Transcript: Understanding Authoritarianism

SN: Interviewer - Satoko Naito

ES: Interviewee-  Dr. Elina Sinkkonen

  

[00:00]

 

This is the Nordic Asia Podcast.

 

SN:

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Satoko Naito, from the Centre for East Asian studies at the University of Turku in Finland.

 

I’m very pleased today to welcome Dr. Elina Sinkkonen, senior research fellow at The Finnish Institute of international Affairs and a specialist in Chinese domestic and foreign policy and authoritarian governance.

 

She’s kindly joined and us to discuss her ideas on how to more effectively conceptualize authoritarianism, in order to better understand authoritarian regimes. Thanks so much, Elina, for joining us.

 

ES:

Thank you Satoko, and thank you for giving me this opportunity to discuss my research.

 

SN:

Of course thank you so much.

 

Could you first tell us how have authoritarian regimes been studied, to date, and what are the analytic tools that have been used, conventionally?

 

ES:

Well, when I started to research this topic and read more about authoritarianism, I noticed that in the literature there has been a really long-term focus on democratic regimes and democratization processes. So there used to even be a kind of general understanding that economic growth would somehow eventually lead into democratization in everywhere, all the regimes and countries in the world, and that has been disputed later but the modernization theories somehow still partly cling to this idea and it continues to be discussed.

 

But there are various problems on these general trends and I try to study these in my work and try to bring out certain features about authoritarian regimes that we should understand and I would like to emphasise that I think it's really important to understand authoritarian regimes from their own starting point, in their own terms and not only in relation to democracies. And this is kind of particularly a problem in the comparative quantitative research studies which use quantitative data and variables for different dimensions of political rule.

 

So in that literature the conceptualization of authoritarian regimes and their features is done often so that they are always compared to democracies and the features of authoritarian regimes are seen as what is missing from them in comparison to democracies. So, in fact that leads into a situation in which the features that are present only in authoritarian regimes but not present in democracies are just left out. 

 

[03:09]

That brings in a lot of issues because then we don't really have a comprehensive understanding of authoritarian regimes in such data sets. So, of course there is great literature on only authoritarian regimes which deal with individual countries or even with several authoritarian countries but one of the issue is that the general level political science literature hasn't been really communicating enough with this particular country-based studies.

 

So, I would like to see these variables that are present only in authoritarian regimes to be included in this International dataset so that we could have a better understanding of what is going on in in governance in different regimes.

 

One thing that I’ve I found specifically missing is a phenomena that affects many of the authoritarian regimes in the current times, and that is that authoritarianism can actually deepen in countries that are already authoritarian. There wasn't really a proper definition for such development because in the general level literature, the concentration is on democratization.

 

And although there is also new research introducing a concept called autocratization, which would I refer to the reverse procedure, they don't really conceptualized a deepening autocratization in already authoritarian countries in a manner that that would make sense and I have tried to contribute to this this discussion by giving some ideas what could be the variables that we could look at and that how we could measure them and watch we should look into more detail in the future studies.

 

[05:02]

SN:

I see so these features that are only seen in authoritarian regimes that are usually or maybe always absent from democratic government, what exactly are these variables that you’ve identified?

 

ES:

Well, first of all, there is a very brilliant book by Barbara Geddes and her collaborators. And they point out that there are different types of authoritarian regimes, so we should first remember the typology: military dictatorship and party-based dictatorship function differently, and they stay in power in different ways, there are different mechanisms. So, you cannot really think of these authoritarian regimes as the opposite of democratic regimes, rather you should think about all the specific features.

 

So there are, there must be some factors that I haven't yet listed that are specific to these regimes but we can look at the level of personalization, how much power is concentrated to the one leader or a small clique that that governs the authoritarian regime, and this concept is from the Barbara Geddes and her collaborators book from 2018. And they have and things that we can measure and they actually have a quantitative data set measuring their level of personalization in different countries.

 

But then there are also other things and scholars looking at China and Kazakhstan have noticed that administrative centralization is something that can vary in different authoritarian countries. So how much resources are given to local governments on the provincial level for instance, and this is something authoritarian regimes don't usually like to decentralize and give power to lower-level governments.

 

But in China and Kazakhstan there has been a fluctuation of this. So, China's economic growth in the past has kind of being dependent on this decentralization quite a bit because the local governments understand their local needs quite well and that's being really beneficial for the China’s GDP growth. But now that trend is reversed and China's moving towards increased centralization also when it comes to resources.

 

[07:27]

What is interesting and useful here is to know that the International Monetary Fund has a ready-made variable for this, so everyone can have a look at how the variables functions from the IMF web page. So that is useful and helpful.

