The Focus of my Thesis: The Puzzle of Deviant Autocracies

It is clear after reviewing the recent literature on deviant democracies and persistent autocracies that one area deserves more attention: deviant autocracies. In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have emphasised the importance of studying deviant autocracies (see e.g. Doorenspleet 2012: 202; Seeberg 2014b: 648), but there are still few studies which explain these cases.

This section starts with a conceptualisation of deviant autocracies and how it relates with the existing literature on democratisation. Second, I give an overview of cases that can be categorised as deviant autocracies based on previous studies; later, Chapter 3 identifies outliers or deviant autocracies in a more systematic way, based on large-N quantitative analyses. I also review previous studies’ attempts to identify and understand deviant autocracies.

In my view, studying deviant autocracies is a logical step in the field of democratisation and autocracy studies. Studies of democracy in the 1950s mainly focused on democratic consolidation among Western countries, which already had a long history of practicing democracy; structural factors, especially a high level of economic development, were identified as prerequisites for sustaining democracy. From the 1970s onward, a significant number of countries experienced democratisation, which encouraged scholars to study the factors leading to transitions to democracy. The structural approach still finds a robust relationship between high level of economic development and democracy. Yet in the process of transition, many cases did not have favourable structural conditions and failed to establish a

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democratic system after a transition from authoritarianism. The literature on hybrid regimes mainly focuses on such cases.

More recently, democratisation studies have begun to focus on deviant democracies: countries which sustain a democratic system even with a low level of favourable structural conditions. In addition, the renaissance of autocracy research has highlighted how autocratic leaders make use of different strategies to increase their hold on power. However, the strategies adopted by military or personalist autocratic regimes in countries with low levels of socio-economic development are fundamentally different from those used in countries with high levels of socio- economic development, because there are different major stakeholders in society. Hence, there is a clear gap in the literature, and few studies try to explain why countries with favourable structural conditions fail to transition to democracy. Although there are some excellent case studies (Sing 1996, 2004; So 2000; and Myhre 2010), there is certainly no comparative research yet, focusing specifically on this question.

In short, two crucial factors distinguish deviant autocracies from other types of regime: favourable structural factors (which can be absent or present) and democracy (which can be absent or present). Figure 2.1 shows the typology of deviant autocracy in relation to autocracy, democracy and deviant democracy.

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Figure 2.1: Typology of Regimes, Based on Structural Factors (IV) and Democracy (DV)

Deviant Autocracy Democracy

Autocracy Deviant Democracy

Let us look briefly at potential candidates for deviant autocracies (note that the next chapter identifies them more rigorously). Using data from the Human Development Indicator developed by the United Nations (United Nations Development Programme 2015), we can show that Bahrain, Brunei, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates are examples of high-income countries with high levels of social and economic development. At the same time, these high-income countries are categorised as non- democratic regimes (Freedom House 2014; Marshall, Jaggers and Gurr 2013). To highlight the importance of studying and understanding deviant autocracies, I would emphasise the findings of Barro’s study (1996), which tried to forecast transitions to democracy; Barro predicted that Hong Kong and Singapore would become fully democratic by the year 2000. In explanation, he stated that ‘[e]xpectations for large increases in democracy also apply to some reasonably prosperous places with some political rights in which the measured level of rights lags behind the standard of living. As examples, Singapore is projected to increase its democracy index from 0.33 in 1994 to 0.64 in 2000’ (pp. 21-23). The actual history of Hong Kong and Singapore has proven his prediction false. Table 2.1 compares the potential deviant autocracies Hong Kong and Singapore with consolidated democracies. The figures show that these two cases are on par with developed societies like the United Kingdom and United States in terms of socio-economic development.

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Table 2.1: Socio-economic conditions among different societies

Country Life Expectancy at Birth Mean Years of Schooling Expected Years of Schooling Gross National Income per Capita France 82.2 11.1 16.0 38,056 Hong Kong 84.0 11.2 15.6 53,959 Singapore 83.0 10.6 15.4 76,628 United Kingdom 80.7 13.1 16.2 39,267 United States 79.1 12.9 16.5 52,947 Source: United Nations Development Programme (2015: 208)

Like deviant democracies, deviant autocracies are not a new phenomenon. The existing studies have simply ignored them. For example, Diamond (2012) claims that Singapore is ‘the most economically developed nondemocracy in the history of the world’ (p. 7). In the early 1990s, Lipset et al. (1993) revealed that ‘[s]ome countries with outstanding economic growth records remained staunchly authoritarian, e.g. Brazil, Spain, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, etc.’ (p. 155). Lipset and his colleagues were fully aware of cases which did not fit into their theory, but did not offer an explanation for this.

