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The analysis of public policy agendas in comparative politics has been somewhat limited in terms of geography, time frame and political system, with studies on full-blown autocracies and hybrid regimes few and far between. This article addresses this gap by comparing policy dynamics in three Hungarian regimes over 73 years. Besides our theoretical contribution related to policy-making in Socialist autocracy and illiberal democracy, we also test hypotheses related to non-democratic regimes. We find that – similarly to developed democracies – policy agendas in autocracies are mostly stable with occasional but large-scale "punctuations". Our data also confirms that these punctuations are more pronounced in non-democratic polities. However, based on our results, illiberal political systems, such as the hybrid regime of Viktor Orbán, are difficult to pin down on such a clear-cut continuum between democracy and autocracy as the level of punctuation differs by policy agendas from parliamentary debates to budgets. Dataset available: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MYEBKF

Does peacebuilding shape the regime type of countries where international missions are deployed? Most peacebuilding missions take place in authoritarian contexts, and seek to overcome the legacies of conflict by overseeing transitions to democratic rule; however, most regimes that experience peacebuilding still retain some form of authoritarian rule. In this article, we examine the extent to which international peacebuilding missions contribute to the consolidation of post-conflict authoritarian regimes even when their stated aims involve the promotion of democracy. We argue that international peacebuilders can act as enablers of authoritarianism in host countries. We distinguish this category of behaviour from explicit 'autocracy promotion', which implies intentional support to autocracy. Instead, enabling is often an unintended consequence, and we identify two mechanisms through which enabling occurs: by building the capacity of incumbent authoritarian leaders and by signalling a permissive environment for authoritarian behaviour for national actors. We illustrate our argument with the case of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The process of democratization in Morocco has confronted political and economic challenges. Civil society has recently become very active in Moroccan society, operating in all sectors and starting from the paradigm of human rights. However, this civil society faces two major difficulties. The first is intrinsic to its existence, because it lacks resources and professionalism; whereas the second difficulty lies in the nature of power and its centralization, as central power is obsessed by co-optation of political actors and actors from civil society. Thus political actors and social activists must start from consensus as a prerequisite and avoid anything that could challenge the political system. This leaves little room for a genuine democratic process. This is the context that the EU enters as an external player. How is it perceived by grassroots actors, and what role could it play to become a true partner towards democracy?

Do countries with less democratic forms of government necessarily have lower literacy rates as a consequence? Using a random sample of 4,600+ individuals from military archives in Portugal, we show that 20-year old males were twice as likely to end up literate under an authoritarian regime than under a democratic one. Our results are robust to controlling for a host of factors including economic growth, the disease environment, and regional fixed-effects. We argue for a political economy and cultural explanation for the success of the authoritarian regime in promoting basic education.

This article examines how authoritarian parties and legislatures affect regime survival. While authoritarian legislatures increase the stability of dictators, political parties – even when devised to quell internal threats – can destabilize dictators. The main argument is that authoritarian parties influence the distribution of power in a subsequent new democracy by helping to protect the interests of authoritarian elites. These institutions thus increase the likelihood of democratization. Using a dataset of authoritarian regimes in 108 countries from 1946 to 2002 and accounting for simultaneity, the analysis models transitions to democracy and to a subsequent authoritarian regime. Results indicate that authoritarian legislatures are associated with a lower probability of transition to a subsequent dictatorship. Authoritarian parties, however, are associated with a higher likelihood of democratization.

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown's propensity to benefit from the State's "poor commune support program". Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson's and promoted official's ages are closer, and where provincial leadership has more discretionary power in shaping policies, suggesting that nepotism works through informal channels based on specific political power and environment. Contrary to pork barrel politics in democratic parliaments, members of the Vietnamese legislative body have little influence on infrastructure investments for their hometowns. Given the top-down nature of political promotions, officials arguably do not help their tiny communes in exchange for political support. Consistent with that, officials favor only their home commune and ignore their home district, which could offer larger political support. These findings suggest that nepotism is motivated by officials' social preferences directed towards their related circles, and signals an additional form of corruption that may prevail in developing countries with low transparency.

Duplicate record, see https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1383. This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown's propensity to benefit from the State's "poor commune support program". Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson's and promoted official's ages are closer, and where provincial leadership has more discretionary power in shaping policies, suggesting that nepotism works through informal channels based on specific political power and environment. Contrary to pork barrel politics in democratic parliaments, members of the Vietnamese legislative body have little influence on infrastructure investments for their hometowns. Given the top-down nature of political promotions, officials arguably do not help their tiny communes in exchange for political support. Consistent with that, officials favor only their home commune and ignore their home district, which could offer larger political support. These findings suggest that nepotism is motivated by officials' social preferences directed towards their related circles, and signals an additional form of corruption that may prevail in developing countries with low transparency.

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown's propensity to benefit from the State's "poor commune support program". Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson's and promoted official's ages are closer, and where provincial leadership has more discretionary power in shaping policies, suggesting that nepotism works through informal channels based on specific political power and environment. Contrary to pork barrel politics in democratic parliaments, members of the Vietnamese legislative body have little influence on infrastructure investments for their hometowns. Given the top-down nature of political promotions, officials arguably do not help their tiny communes in exchange for political support. Consistent with that, officials favor only their home commune and ignore their home district, which could offer larger political support. These findings suggest that nepotism is motivated by officials' social preferences directed towards their related circles, and signals an additional form of corruption that may prevail in developing countries with low transparency.

