Identity, procedures and performance: how authoritarian regimes legitimize their rule

Soest, Christian von; Grauvogel, Julia

doi:10.1080/13569775.2017.1304319

Cited by 145 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…1 As outlined, a form of rule's claim to legitimacy regularly rests on different components. It can be more identity-, process-or output-based (Soest and Grauvogel 2017a) but these claims are not mutually exclusive and are often invoked in parallel (e.g. Alagappa (1995)).…”

Section: The V-dem Legitimation Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The item on ideology asked the experts to further categorize the ideology of the regime as nationalist, communist/socialist, conservative/restorative, religious, and/or separatist. Expanding on von Soest andGrauvogel (2017a, 2017b), our data is the first to capture legitimation claims across time, and for all regime types. The temporal aspect allows not only for tracking trends, but crucially for analyzing what happens following changes in legitimation claims or what happens with legitimation claims when other aspects of rule are transformed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018

et al. 2019

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In this paper we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 179 countries in the world from 1900 up until 2018 that are comparable across time and space. Country experts have rated the extent to which the government promotes or references its performance, the person of the leader, rationallegality, and ideology in order to justify the regime in place. With regards to ideology, the experts are further asked to categorize the ideology of the regime as nationalist, communist/socialist, conservative/restorative, religious, and/or separatist. The main purpose of this paper is to describe and validate the data against expectations on claims from case studies as well as with existing regime type classifications. We show that experts do understand and can be employed to code legitimation claims. Not only do we document historical shifts in legitimation claims, but the measures also pick up recent trends, such as, an increased emphasis of the leader in countries such as Russia, Turkey, Cambodia over the last decades, and more recently also in India and the Philippines; as well as recent increases in legitimation claims based on both conservative and nationalist ideologies the European countries Serbia, Hungary and Poland, which also have experienced autocratization in recent years.

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Section: The V-dem Legitimation Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018

et al. 2019

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“…Within authoritarian politics, legitimation can be seen as one of three strategies governments can use to maintain power (Gerschewski 2013). Alongside violent state repression and the co-optation of elites and opposition groups, legitimation seeks to generate the perception of that government's "right to rule" or, failing that, the acceptance of its authority (von Soest and Grauvogel 2017;Dukalskis and Gerschewski 2017).…”

Section: Regime Legitimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While theoretical explanations for the incentives and payoffs of legitimation have gained recent attention, see von Soest and Grauvogel (2017) for the most recent framework, the empirical underpinnings of legitimation remain largely unexamined. In this context, I argue that the amount of legitimation matters.…”

Section: Regime Legitimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power of Persuasion: Regime Legitimation During Authoritarian Elections

Patane¹

2019

Preprint

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Legitimation, the ways governments seek to justify their rule, is becoming an essential component of our understanding of authoritarian regimes. This paper seeks to measure the changes in legitimation efforts around the time of elections in authoritarian regimes. It is well understood that authoritarian regimes can benefit from the process and image of elections, as long as they remain managed. But it is less clear how these governments justify the management of such elections, and whether they are accepted by the population. Relying on detailed events data measuring the frequency of certain legitimating government statements, this paper tests whether electoral authoritarian regimes increase their justifications for remaining in power or devote their efforts to undermining the legitimacy of opposition parties in order to reduce the uncertainty of electoral loss.

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“…In Easton's (1965, p. 278) words, it is 'a strong inner conviction of the moral validity of the authorities or regime'. Legitimacy claims are attempts by the authorities to convince citizens about their right to rule (see also Von Haldenwang;Grauvogel & Von Soest, 2017). Authorities can formulate these claims drawing on different sources of legitimacy (Weber, 1947(Weber, , 1978; see also Bensman, 1979).…”

Section: Micro-perspectives On Legitimacy: Legitimacy Beliefs and Expmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes

Mazepus

2017

Contemporary Politics

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Because the legitimacy of political authorities exists only in the eyes of citizens, this study investigates which criteria citizens use to decide that an authority is legitimate. By comparing ideas about what makes political authorities legitimate, this study in five European democracies and hybrid regimes illuminates the 'demand side of political legitimacy'. Using original student survey data, this article compares expectations of students from the Netherlands, France, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia about how political authorities should acquire the right to rule and how they ought to behave when in office. The analysis shows that the respondents across the five countries use similar criteria for granting legitimacy. Across the five countries, throughput and input were more important criteria for legitimacy than the output produced by authorities. Although several country differences were found, these differences did not align with regime type. The findings challenge the widespread view that what kind of authorities people consider legitimate is determined by their socialization in a particular political regime.

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Identity, procedures and performance: how authoritarian regimes legitimize their rule

Cited by 145 publications

References 82 publications

Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018

Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018

Power of Persuasion: Regime Legitimation During Authoritarian Elections

What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes

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