Another interesting feature of deviant autocracies is the general lack of quantifiable, comparative data. Cross-national studies on democratisation, especially quantitative ones, heavily rely on existing databases such as the World Bank, United Nations and Freedom House and Polity project to provide indicators for statistical analysis and hypothesis testing. Small states or territories are neglected and data from them is omitted from the dataset, because it is argued that small countries have a higher propensity to democratise (Seeberg 2014b: 636). Due to limited availability of data, most existing cross country studies (such as Barro 1996; Cutright 1963; Cutright and Wiley 1969; Lipset 1959; Lipset 1994; Lipset et al. 1993; Narayan and Smyth 2010; Ravich 2000; Rostow 1960) have ignored anomalous cases or simply do not include them in their analysis models. The city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, for instance, have always been overlooked in large-N analyses.

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Still, some scholars have tried to identify and understand anomalous cases. According to Sing (1996: 344), ‘on the basis of economic development alone, Hong Kong and Singapore appear as the sole anomalies’. To explain the situation of Hong Kong, Sing (1996: 351-355) argued that several factors contributed to the absent of democratisation in Hong Kong, including China’s opposition in the 1980s, the weakness of the pro-democracy movement, the government’s strong performance and relatively lack of corruption, and the co-optation of business elites into government decision-making and consultative bodies. Yet this explanation neglects the most important external actor, Britain, the colonial master that played a major role in establishing institutions and norms favourable to the development of democracy. Sing (1996) stated, ‘Hong Kong has been a British colony for over 140 years, pervaded in that time by British ideas of the rule of law and procedural justice’ (p. 344). Also, ‘[i]t had been British policy gradually to democratize Hong Kong after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, preparing the way for an honourable retreat’ (Sing 1996: 354). Nevertheless, the negotiations between China and Britain about the future of Hong Kong were secret at the time this analysis was made. To fully understand deviant autocracies, we need to consider elite structural interaction, including how ruling elites acquire coercive state capacity in the process of transition and how internal and external elites interact to shape the resultant system.

Recently, Seeberg (2012: 29) has tried to map ‘anomalous autocracies’ using large-N analyses. This mapping focuses on 1993 to 2008, and only uses diffusion via democratic neighbour countries as an independent variable. This analysis underestimates the importance of other dependent variables, such as economic development level, oil production and country size. Hence, his analysis identified some controversial cases such as North Korea and China as anomalous autocracies, unlike the conceptualisation of deviant autocracies proposed in this thesis.

In addition to economic development, countries reliant on the export of raw materials and small states should not be excluded when identifying deviant autocracies. With regard to high income countries in Middle East that deviate from the structural analysis, some scholars use the oil production explanation to argue that the social structures and values have not undergone significant changes, and hence

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pressure for democratisation is low (see Barari 2015: 102; Sing 1996: 344). Nevertheless, many large-N studies show that oil producing countries can easily be democratic (see Ahmadov 2013; Bearce and Hutnick 2011: 706; Butcher 2014: 736; Gurses 2009: 523, 2011: 173; Liou and Musgrave 2014: 1604). In other words, oil producing countries should not be neglected.

In addition, with regard to small countries or city-states, it is unwise to exclude outliers such as Hong Kong, Macau and Brunei. Apparently Seeberg (2012) overlooked the literature on democratisation that I reviewed in this chapter. Social economic development is indeed an important structural factor in explaining democratic consolidation in the 1950s and transition to democracy from the 1970s onward. Hence, the list that Seeberg (2012) proposed is quite controversial; he categorised Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Cuba, North Korea, Peru, Singapore, Swaziland, Togo and Zimbabwe as anomalous autocracies. It is debatable to categorise North Korea as a deviant autocracy, for example, given its low level of development in terms of structural factors. There is a detailed discussion in the next chapter on how to properly identify deviant autocracies with large-N quantitative analysis.

