Final Exam Flashcards
According to Frantz, who are the 3 key actors in autocracy?
1) Leaders: could be military, single-party, or personalist leader
2) Elites: business leaders, party members
3) Masses: everyone else
According to Haber and other authors throughout the semester, how do autocracies take control of elites?
1) Terror: punishing others when they are disloyal (could be murder, taking away economic privileges or political power, etc.), “sticks”
2) Cooptation: giving rewards for loyalty; in business elites, economic advantages, tax breaks, etc; in political elites, political advantages, titles, offices, positions in the party, etc
3) Organization proliferation: making more groups that do similar tasks to existing groups –> makes cooperation among groups more difficult
4) Divide and conquer: don’t allow coalitions to form, keep officials moving around or make a environment in which competition is rewarded
5) Remove the desire to rebel altogether by controlling the information that the masses have available to them. if they believe the regime is doing well, they will be less likely to rise up against the state.
What is Haber’s take on the resource curse
For Haber, rather than autocracies rising up out of fights over resources and creating more instability (thus leading to strongmen autocracies), autocracies may promote investors to put money into industries that the are difficult to expropriate. Thus autocracies create incentives for resource investment.
In Grieve and Treisman conception, what are spin dictators and how do they differ from fear dictators?
Fear dictators: old school dictators, repressive, military iconography, official philosophy against democracy
Spin Dictators: new school dictators, repressive in different ways, business man/economic acumen aura, create strong veneer of democracy
Fear dictators: projet image of fear, violence, and repression; control the media through overt means (book burning, arresting journalists, blatant/boring propaganda); very isolationist international policies
Spin Dictators: limit public violence/use it as a last resort, control media by flooding airways, buying out competitive stations, making .gov stations more entertaining, making competition sites harder to access (slower internet); actively seek foreign investment/aid
What are some difference in international policy for personalist regimes as opposed to single-party or military regimes?
1) According to Geddes, military regimes are more likely to try to negotiate when confronted with uprising rather than digging in their heels and fighting back. This is because militaries have wide dissemination of power that means most of the military leaders will likely survive. because the military was a pre-existiing force, military leaders are usually more concerned with keeping the military alive (no civil war) and keeping their own positions. This is different from personalist regimes in which “tomorrow” is not so similarly guaranteed.
2) Personalist regimes are much more likely to go to war. because personalist leaders want to create a legacy, fewer people are willing to say no to the leader (repression of opposition), and the lack of personal risk, both economic and physical (leaders won’t be in the trenches), there are fewer obstacles to war in personalist regimes.
3) Single party regimes tend to be more politically stable when it comes to policy. In personalist regimes, policy can come down to the whims of the central leader but in single party regimes where most of the political elite are on the same page, policy can be more consistent.
4) Military regimes are more likely to fall due to economic shocks They are also more likely to result in a hybrid regime or a democracy than personalist regimes.
What is legibility and how can it impact suppression responses by a government?
blaydes covers this in their piece when they go over how Saddam Hussein repressed Kurds in Iraq. because he had little information on the leaders of the Kurdish protests, he utilized collective punishment as a repression tactic. Had he had a higher level of legibility, or knowledge on his people, he might’ve been able to more specifically target the leaders of the protests. Instead by utilizing collective punishment, he revealed that the state had little knowledge of its people. This then allowed people to organize more safely, increased social cohesion, encouraged group policing, and united people against the state.
How important is the media when trying to capture a government
Very.
In Macmillan and Zoido’s piece, they examined Peru’s Fujimori regime and found that media bribes were by far the largest bribes. Even when compared to individual judges and politicians, most of the bribe budget (?) went towards having the media within the governments pocket. However, what led to the downfall of the regime was the fact that this buying out was incomplete. Other media sources that were not bribed were able to catch wind of the story and exposed the government. Video evidence of these transactions made them difficult to suppress and ignore and so the regime eventually toppled.
What keep the CCP in power?
Xi uses a Leninist approach to power. This includes:
- control of political organization and the military
- a lack of political competition
- suppression of organization efforts outside the party
- vertical power, top-down
- a vanguard party
- centralization of the economy after Deng’s more free market moves
How are leaders in the CCP chosen?
In regular personalist autocracies, usually death, coups, or protests lead to end.
In China, the CCP used to have a regular rotating system. Lower level officials would have their performance evaluated and if doing well would be put into higher government positions to test/confirm their skills. In this way, it is sort of a meritocracy. However, the highest levels of power do still require some level of personal connection/
Now that Xi has taken control, term and age limits no longer exist and the informal norms that led to leaders stepping down have been ignored. With this centralization of power, there has been less turnover of officials and fewer new ideas/voices entering the CCP
According to Dickson, how are policies made in China?
Though Xi Jinping dictates the broad policy goals the party should be making, much of the details when it comes to implementation is left to local government officials. Competing interests thus lead to a lack of cohesion when it comes to these policies.
Additionally, though the system is supposed to theoretically have a two way line of information going from elites to the masses and back again, Xi’s centralization of power has made it so that local officials are reluctant to engage in policy reforms. This then cuts off the line of bottom-up information and makes it only a top-down one. In this way, public preferences are not implemented.
Do political protests in China threaten political stability?
According to Dickson, though the party believe that protests threaten stability of the regime, evidence largely points to the opposite. Since the 1989 protests, most of the protests have been local and have arisen due to local issues that easily solvable. Instead of being protests demanding for sweeping changes in the regime, most protests have instead been calls for accountability for the government to do what it says it would. the general public seems to be uninterested in democratic reform. However, Xi’s recent “reduction of oxygen” when it comes to protests by reducing people’s ability to meet and organize as well as trying to reduce the idea of protest as an option may backfire as the government will have less legibility as to what the public is thinking and feeling about the government.
Will China become a democracy?
Dickson argues that there are reasons for and against the idea that China will become a democracy.
Yes
- modernization theory: with a growing middle class, more economic freedom will lead to demands for democracy
- compatibility of capitalism and democracy
- desire for international prestige which can be won by becoming more democratic
No
- one-party regimes tend to be durable because personalist leaders are more easily replaced
- the CCP has proven to be incredibly adaptable
- increasing middle class may instead validate the regime because more people are becoming wealthier as a result of economic changes
In the end, the relationship that the party has with the people will continue to define Chinese politics.
In what ways does China today resemble the United States’s gilded age? In what ways does fit differ?
According to Yuen Yuen Ang, China currently resembles late 19th century US landscape because of the relationship corporations and politicians currently have. Corporations are currently growing rapidly due to the special privileges the government has provided them. This access money has come in the form of land grants, property rights, and tax breaks. Due to the government’s centralization of power, tax revenue has also decentralized leading to poorer local governments. This is turn has driven local governments to invest in real estate which has increased inequality.
Why has Xi changed the status quo so much so quickly?
According to blanchette in her article Xi’s Gamble, Xi sees a 10-15 year window in which a combination of factors (the US’s perceived decline in international power, the Chinese economy not growing as quickly as it did, and advances in AI) have given China a chance to secure their global position. In redefining national security by blurring the lines between internal and external acuity and putting the party before the country though, Xi is on the path to overextending the power of the CCP.
How is the Chinese middle class unique?
According to Nathan in his article on the Chinese middle class as well as Dickson in his book, the Chinese middle class is unique in that it is small and new. Many within it have jobs that are closely tied to the state and and there is less of an independent civil society when compared to middle classes in other parts of the world.
