Browsing by Subject "Authoritarian regimes"
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Item Open Access Authoritarian Governance and the Provision of Public Goods: Water and Wastewater Services in Egypt(2019) Hegazi, FarahStudies on the effect of regime type on public goods provision have tended to take a quantitative, cross-national approach to examining the relationship between regime type and access to public goods, and have demonstrated that democracies produce better public goods outcomes than non-democracies for a variety of theoretical reasons, including politics being more competitive in democracies, democracies needing to appease a greater proportion of their population, and re-election incentives. Such studies, however, have not aimed to understand which segments of the population receive access to benefits and the literature examining this question has tended to focus on the distribution of benefits in democracies. As such, little is known about how authoritarianism itself affects the distribution of public services.
This dissertation examines how inequalities in access to drinking water and wastewater services arise in authoritarian regimes. In examining Egypt during the period of 1882 to 2015, and using archival documents, census data, electoral returns, and interviews, I find that the groups that are prioritized for receiving access to drinking water and wastewater services differ across the different regimes within this time period, as they are a product of the goals that leaders are seeking to achieve and the structure of the authoritarian political system that is implemented, which affects elite composition, the degree of influence that leaders have over policymaking, and the regime’s relationship with the mass public.
I also find that in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings, self-undermining policy feedbacks, which occur when those who are not benefitting from government policy that is currently in place push for significant changes in policy, can affect the state’s response to expressed discontent regarding the state of public services, but that democratization is not necessarily correlated with greater investment in public services.
Overall, the findings emphasize that political will plays an important role in affecting the distribution of public services in an authoritarian setting.
Item Open Access Do Citizens in Authoritarian Countries Censor Themselves?(2014) Dai, YaoyaoCitizens' opinions in authoritarian countries are overlooked in the current research on authoritarian regimes. It is also hard to get the true opinions from the citizens. Because they might fear the consequences of disclosure and they might be unwilling to report socially undesired opinions. Researchers question the survey conducted in authoritarian countries, and worry about the possible "self-censorship" in those countries. In this paper, I applied a survey technique named list experiment to answer whether citizens in authoritarian countries censor their opinions towards sensitive questions, what kind of issue could be more sensitive and what kind of people tend to self-censor more. Based on my experiment in the capital of China, people do censor themselves, especially in political fundamental issue. People are more willing to tell true opinion towards economic issue. Among different subgroups, old people, probationary CCP members and government employees tend to censor themselves more.
Item Open Access Elite Politics and Inequality: The Development of Fiscal Capacity in Authoritarian Regimes(2015) Hollenbach, Florian Max BenjaminThe ability to raise revenue is one of the most fundamental requirements for state- hood. Without revenues, states are unable to perform even the most basic tasks. In this dissertation I aim to answer the question: When do authoritarian elites in- vest in fiscal capacity? First, I develop a theoretical argument using computational modeling techniques. I contend that inequality increases the costs associated with higher fiscal capacity due to a possible regime change in the future. On the other hand, elite demand for government spending can raise the incentives for autocrats to increase the tax capacity of the state. Complimentarity between elite-owned capital and government investment can lead to a demand for higher taxation. Based on their personal utility associated with government spending, elites weigh the current benefit of higher tax capacity with possible future costs.
I then test the overarching theoretical argument across two different datasets. First, I empirically investigate the question on a sample of over 90 authoritarian regimes from 1980 to 2006. Estimating a number of different models and including a variety of controls, I find that inequality has a strong negative long term effect on fiscal capacity. On the other hand, more industrial countries have higher levels of capacity. In the second empirical chapter, I investigate the theoretical argument on newly collected data on tax revenue and administrative spending in local Prussian counties in the 19th century. Again, I find that local inequality has strong negative effects, while more industrial areas are associated with higher levels of fiscal capacity.
Item Open Access The Emergence, Maintenance and Defeat of Dominant Party Authoritarian Regimes (DPARs)(2010) Ong, Kian M.This thesis is an investigation into the causes behind the emergence, maintenance and defeat of dominant authoritarian party regimes (DPARs). The emergence of these regimes during certain critical junctures in a country's history is attributed to the ability of charismatic leaders to co-opt political elites using electoral instruments and incentives under the banner of a single party. The presence of institutional mechanisms that can smooth the leadership transition process, provide rewards for elites to remain in the dominant party and increase the costs of elite defections are important explanatory factors in DPAR maintenance. DPARs also employ different strategies to co-opt and divide the opposition in order to reassert their political dominance. Intra regime splits are a necessary but not sufficient condition to weaken a DPAR. Institutional reform which further weakens a DPAR and increases the probability of future elite splits is introduced when the opposition can play a veto card. The mutually reinforcing effects of elite splits and institutional reform explain the downfall of DPARs in Mexico, Taiwan, Senegal and Paraguay. The DPAR in Malaysia is at a critical juncture whereby an opposition veto which can possibly lead to institutional reform currently hangs in balance.
Item Open Access The Politics of Protest and State Repression in Authoritarian Regimes(2019) Liu, HowardThe Arab Spring has renewed scholarly interest in popular protests and nonviolent mobilization against authoritarian rulers. Over the past decade, the bulk of the literature has focused on examining the impact of protest movements on regime transition, while lesser attention was paid to explain why protests emerge initially. Social movements literature has documented rich materials on contentious politics; however, as Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam (2001) indicated in their seminal work, these traditional approaches work better to explain contention in democracies but less well when it comes to explaining protests in nondemocratic contexts. My dissertation, a suite of three related papers, aims to fill this gap by asking several important questions: Why do citizens risk their lives to protest against the authoritarian governments under the threats of state repression? How does mobilization behaviors interact with state responses (e.g. state repression)? Why do opposition parties participate and mobilize protesters in authoritarian elections? Using new protest event data, I first show that in authoritarian China, politically motivated officials are encouraged to compete in the economic field by extracting local resources, and these efforts often contribute to local protests. Additional evidence also indicates that land expropriation by local governments has become the main source of social grievance in contemporary China. Second, I show that mobilization behaviors and state responses are intrinsically interdependent to each other. I propose a network method to model this interdependence and interactive repertoires of contention. I find that the nodes-as-actions framework I introduce improves our ability to forecast different types of state repression against protesters and helps us examine the processes of conflict escalation and a mutual spiral effect in authoritarian elections. Lastly, I find that anti-government protest mobilization is an oft-used electoral campaign strategy by the opposition to mobilize supporters, gain visibility in state censorship, and signal their strength and commitment to unseating autocratic rulers in authoritarian elections. When the authoritarian incumbent suffers from declining popularity among citizens, it provides a window of opportunity for the opposition candidates to defeat the authoritarian ruler on the ballot by mobilizing anti-regime protesters and encouraging voter turnout. Overall, this dissertation introduces novel theoretical framework and empirical methods to advance our understanding of protest emergence in authoritarian regimes.