Abstract India is a territory of innumerable tongues, numerous religions, castes and the archetype of "Unity in Diversity". But it is controverted in the Indian Journalist Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger which is set in India derelicted by depravation, corrosion and insurrection exposing an astute picture of alleged Dark India which is beneficial enough to morally taint people. He challenges the fake democracy in Indian subcontinent where the poor have little power. The White Tiger is an attempt to question the 'Shining India' amidst poverty and corruption? It is a manifestation of modern India, calling attention to social justice in the wake of economic prosperity. Adiga writes about the plight and predicament of the poor in India when they migrate to the metropolitan city for their livelihood. The discontent instigated in the exploited against the exploiter transformed an autocracy to outcry. Hence this paper will explore the sufferings, struggles, discrimination, servitude and economic disparity faced by the protagonist in the novel. Keywords: Autocracy, Outcry, Protagonist, Exploiter Introduction

This research note contributes to the emerging debate on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for democracy, autocracy and regime change. Following a review of the literature on the short-term impact of the pandemic on citizen freedoms, I conduct a preliminary test showing that COVID-19 has widened the freedom divide between democracy and autocracy. I propose a prudential interpretation of this new finding and of its implications for medium- to long-term regime change dynamics. In an age of advancing autocratization, regaining awareness that democracies and autocracies treat citizens differently could help marginalize antisystem political forces in democratic countries. However, increased levels of repression in regimes that are already authoritarian are no good news in terms of prospective democratization. Moreover, the management of the social and economic consequences of the pandemic is likely to represent a key driver of future regime change, duo to its impact on the legitimacy and stability of both democracies and autocracies.

Leadership succession marks a truly ubiquitous phenomenon with manifold and wide-ranging implications, which explains the major attention that issues of succession have received in the international literature. Most contributions to the field continue, however, to focus on political succession in either democratic or non-democratic regimes. This article develops an integrated perspective on key aspects of leadership succession at the level of political chief executives in democracies and autocracies. A comparative assessment across time and space reveals several features that challenge established notions, and stereotypes, of leadership succession in democratic and autocratic regimes. The empirical ambivalences identified suggest that the way leaders come to and fall from power should be made a more explicit part of conceptualisations of political regimes, and comparative evaluations of their respective democratic quality. ; (VLID)5870091 ; Version of record

Much recent attention referring to surveillance practice in China has been paid to Chinese authorities' authoritarianstrategies like hiring online inspectors and building the Internet Firewall. While this focus meets the conventional imagination of a non-democratic regime, it neglects the underlying policy changes and structural arrangements with which the Chinese government conducts its governance in the era of big data. My ongoing study demonstrates, there has appeared a market through which various for-profit institutions are selling data services to help the governments conduct domestic governance in China. Through purchasing the Internet information surveillance system which is based on technologies like data mining, sentiment analysis and cloud computing, most Chinese local governments have incorporated the surveillance of public online opinion into their daily work. This phenomenon implies that aneolibralform of governance whichaims at monitoring and guiding public sentiment is taking shape in authoritarian China.

Most authoritarian regimes have legislatures. Are these institutions risky or beneficial for the regimes that establish them? Some argue that partial liberalization is dangerous because it gives opponents an opportunity to attack the regime. However, more recent work finds that partially liberalized regimes last longer and grow faster because these legislatures help neutralize opponents and stabilize power sharing arrangements. Unfortunately, these studies largely rely on cross-national evidence to support their claims, which prevents confirmation of the mechanisms linking legislatures to different outcomes. This project looks at speeches made in the Vietnam National Assembly between 2007 and 2013 to assess the risks regimes face when they allow delegates the opportunity to speak publicly. It shows that regime does not appear to invite robust criticism, as all genuine opponents are vetted during the election process. Instead, delegates mostly provide technocratic information on laws. However, despite the lack of true opposition figures, some delegates are nonetheless willing to challenge the regime on sensitive issues. These findings challenge the notion that critical behavior in a legislature is a sign of a co- opted opposition. Instead, this dissertation argues that in a single-party regime, such behavior is the unintended byproduct of an attempt to professionalize the legislature. Therefore, legislatures can provide benefits, but not without some unintended risks

Democracy is believed to allow greater and popular participation in governance than authoritarian regimes. It follows that democracy would increase the influence of public opinion on the foreign policy making process of nations. This being so, public opinion as a factor in the government decision-making process has become contemporaneous with democratic regimes such that there is a general notion that autocratic regimes act independent of popular opinion in foreign policy decision-making. Using public opinion as an expression of popular view, this article contradicts such notions by establishing that non-democratic (military) regimes could be malleable to public opinion in foreign policy decision-making. This it does in a content analysis of selected Nigerian newspapers, using the Babangida military regime's decision on an IMF loan as a case study and submits that non-democratic regimes could lay claims to popular diplomacy. More so, because evidence in this study does not show that democratic regimes in Nigeria have necessarily increased the influence of public opinion on foreign policy decision-making, it submits that the manifest of democratic ethos such as popular diplomacy in governments' foreign policy decision-making would not necessarily be a product regime-type.

The discourse conducted by Syria's Christians since March 2011 reveals that many of them have now turned their back on the protest movement, despite their initial sympathy and even involvement with it. These Christians have not turned away out of any deeply held convictions in support of the regime, but because they are worried by the militarisation and radicalisation of the revolution, and by the fact that after three years the opposition has still not shown itself to be a credible alternative to the regime. German and European policymakers should continue working towards a political solution and avoid supporting any particular religious or ethnic groups at the expense of others, because apart from those in areas where foreign Jihadists operate, Christians in Syria are no more at risk than other Syrians. (SWP Comments)