Authoritarian Regime Legitimacy and Health Care Provision: Survey Evidence from Contemporary China

Context: Over the last two decades a growing body of research has shown authoritarian regimes trying to increase their legitimacy by providing public goods. But there has so far been very little research on whether or not these regimes are successful. Methods: This article analyzes data from a 2012–2013 nationally representative survey in China to examine whether health care provision bolsters the communist regime’s legitimacy. Using multivariate ordinal logistic regression, we test whether having public health insurance and being satisfied with the health care system are associated with separate measures of the People’s Republic of China’s regime legitimacy: support for “our form of government” (which we call “system support”) and political trust. Findings: Having public health insurance is positively associated with trust in the Chinese central government. Health care system satisfaction is positively associated with system support and trust in local government. Conclusions: Health care provision may bolster the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, with the clearest evidence showing that concrete benefits may translate into trust in the central government. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between trends in provision and legitimacy over time and in other types of authoritarian regime.

The Crystallization and Erosion of Transnational Solidarity

This chapter provides an interpretation of the regional “appeal” of the Pink Tide in Latin America and its more recent deceleration. It details the legitimation strategies of Hugo Chávez and Chavismo, the political project, movement, and regime led by Chávez, along with his regional allies and successors. The chapter suggests that in legitimizing that political project, Chávez addressed the expectations of wide sectors in the Americas, whose voice he claimed to express. By relying on long-existing visions of “Nuestramerican” (Our American) solidarity and providing material assistance to allies, he invigorated the sense of transnational connection for millions of people in the Americas. This layer of regime legitimacy also provided the basis for Chávez’s global realignment and served his foreign policy of defying the hegemony of the United States and its allies. The chapter reconstructs the rise and partial erosion of the encompassing narrative of transnational solidarity and its political implications for regional dynamics.

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Democracy in Brazil

Some claim that an erosion of democracy is occurring worldwide. There are also questions on the scope of the crisis, which countries are affected, and how to reverse it. The Covid-19 pandemic may have fostered disagreements, deepened rifts, and contributed to the definitive crystallisation of the crisis, but it may also have engendered more moderate and compliant attitudes given the need to unify around the response to common threat. We explore the current dilemmas of democracy in the Brazilian case, focusing on how regime legitimacy, authoritarian attitudes, and support for a populist, authoritarian leader interact and are affected by the pandemic, using public opinion data from 2018 to 2020.

From poverty to trust: Political implications of the anti-poverty campaign in China

Despite the rapid decrease in poverty across the developing world, there have been few attempts to analyze the implication of poverty alleviation on regime legitimacy. Bridging the literature on poverty alleviation and political trust, this analysis examines the mechanisms through which poverty reduction affects trust in local elected and appointed officials. Using an original survey on the Target Poverty Alleviation campaign in China and causal mediation analyses, we find that beneficiary status is positively associated with political trust. The perception of anti-poverty governance quality, rather than economic evaluation, is the mediator through which beneficiary status affects political trust. Moreover, the intensified non-formalistic elite-mass linkage developed in the poverty alleviation campaign enhances political trust through the improvement of perception of governance quality. These findings have implications for mechanisms through which poverty reduction affects political trust and the type of political linkage that sustains regime legitimacy.

Political trust as a cause and consequence of democracy: Longitudinal analysis of European data

The causal link between political trust and democratic performance has been assumed rather than established. Building on research on political trust as related to regime legitimacy and on the evaluative nature of political trust, we formulate hypotheses about the effect of political trust on democracy and of democracy on political trust, both with regard to overall levels of trust in societies, as well as trust by education and age groups. We test these hypotheses with cross-lagged models applied to country time series of political trust from 26 European countries between 1991 and 2019, and with two democracy indicators, from the Varieties of Democracy and the Democracy Barometer projects. We find evidence of effects of democracy on trust and vice versa, as well as of differences in the effects of democracy on political trust among different education and age groups. The results are sensitive to the choice of the democracy indicator as well as the lag length, which points to the need of examining different reasonable combinations of indicators and nags in this kind of analysis.

Saudi Arabia: The Role of the Military in Politics

More than any other time in Saudi Arabia’s history, Saudi nationalism and the role of the military in society are becoming a major source of regime legitimacy. Military expenditure is exceeding allocations to other ministries, and Saudi Arabia surpassed its past spending on the military to become one of the world’s main importers of arms, particularly from the United States. The process of increased militarization corresponded with the concentration of power in the hands of Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Muhammad Ibn Salman. It ushered in a period of drastic restructuring of military and security agencies to consolidate his rule. On the regional level, Saudi Arabia increasingly projects itself as the leader of the Arab world, including the Gulf region, in fighting terrorism and in direct challenge to Iran’s positioning to assume regional dominance. However, the surge in spending on equipment and training has never translated into an effective fighting force that would enable the kingdom to protect itself internally or engage in military ventures abroad. Consequently, and in the process of consolidating his power, Ibn Salman initiated a number of changes. He secured the support of the younger generation of royals but sidelined the more senior members of the royal family. He pacified the religious establishment and restructured the military leadership. He became deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, Chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs, and Minister of Defense. Ibn Salman’s role as Minister of Defense enabled him to assert full control over the military and national security agencies. Throughout this process, Wahabbism, tribalism, economic rewards, and the steady flow of advanced armaments ensured the military’s continued allegiance to al-Saud and Ibn Salman’s vision for Saudi Arabia. Ibn Salman introduced a top-down plan (Vision 2030) intended to create employment, to diversify the economy, and to reshape the social and cultural life of the kingdom. The kingdom adopted a more aggressive foreign policy, and the military became an important instrument of this policy. In departure from long-standing practices, the kingdom deployed air and ground forces outside its borders. It joined the U.S.-led air raids against the Islamic State (ISIS), and air and ground forces have been deployed in the campaign in Yemen. It also resorted to traditional means of influencing regional politics through financing local allies and the promotion of the kingdom as the guardian of Sunni Islam. The rentier base of the Saudi economy enabled the kingdom to spend billions of dollars to purchase an impressive array of military hardware from the United States, Britain, France, and other countries, making Saudi Arabia among the top nations in the world in terms of spending for the military. However, the military’s performance on the battlefield, such as in the Yemen war, have shown that heavy spending is not translated into an effective fighting force that would protect the kingdom internally or externally. Restructuring the military organization did not produce a modern fighting force. Tribalism, lack of transparency, and discrepancy between ambition and reality continue to prevail. It remains to be seen if Ibn Salman’s national modernization process, including a push to build a domestic armament industry and to reform the military establishment as a whole, will succeed. The challenge for Saudi Arabia today is how to balance its development initiatives with maintaining the traditional bases of regime legitimacy.