 

And then a third thing that I've been looking at is a more general category of things and that is state control over key economic assets. And that's a bit more tricky to measure in a comparative sense because the conditions in different authoritarian countries differ quite a bit. In China there is, of course you can look at for instance things like how much state-owned enterprises make of China’s GDP growth or GDP production in general there are figures for that, but then in some other countries there are not so many data or so big role for state-owned Enterprises.

 

In Russia, for instance, the structure of ownership is more diverse, and although President Putin has basically control over many of these companies and their functioning, it's not administered in the same way as in China so you can't really easily figure out how one should best compare these cases.

 

But this is an important because in China we are seeing currently that the centralization trend is really strong and there is new legislation coming on all the time and also the social credit system that China has created during Xi Jinping time is something that covers all the enterprises as well. So, there are different mechanisms to make sure that the economic elite won’t get too strong and challenge the leadership.

 

 

[09:22]

SN:

Thank you I would love to return to the specific issue of China, but I would like to go back a little bit. You mentioned that in conventional studies or studies to date, there has been a focus on democratic governments and on the autocratization of democratic governments and less of a focus on stable authoritarian regimes or those that become more authoritarian over time. Could you expand a little bit on that point?

 

ES:

Yes Satoko, that's exactly right. I think one thing that would be important for everybody to understand is that all the regimes that want to stay in power have to continuously adapt to all the changing situations in the world. They might be domestic factors that change or technological innovations that change the way regimes can handle things and that means that stability is actually a process of continuous movement.

 

So if a country wants to stay authoritarian, it has to constantly make changes in order to stay in power. And also of course this applies to democratic countries. So democracy is not something that once you reach democracy that that situation will stay forever, unless you actively take measures to support the democracy and democratic system.

 

In authoritarian regimes there has been in the literature somehow the kind of assumption that authoritarian regimes, when authoritarianism has been reached or that that is the current situation that would somehow eventually stay like that unless economic growth starts and changes things. But these are really simplified understandings. I think it's important to look at in in more detail what are the measures that different type of authoritarian regimes take in order to stay in power and there is more room for research on this topic.

 

And one thing that constantly changes is, for instance, the technological development. And for authoritarian regimes, this has given new tools to strengthen their authoritarianism.

 

And also the factor that economic growth at some point leads into more stable authoritarian regimes, is something that should be acknowledged. So it's not so simple and China is a prime example of a country that has been really able to use new technologies to strengthen their government and stabilize the authoritarian regime style, so for instance, internet has never been completely free in China. There has been a constant fluctuation of the level of measures and concrete tools how internet has been managed.

 

But the party and its officials have been able to keep internet under control the whole time. So also it's flawed to think that technological development or social media or something like that will just automatically change things. Although, in the 2010s when there was democratic type of movements going on in Northern Africa there was kind of a general atmosphere of hopefulness toward mobile communications and how that could ease up opposition forces and there are democratic aims in different countries.

 

But then after that features in the global scene that unfortunately have made us a bit more pessimistic again on that the roles technology can play in either strengthening or challenging authoritarian regimes.

 

 

[13:13]

 

SN:

Right. In terms of these technological innovations of course there's social media but there's also something you mentioned briefly the IT-based social credit system in China. I saw somewhere that it is actually not a centralized system. Is this then not yet an effective tool for the CCP in terms of maintaining its control over the population?

 

ES:

The social credit system is a work-in-progress at the moment. A recent publication by Greenhouse proceeds to define the social credit system as a framework of initiatives rather than a coherent whole. But of course it has different parts so there is one social credit system concentrating on enterprises, so the commercial life, and that is more developed.

 

And actually when it comes to the motivations for the whole system it's also worth mentioning that it's not just developed as a tool for oppression only. It has also other motivations behind. For instance a Chinese consumers have for long been disappointed about the quality of certain products, and then the companies are just selling products that might even be dangerous. So the governance of these issues have been poor in the past and there has been for instance scandals related to baby milk products that were actually poisonous and the level of trust towards certain companies has been really low.

 

So there are also good and generally well meaning motivation for this system to target the companies that are not really following the rules and are selling something that is not safe for consumers. So that's something to be noticed but then of course because it's a complicated system and it also collects data from different sources and it can even include health information to other sources of information and it’s not really always clear when it comes to the citizen side of social credit system. Where the information comes from that might depend on the province the person lives in and there are several ways in which commercial and more state-related bodies are cooperating and it's not made clear to the citizens who is really collecting what.

 

[15:42]

So all these features are really problematic. And then if you get blacklisted, you can get blaclisted for several reasons, but if you get in there then they can prevent your usage of credit cards and make your life really difficult. So in that sense for political opposition and the future of Chinese political opposition these sort of tools are of course really worrisome.

