high levels of public deliberation more often experience stable growth outcomes, while other countries can make radical changes in economic policy with uncertain outcome. The variation in public deliberation within regime type is significant, especially amongst authoritarian regimes. One startling implication is that, in certain situations, impressive gains in economic growth can be achieved only at the expense of active negotiation and participation in the policy-making process.

5. The Consequences of Democracy and Authoritarian Regimes

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-96
Author(s):  
Andrea Kendall-Taylor ◽  
Natasha Lindstaedt ◽  
Erica Frantz
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Key Questions

Key themes 72 Regime type and conflict 74 Regime type and terrorism 78 Regime type and economic performance 81 Regime type and quality of life 86 Regime type and corruption 89 Regime type and repression 92 Conclusion 94 Key Questions 94 Further Reading 95 So far we have focused on defining different types of political systems. We discussed how to distinguish democracy from autocracy and the rising prevalence of ...

Mobilizing Restraint: Democracy and Industrial Conflict in Post-Reform South Asia. By Emmanuel Teitelbaum. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 248p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-811
Author(s):  
Erik Martinez Kuhonta
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rates ◽  
East Asian ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
The Relationship

A major debate in the literature on the political economy of development centers on the relationship between regime type and economic development. This debate has been heavily influenced by the East Asian development model, where authoritarianism has often gone hand in hand with high growth rates. In South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, development has been propelled by authoritarian or semidemocratic regimes. One key element of this argument is that the repression of labor under these authoritarian regimes has been especially helpful in states' pursuit of high growth rates because it has ensured political stability and checked societal demands.

Who Pays for Skills?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Hogarth ◽  
Lynn Gambin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Education And Training ◽  
The State ◽  
National Economic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Investments In Education ◽  
And Training

Debates about the need to increase investments in education and training in order to improve overall national economic performance quickly result in deliberations about who should pay for those investments. If it is the individual or the employer who are the principal beneficiaries, then there is an expectation that they should share the cost of the investment proportionate to the benefit they obtain. There are, however, a number of barriers which prevent employers and individuals making optimum levels of investment which inevitably means that the State needs to step into the breach. This chapter addresses what economics has to say about who should make the investment in training and how various barriers to those investments being made can be overcome.

scholarly journals Regime legitimation, not nation-building: Media commemoration of the 1917 revolutions in Russia’s neo-authoritarian state

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Precious N Chatterje-Doody ◽  
Vera Tolz
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Aligned Media ◽  
Russian Identity

Scholars predicted that official Russian commemorations of the centenary of the 1917 revolutions would prioritise ‘reconciliation and accord’ between pro- and anti-communists. Such a frame might help construct a new post-Soviet Russian identity. Yet, in 2017, state-affiliated political and media actors gave accounts that contrasted with their previous narratives and with each other. Domestic state-aligned media were unprecedentedly negative about the revolutions’ events and enduring legacies, while Russia’s international broadcaster, Russia Today, emphasised the revolutions’ positive international legacies. We explain this paradox by arguing that regimes of commemoration are directly related to political systems: in neo-authoritarian regimes such as contemporary Russia, history is not used primarily for nation-building, but to build legitimacy for the ruling regime. Referencing similar practices in other neo-authoritarian regimes, we show how state-affiliated actors selectively co-opt interpretations of historical events that circulate in the global media ecology, to ‘arrest’ the ‘memory of the multitude’. Simultaneously, they reinforce core messages that legitimise the existing government.

Response to Howard and Walters

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Lust
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
State Relations

This response points to three critical problems in Explaining the Unexpected. First, the authors' contention that scholars ignored “everyday contestation,” including changing citizen-state relations, emerging venues of political participation, and the potential for mobilization, is based on a selective reading of the literature on politics in the Arab world before 2011. Second, their assertion that existing paradigms hindered scholars' ability to understand change mischaracterizes the literature on enduring authoritarianism. Scholars did not argue that regime breakdown was impossible before 2011 but rather sought to understand why authoritarian regimes were sustained. Long before the uprisings, they recognized the factors that could make breakdown possible. Third, Howard and Walters' conclusion that Middle East scholars' fundamental paradigms and their focus on regime type will lead them to treat “utterly remarkable waves of mass mobilization as politically inconsequential” is misplaced. The literature has and continues to explore a wide range of issues that extend far beyond democratization, and recent scholarship has examined varied aspects of the diverse political processes and outcomes witnessed since 2011. Explaining the Unexpected misses the mark on many points, but it does provide a useful platform for scholars to reflect on problems facing comparative politics. These include the blinders resulting from the normative biases underpinning the discipline and the need for a nuanced discussion about how, and to what extent, scholars facing rapid, regional transformations can learn from the study of similar experiences in other regions.

Why is Stabilization Sometimes Delayed?

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Oatley
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
High Inflation ◽  
Distributive Conflict ◽  
Societal Dynamics ◽  
Do So

Existing work on the politics of stabilization has failed to find compelling evidence of a regime-type effect. This article reformulates and reevaluates the regime-type hypothesis. It is argued that regime type does not have an independent impact on the timing of stabilization. Instead, regime type influences the extent to which societal opposition and distributive conflict will delay stabilization. Societal opposition and distributive conflict are likely to delay stabilization in democratic regimes, because governments must worry about maintaining power. Such societal dynamics are less likely to delay stabilization in authoritarian regimes. Using a sample of 92 high-inflation episodes, precisely these regime-specific dynamics surrounding the politics of stabilization were found. Governments in democratic regimes want to stabilize rapidly but often cannot overcome societal opposition and distributive conflict to do so. Authoritarian regimes are substantially less constrained by societal opposition and distributive conflict but have less incentive to stabilize rapidly.

The influence of regime type on Russian foreign policy toward “the West,” 1992–2015

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen C. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political System ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Western World ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Broad Policy

Russia’s foreign policy does not follow directly from the nature of its internal political system but rather from the interaction of that political system with other political systems. Russian policy toward the Western world is best understood in terms of the capacity of Russia’s post-Soviet rulers to achieve two goals that are in implicit tension with each other. They are: a) maximizing the benefit to the Russian state of the country’s multifaceted relations with the Western world; and b) securing Russia’s status as the undisputed hegemon throughout the country’s historical borderlands. These broad policy objectives—shared by Russian liberals and nationalists alike–have been common to both the Yeltsin and Putin administrations, albeit expressed in different ways over time and with differing expectations of being able to reconcile the two. Building upon authoritarian and interventionist patterns established early in the Yeltsin years and reacting to the West’s refusal to acknowledge Russian regional primacy, Putin has consolidated an arbitrary personalist regime at home and waged war along the Russian periphery, even at the cost of relations with the Western world. In this respect, Putin’s regime may usefully be seen as a “state-nation” with a strong imperial imprint, building upon powerful legacies of Russian political development. The removal of Putin from power will not in se change that regime type or key challenges in Russiane Western relations.

Rose, Orange, and Tulip: The failed post-Soviet revolutions

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodor Tudoroiu
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Ruling Elites

In 2003–2005, democratic revolutions overthrew the Georgian, Ukrainian, and Kyrgyz post-Soviet authoritarian regimes. However, disillusioned citizens witness today their new leaders creating a Bonapartist regime, entering into open conflict with former revolutionary allies or being forced to accept cohabitation with leaders of the previous regime. This article argues that despite internationally acclaimed civic mobilisation, civil society's weakness seriously affected the three revolutionary processes. These were in fact initiated, led, controlled, and finally subordinated by former members of the authoritarian regimes' political elite. Finally, the supposedly democratic revolutions proved to be little more than a limited rotation of ruling elites within undemocratic political systems.

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