Conclusion

This book has argued that authoritarian states try to maintain a positive image of themselves abroad and work to protect that image from criticism. The logic for this authoritarian image management strategy is to enhance both the internal and external security of the regime. The book drew on an array of empirical content to substantiate its arguments, including both global and case study material. This chapter offers concluding remarks. Specifically, it offers speculative comments in three areas. First, it complicates the models laid out in the book by considering temporal change, the proposed mechanisms in interaction with one another, and new opportunities afforded by technology. Second, it considers the future of authoritarian image management. Third, it asks what, if anything, democratic policymakers and publics ought to do.

Projecting Peace and Prosperity

This chapter unpacks and assesses the Rwandan government’s authoritarian image management strategies under the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). As relatively small, and aid dependent for much of the period under analysis, Rwanda under the RPF had special incentives to pay attention to authoritarian image management as the latter entrenched its power domestically. Perhaps for this reason, the RPF has been an unusually successful authoritarian image manager in attaining regime security. After presenting a brief historical background, the chapter establishes how the RPF works to create a foundation on which to build its promotional image management efforts by obstructing outsider critics. Next, it discusses how part of Rwanda’s promotional strategy entails retention of public relations firms to burnish the image of the RPF and its leader Paul Kagame. Finally, the chapter turns to the most brazen element of the RPF’s image management, namely the intimidation and repression of critics abroad.

The Motivations Behind Authoritarian Image Management

Why would authoritarian states care how they are perceived abroad? This chapter builds theory to understand the motivations behind authoritarian image management. The chapter posits that scholarship on authoritarian legitimation and on autocracy promotion reveals that authoritarian image management can have causal effects for regime security. The chapter argues, drawing on Owen (2010), that authoritarian states manage their images abroad for both internal security (to bolster their domestic rule) and external security (to help build a friendlier international environment for their rule). All states attempt to manage their image abroad to some degree, but authoritarian states in the post–Cold War era have special incentives to do so given the predominance of democracy as an international norm.

Introduction

Authoritarian states try to present a positive image of themselves abroad. They invest in foreign-facing media, retain public relations firms, and showcase their successes to elite and popular foreign audiences. But there is also a darker side to these efforts. Authoritarian states try to obscure or censor bad news about their governments and often discredit their critics abroad. In extreme cases, authoritarian states intimidate, physically attack, or even murder their opponents overseas. This book is about how authoritarian states manage their image abroad using both “promotional” tactics of persuasion and “obstructive” tactics of repression. They adopt these practices to enhance their internal and external regime security, or put differently, to make their world safe for dictatorship. This chapter introduces the main arguments, themes, and data of the book.

Mechanisms of Authoritarian Image Management

How exactly do authoritarian states manage their image abroad, and what are the causal chains linking their activities to their desired outcomes of internal and external security? This chapter proposes four sets of mechanisms to explain how authoritarian image management is meant to have tangible effects for states that undertake such a strategy. The framework categorizes specific tactics (i.e., soft power initiatives or silencing exiles) into higher-order groupings of mechanisms. The idea is to create a framework that can facilitate case study and comparative causal analysis across a range of contexts. Four mechanisms are proposed that vary along two dimensions: their form (promotional vs. obstructive) and their intended target (diffuse vs. specific). The chapter provides the tools to trace the causal processes associated with authoritarian image management.

Promoting and Controlling the China Dream

This chapter captures the myriad ways in which the Chinese government is packaging its image for international audiences (promotional/diffuse), cultivating messengers capable of conveying that image (promotional/specific), trying to respond to or downplay criticisms about its policies in international discourse (obstructive/diffuse), and intimidating and threatening activists outside its own borders (obstructive/specific). To do so, it draws on a variety of data, including speeches and documents from the leadership, close attention to China Global Television Network (CGTN) content about Xinjiang, interviews conducted by the author with targets of China’s promotional/specific efforts, and data from the AAAD about the country’s repression of exiled critics.

Controlling Critical Messengers

This chapter focuses on how Chinese authorities attempt to control the image of China that the world sees. It first sets the stage by describing China’s domestic media sphere. It then draws on semi-structured interviews with current and former foreign correspondents for European and North American outlets in China. The interviews reveal the techniques that the government uses to try to inhibit negative news about China from reaching global audiences. These include direct persuasion, restricting sites and/or persons from being investigated, surveillance, intimidation, and the specter of visa non-renewal. Ultimately, if these techniques fail, the government sometimes attempts to refute the story that results and/or to impugn the reputation of the journalist. Examining how foreign correspondents are “managed” in China is important because they help shape public opinion about China abroad and thus provide the backdrop to China’s other efforts at image management.

Selling Dictatorship and Silencing Dissent

This chapter provides a global, cross-national snapshot of two dimensions of authoritarian image management, one promotional and one obstructive. First, to capture primarily the “promotional” mechanisms of authoritarian image management, it presents data on public relations and lobbying by authoritarian states in the United States. Analysis of 113 filings from 33 countries active in 2018 and 2019 reveal a glimpse of what authoritarian states do with the tens of millions of dollars they invest in trying to cultivate a positive image of themselves in the United States. Second, to illustrate the “obstructive” side of authoritarian image management, the chapter presents and analyzes the Authoritarian Actions Abroad Database (AAAD). The AAAD reveals nearly 1,200 individual cases in which an authoritarian state attempted to threaten, attack, abduct, arrest, detain, or assassinate one or more of its citizens abroad perceived to be politically threatening.

Coping with a Post-Communist World

After a broad overview, this chapter analyzes two specific instances of North Korea’s authoritarian image management, spanning both the Cold War and post–Cold War eras. First, it focuses on North Korea’s Japan-based efforts to craft an appealing image among Koreans there through Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). Second, it discusses the loose network of North Korea sympathizer organizations around the world. The chapter draws on primary North Korean media sources, online evidence of friendship group activities, and fieldwork conducted about Chongryon in Japan in 2019. The main argument is that North Korea’s image management efforts have been effective in some respects, but they appear outdated and ill-suited to the contemporary world because the country was slow and hesitant to adapt to new realities. The system was designed for a context of party-to-party relations and Third World solidarity initiatives that eventually faded in relevance.