 

And then there is also the issue that China also tends to sell some of these Innovations into different countries that are willing to buy by such things. So China might sell it to some other authoritarian regimes. And then the problem it poses for opposition forces and regular citizens is not just related to the Chinese population anymore. so these are some of the things that I’ve been worrying a little bit when following the social that the development of social credit system

 

SN: I see, of course it’s very complicated, thank you for explaining it. I want to make sure to get in some phrases because there are your own original vocabulary and one is dynamic dictatorships you already explained the concept behind it that there needs to be adjustments made constantly in any sort of regime our government, be it democratic or not, and I think that's a significant point that I just wanted to mention. But also another phrase that I've seen in your work is deepening autocratization. So what I'm understanding is that Xi Jinping has been effective in deepening autocratization in China, is that correct in your view? 

 

 

[17:23]

ES:

Yes, you are right. Autocratization has deepened during the whole time Xi Jinping has been in power. And I define deepening autocratization as process of increasing either power concentration or domestic repression or both of these. Actually, if you read my article that was published in Democratization, I've made a graph of these processes which might make it a bit easier to understand when you have a visual graph. Because it's open access I can recommend everybody to have a look. It would mean that we would look into level of personalization administrative centralization and state control over economic assets. And that would form the sort of elite level of the puzzle. And Xi has increased the power of concentration on all of these three measures that I discussed earlier a bit in more detail.

 

But then of course there is the domestic repression level side. So, related to more wider societal level we can look at the level of repression of civil liberties or political rights. These are actually something that the international data sets that I criticized earlier already measure quite well. So, the societal level is more properly covered and what is more missing in the general political science literature is the elite level dynamics in authoritarian regimes because that's something that doesn't really have an equivalent in the in the democratic countries or the definition of democracy.

 

When we look at the elite level trends we can clearly see that although Xi Jinping’s predecessor Hu Jintao tried out a more collective leadership style, Xi has a moved on and concentrated power and he got all the top positions as soon as his term started including the chairmanship of the military commission. And the presidential term limits were eliminated in 2018 and there has been a huge military reform and other administrative reforms and a new political bodies. So you can give kind of countless examples of the ways the personalization process has deepened in during Xi’s time.

 

[19:55]

And then the administrative centralization can be easily measured with the IMF fiscal data set. And then there has been a really wide range of reforms taking place regarding the Chinese economy more broadly speaking. So state-owned enterprises have regained some powers and economic activities in some other sectors have been limited or regulated so that it's more difficult to function as used to be possible. So the trend is towards dividing the economic resources more equally, and that means that of course private entrepreneurs have it more difficult in China in these days.

 

And that can of course prevent innovations in certain sectors but that's exactly what the leadership seems to be wanting, that they want the Innovations to concentrate in the strategically important sectors that have been defined already in certain policy paper so artificial intelligence and militarily useful technology for instance. Huawei has been able to function as before. These things haven't changed but if you want to produce product for commercial purposes and entertainment purposes then that has been made more difficult.

 

SN:

Right. In terms of strategic industries of course right now, within the last couple of years, the pharmaceutical industry is big and I'm wondering the covid pandemic, how have you seen it affect autocratization in China and what would you like to look out for going forward?

 

ES:

Covid doesn't really challenged the Chinese leadership in any profound way. The Chinese citizens have are used to and are more kind of accepting off of the really strict limitations the regime has has posed on citizens. And it's been a really aggressive tactic but people seem to be mostly okay with that. So we haven't seen any protest movements and there have been even applications on mobile phones measuring the predisposition to coronavirus and these apps have shared the information with local authorities including the police.

 

[22:20]

So this would be unthinkable in Finland that your health information would be tracked and shared with some authority. So, people have been accepting this but of course it's difficult for the Chinese economic system to continue restricting travel and functioning of international business forever like this. So that's one thing and of course, well, everyone has to find new ways of dealing with the different variants of the virus and we don't know when this will end and how it will change in the future. So of course we all hope that at some point things will return to more normal and the vaccines will function so that international travel can be allowed.

 

But at this point of course the COVID situation gives the Chinese authorities also convenient ways to prevent public gatherings or a limit the movement of citizens and you can always just say that it's due to COVID or something like that even though the reason might be something else. So for instance the situation of international journalists and how difficult it has been to get into China is one example of this and when you don't have you don't have the international journalists present in in China, then it's more difficult to get information on what is going on in there. So these travel restrictions are in some ways convenient for Chinese autocratic regime, but I’m hoping that at some point we could move back towards a bit more normal situation because this is a really difficult state of affairs for  journalists, for people who work in China, and also for scholars who would like to do field work so I can just imagine how difficult it might be for a PhD student hoping to do field work in China when the COVID situation just continues.

 

 

[24:20]

SN:

Right, you're certainly correct of course for so many reasons. Hopefully the situation improves. Thank you so much Elina, it's been really eye-opening and thank you for sharing your wide expertise and for your time today.

 

ES:

Well thank you so much it was really a pleasure talking with you.

 

SN:

Thanks a lot. And to our listeners, thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.

 

 

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