Competitive Authoritarianism

To the list of methods of government–democracy, republic, monarchy, dictatorship, etc., etc.–we can add another: competitive authoritarianism.

This is when the people democratically elect an authoritarian ruler. Then later, they can elect a different authoritarian ruler.

This is indeed a form of democracy, since the people choose their leader. But instead of a rule of laws, as legislated through a democratic process and to which even the ruler is subject, competitive authoritarianism is rule by decree from a “strong man,” who, despite his almost dictatorial powers, can be voted out of office.

I came across this concept in an article from the Washington Post by Ishaan Tharoor entitled U.S. democracy slides toward ‘competitive authoritarianism’. The article thinks President Trump was an authoritarian–though few presidents were as checked and balanced as he was–and raises alarms about election deniers, January 6 insurrectionists, and the Republican threat to democracy. He doesn’t seem to face up to the implication of the concept he invokes, that Democrats must be competitive by implementing their own authoritarianism.

But Tharoor links to a scholarly article that first defined the phenomenon in the Journal of Democracy (2002) by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, entitled Elections without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism. (That work was updated in 2020 in a new article, The New Competitive Authoritarianism, which contends that this form of government is spreading.)

Levistsky and Way examine various post-colonial and post-Cold War regimes in Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, coming to these generalizations (from the original article):

In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. . . .Although scholars have characterized many of these regimes as partial or “diminished” forms of democracy, we agree with Juan Linz that they may be better described as a (diminished) form of authoritarianism. . . .

Although elections are regularly held and are generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results. . . .

Although incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes may routinely manipulate formal democratic rules, they are unable to eliminate them or reduce them to a mere façade. Rather than openly violating democratic rules (for example, by banning or repressing the opposition and the media), incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and other state agencies to “legally” harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior from critics. Yet even if the cards are stacked in favor of autocratic incumbents, the persistence of meaningful democratic institutions creates arenas through which opposition forces may—and frequently do—pose significant challenges. As a result, even though democratic institutions may be badly flawed, both authoritarian incumbents and their opponents must take them seriously.

I think Levitsky and Way are making an even stronger case than they realize. They persist in defining democracy not only in terms of the people electing the leaders of their choice but also in holding to other values, such as civil liberties and political freedom. By those standards, in terms of their title, competitive authoritarianism offers “elections without democracy.”

But it is certainly possible for democracies to suppress civil liberties and political freedom. And for the people to elect a leader but not a legislative body. In fact, this kind of system far pre-dates modern “banana republics.” The ancient Greeks invented democracy, but their democracies were plagued by this very problem. The people would elect a leader, who would then often persecute his enemies, only to be voted out of office in favor of another leader who would persecute the other side. This is why Plato would criticize democracy as a form of government as giving rise to tyranny and as being a threat to freedom, as individuals were forced to conform to the will of the majority.

Rome made a genuine advance in democratic rule with the invention of a representative republic, in which not just rulers but a legislative body were elected, and a system of laws were established that limited what even the rulers were allowed to do. The Roman republic–not the Roman empire, which replaced the republic with a divinized Emperor, though by a revolution of the people who preferred the charismatic Caesar to the slow-acting Senate–was the model followed by the American founders, who crafted the checks and balances and the authority of our written Constitution.

I agree, though, that we are headed in the direction of competitive authoritarianism. Obama, Trump, and Biden all did too much of their governing by “executive order.” And Obama and Biden presided over an executive branch that usurps both legislative and judicial functions with an all-powerful bureaucracy that regulates much of our lives.

Furthermore, it seems that American citizens are thinking in terms of competitive authoritarianism. We assume that picking the right president will cure all our woes. We put our hopes in our leader, and if we have one we disapprove of, we put our hopes in electing someone else the next time. As if the House of Representatives, the Senate, the judicial system, and our state and local functions aren’t factors in our government, other than helping or hindering the presidency of one party or the other. And in some ways they aren’t factors, as they are often reduced at their own initiative to being mere appendages of our political polarization.

Thinking in such terms can lead to expectations in those directions, which can lead to a cultural shift in favor of competitive authoritarianism. Which can lead to a political process that cares little for individual rights and liberty, but one in which the citizens simply choose one dictator after another.

Image by Vectorportal.com by Vectorportal.com