Mechanisms of semi-authoritarian regimes

As explained above, the survival of semi-authoritarian regimes hinges on skillfully displaying certain make-believe democratic features. Yet the form of these features severely lacks substance: electoral competition is stifled, the parliament is devoid of any power and the judiciary is intimidated in an inescapable manner.

In what regards popular participation, the rulers of semi-authoritarian regime play a double-faceted card: on the one hand, they claim to encourage popular empowerment and the redistribution of power, while on the other hand they forcefully stress the risk of instability that would thus be generated. By this clever maneuver, they succeed to both put on a show of openness and therefore repel criticism, while simultaneously dampening any incipient rebellion. Each of the mechanisms by which such a paralysis of opposition is engendered will be delineated as follows.

A. Limits on the transfer of power

One of the seminal pillars that keep semi-authoritarianism in place is that the transfer of power through elections is severely circumscribed. Indeed, the theoretical premises of this section (the definition provided by Sartori) clearly point to the fact that in such regimes the very crux of democracy is corrupted: the process by which others delegate to someone the authority to rule is disrupted, and thus results in a non-authentic form of representation.

While it is true that, at least at the formal level, democratic institutions are indeed in place and a certain degree of political freedom is allowed, what lies behind these pretense institutions renders the façade void of any significance. The fact that elections have been organized in many Middle Eastern countries both at the local and the national level has been interpreted as an encouraging signal and has been repeatedly cited by the Bush administration as a proof that certain motions towards democratizations are indeed occurring: “Morocco has a diverse new parliament; (…) In Bahrain, last year, citizens elected their own parliament for the first time in nearly three decades; Oman has extended the vote to all adult citizens; Qatar has a new constitution. Yemen has a multiparty political system; Kuwait has a directly elected national assembly; Jordan held historic elections this summer; the Saudi government is taking first steps toward reform.” And indeed, on the face of it, all this electoral commotion may seem to herald the germs of democratic initiatives. Yet in all these cases, competition is allowed only peripherically, at the local level or in situations in which backbenchers are defeated in the parliament. Following analysts’ observation, it must be asserted that “at the center, competition is a fiction.”

A meta-analysis of the semi-authoritarian regime reveals that power remains an utmost indisputable issue: “There is little debate over the nature of political power, where that power resides and who should hold it.” Moreover, it has been noted that power is generated by relations established among individuals and these relations are shaped outside the boundaries of institutions. This opacity results in serious difficulties when it comes to mapping out and explaining the real allocation of power, which in turn means that the regime becomes even more intricate to expose because of these entangled relations.

A second principle that catalyzes the endurance of semi-authoritarian regimes is that of partial inclusion. Instead of resorting to an evident repression of dissenters, the regime resorts to forging alliances with forces that officially constitute the opposition (this is the case in Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria). These alliances are an effective ruling tool because they reinforce the dependence of party leaders on the regime, and thus enable the latter to silence disagreement.

Additionally, the partial inclusion also targets competing economic forces, with whom various pacts are established. Yet, unlike the procedures of authoritarian regimes, these pacts do not lead to a total fusion between the economic and political power- rather, they are deals by which the regime can afford to “loosen the grip without losing the economic advantages.”

Finally, the same strategy is applied in what regards the civil society: by co-opting many of the unions and organizations, the regime plays a divide-and-rule game that denies them any possibility to coalesce into actual opposition. This mechanism is extremely effective because it is based on a win-win rapport: for the civil society organizations, collaboration with the regime means securing funds, while for the regime it means that certain tasks that may be too burdensome for the state can be delegated to these organizations (especially welfare aspects).

B. Weak institutions

From the institutional point of view, semi-authoritarian regimes have a middle-of-the-way approach between the authoritarian systems that emphasized strong institutions as a means of politically permeating all the entire fabric of society and the democratic regime that needs strong institutions as channels for a more effective representation. Instead, semi-authoritarian regimes resort to “undermining their own institutions” precisely because they need to bypass them when it comes to generating and exercising power. Relating this issue to the above discussion about the locus of power and the entwined net within which it is distributed, it results that institutions must perforce be impotent, so that they make possible the allocation of power outside their realm.

At this level too, semi-authoritarian regimes diverge from democratic ones, in that the stability of the former is based on leadership rather than on institutions. In a similar fashion to sultanist regimes, this type of leadership is highly personalistic and free from rational-legal constraints.

C. Reform disconnect

The relation between economic and political reform and whether they reinforce each other is the topic of a lengthy discussion and therefore will be approached separately in one of the following sections. What needs to be pinpointed at this level is that in Middle Eastern countries, “political opening have not led to economic reform, nor has economic reform led to a more democratic process.”

Indeed, in the case of semi-authoritarian regimes, economic change is manipulated by the regime so as not to lead to a degree of openness that might jeopardize its survival. What results from this policy of partial economic reform is a dualist economy that artificially maintains state-enterprise and thus breeds red-tape and pervasive corruption. As Ottaway pointed out, “hurried and corrupt privatization programs transfer control over major economic assets from government officials as state representatives to the same government officials as private entrepreneurs.” Because of this lack of transparency, the cronies of the ruling establishment that are granted huge economic privileges “give capitalism a bad name and fuel anti-Western sentiments.”

As in the case of political reform, the outcome is a façade market economy in which the purse strings are ultimately pulled by the state.