In other words, while studies have focused on deviant autocracies, it is still a very small field. The next chapter shows that the number of deviant autocracies has increased over time, and hence the study of them has become more important. These under-studied cases should be analysed critically and systematically; a new analytical framework is thus needed to help understand the phenomenon. According to Doorenspleet (2012: 202), studying ‘deviant autocracies’ can explain why autocratic regimes continue even in societies experiencing a high level of economic development; in turn this may help us to understand more about the process of democratisation.

Conclusion

To conclude, this chapter has summarised the key debates and developments in the field of democracy and democratisation.

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In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars were mainly concerned about the durability of democracies, particularly in Western Europe and Northern America. At the same time, the U.S. government began actively promoting democracy all over the world (see Carothers 1999) to counteract the influence of communism. From the 1970s onward, more and more countries make transitions to democracy. Some successfully established a genuine, consolidated democracy, but some still remained authoritarian or became hybrid, ‘grey zone’ regimes. This political reality contributed to the development of the literature on transitions to democracy and hybrid regimes.

The idea of studying deviant autocracies is inspired by recent studies of both deviant democracies and of the durability of autocratic regimes. The literature on deviant democracies mainly addresses the issue of countries that transitioned successfully to democracy despite unfavourable structural conditions. A number of excellent studies have examined such outliers using small-N qualitative or large-N quantitative analysis to identify and identify explanatory factors. They provide a strong foundation for the study of the other type of outlier, i.e. deviant autocracies. Studies of the durability of autocratic regimes have mainly analysed cases in which structural factors favouring sustained autocratic government are absent. They help us to answer several important research questions, such as how authoritarian leaders consolidate their power. Yet the autocratic regimes analysed in this area of the literature differs conceptually from deviant autocracies.

The deviant autocracies highlighted in this thesis are societies possessing a high level of socio-economic development. This flies in the face of the central idea of the structural explanation, that economic development is positively related to democracy. Deviant autocracies thus point to a gap in studies of democratisation and persistent autocracies. The literature review in this chapter has shown that deviant autocracies have been understudied so far. In my view, understanding deviant autocracies is very important, particularly as the number of cases seems to have increased (see next chapter). Understanding the phenomenon of deviant autocracies also has great theoretical significance for the study of democratisation. Hence, we need to improve our empirical knowledge of those cases.

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When proposing a study of deviant autocracies, two questions may be asked. First, why should we bother with outliers? As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, the study of democracy and democratisation has changed focus from normative and analytical studies to empirical studies. I agree with the observation of Diamond et al. (2014):

It is a kind of standard story in social science: Someone identifies a pattern or two associated with a phenomenon, others glom onto it, and then it’s discovered that the pattern is not universal. This shouldn’t shock us, because it is so common, but it doesn’t make the ideas utterly worthless. There are various paths to democracy, and it’s worth trying to identify them (p. 89).

Indeed, the structural explanation of democratisation has dominated the field since the 1950s. A significant amount of empirical large-N quantitative analysis shows that economic development is an important independent variable in accounting for the consolidation of and transition to democracy. But the data in the next chapter show that this pattern is no longer universal; an increasing number of outliers that have emerged in recent decades deserve our attention.

The second question is related to how to define autocracy. Autocracy is the antonym of democracy. I concur with the idea that an undemocratic regime can be categorised as an autocracy (Møller and Skanning 2013b: 45). To identify autocracy, it is beneficial to understand the typology of democratic political regimes. Møller and Skanning (2013b: 43) use four criteria (competitive elections; free, inclusive elections; political liberty; and the rule of law) to categorise different sub-types of democracy, namely minimalist democracy, electoral democracy, polyarchy and liberal democracy. Classifying autocratic regimes is straightforward based on the definition of minimalist democracy, which emphasises one basic criterion, competitive elections. To fulfil the minimalist standard, elections must be provide genuine choice to voters, without government intervention or manipulation of the electoral law by incumbents. In the case of Singapore, for example, the government allows periodic elections, but because it does not fulfil the minimal standard of democracy, Møller and Skanning (2013b) still categorise Singapore as an autocracy.

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The next chapter provides a more detailed conceptualisation of democracy versus non-democracy, and the major structural factors identifying deviant autocracies. Large-N quantitative analyses are used to evaluate the most important factors in regime change. The most significant predictor is then used to identify outliers or deviant autocracies since the 1960s. I also provide a list of cases that will be analysed further – in qualitative research – in subsequent chapters.

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Chapter 3: Making the Empirical Case