Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Adapting or Freezing? Ideological Reactions of Communist Regimes to a Post-Communist World
    (Cambridge University Press, 2020-07) ;
    This article studies the ideological reactions of communist regimes to the advent of a post-communist world. It examines two cases of reformed communist regimes (China and Vietnam) with two relatively unreformed cases (North Korea and Cuba) to understand different legitimation strategies employed during and after the downfall of the Soviet Union. Theoretically, the article compares two ideal-type approaches to ideology in autocratic regimes. The first approach emphasizes semantic 'freezing' over time. The consistency and coherence of ideology is underlined. The second approach argues that the success of an ideology lies in its ability to be a dynamic, adaptive force that can react with changing circumstances. Four parameters help to distinguish the freeze-frame end from the adaptation pole: (1) the autonomy over semantic changes, (2) the timing, (3) the velocity and (4) the distance that an ideology moves. Using qualitative case-based analysis that is enriched with quantitative text analysis of communist party documents, this article compares these contending conceptions of ideology with each other in the four cases. Sharing similar starting conditions in the 1970s, the article shows how China and Vietnam harnessed a flexible legitimation strategy while North Korea and Cuba adopted a comparatively rigid legitimation approach.
    Scopus© Citations 11  184
  • Publication
    What Autocracies Say (and What Citizens Hear): Proposing Four Mechanisms of Autocratic Legitimation
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017-03) ;
    Autocratic governments make claims about why they are entitled to rule. Some autocracies are more talkative than others, but all regimes say something about why they deserve power. This article takes seriously these efforts by introducing and interrogating the concept of autocratic legitimation. After engaging in a definitional discussion, it traces the development of autocratic legitimation in modern political science by identifying major turning points, key concepts, and patterns of inquiry over time. Ultimately, this introductory article aims to not only argue that studying autocratic legitimation is important, but also to propose context, concepts, and distinctions for doing so productively. To this end, the article proposes four mechanisms of autocratic legitimation that can facilitate comparative analysis: indoctrination, passivity, performance, and democratic-procedural. Finally, the essay briefly introduces the five original articles that comprise the remainder of this special issue on autocratic legitimation. The article identifies avenues for further research and identifies how each article in the issue advances down productive pathways of inquiry.
    Scopus© Citations 105  395
  • Publication
    Rising Powers and Grassroots Image Management: Confucius Institutes and China in the Media
    (Oxford University Press, 2019-12-13) ;
    This article proposes and tests a mechanism of grassroots image management to explain how rising powers craft an international environment more conducive to their interests. The aim is to promote the state's foreign policy goals by influencing the perceptions of ordinary foreign citizens. To test this mechanism, we examine the impact of China's Confucius Institutes (CIs) as an observable instrument of China's grassroots image management strategy. Using data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), we employ a spatial-temporal approach which finds that proximity to an active CI significantly and substantively improves the tone of media reporting about events relevant to China in that locality. The finding is robust to different specifications and estimation strategies, and is qualitatively consistent with results generated using household opinion data from Afrobarometer surveys. Theoretically, our results suggest the importance of systematically examining presentations and perceptions about rising powers at the popular level, in addition to focusing on elite attitudes, to understand discursive change. More directly, our findings reveal that CIs are helping to improve how China is viewed among foreign publics.
    Scopus© Citations 20  596
  • Publication
    Justifying power: when autocracies talk about themselves and their opponents
    (Taylor & Francis, 2019-01-28) ;
    It is commonly understood that authoritarian regimes attempt to legitimize their rule and de-legitimize opponents. What is less clear is the intensity with which they do so, whether (de-)legitimation varies by institutional structure, and whether and how this intensity varies in times of crisis. To address these questions, this article focuses on the types of messages that autocracies disseminate, how they vary across autocratic regime types, and how they change when confronted with system-challenging movements. The article tests expectations using quantitative events data on government statements, movements and state repression. It also examines a case of a single-party regime faced with a widespread protest movement, namely China in 1989, to investigate whether the quantitative findings manifest themselves in the dynamics of a particular episode. The article finds evidence that autocratic regimes regularly disseminate messages to legitimize their rule and de-legitimize opponents and that single-party regimes generally engage in more (de-)legitimizing rhetoric than other autocratic regime types both during ordinary times and times of regime crisis. In general, regimes scale up their (de-)legitimation efforts when they face a major system-challenging movement as well as when they choose to repress such movements.
    Scopus© Citations 10  268