States interact with their national communities abroad in very different ways. In some cases, they actively support and protect them. In other cases, they co-opt and exploit their national communities abroad in that they reach out to them in order to tap into, thus benefitting domestically, from their economic and financial potentials or to garner political support. In still other cases, they repress or coerce their communities abroad, thus conceiving the latter not as an asset but as a possible challenge or threat that needs to be controlled. Against this background, the chapter first explores the general motivations and objectives as to why states interact with their national communities abroad, in the form of “support,” “co-optation,” and “repression.” Then, it discusses key practices that states employ in this interaction, along three substantive dimensions, namely: diplomacy and consular, economy and social, and security. Next, possible drivers that condition whether, how, and for what reason states interact with their communities abroad are presented. This is followed by a discussion on how the countries covered in this volume were selected. The concluding section presents the plan of the book and briefly summarizes the individual chapters.

Chapter 10 takes stock of the evidence and looks ahead at the long-run implications of women’s political inclusion for broader processes of development and social change. It argues that women’s political inclusion hinges on their ability to navigate resistance and co-optation. If they are able to achieve real political representation, it suggests it is likely to yield important changes to governance and development more broadly.

This chapter brings into dialogue the insights of the three partial theory frames on legitimation, repression, and co-optation. Instead of looking at their individual functions and effects, this chapter proposes a conjunctural perspective. The conceptual cement that holds together these three frames is the concept of “complementarity.” Borrowing from the Varieties of Capitalism debate, it puts forward that complementarity can follow an understanding of contrast (A serves as the missing ingredient for B), of similarity (A and B are synergetic), or an economic approach of complementary goods (negative cross-price elasticity of A and B). The relationship between forms of legitimation, repression, and co-optation is assessed against these three understandings of complementarity. The chapter demonstrates why certain factors go together better than others, making the case for the two logics of over-politicization and de-politicization.

This chapter is concerned about the role of elites in autocratic regimes. It focuses mainly on business and military elites and asks how autocracies can bind these actors to their inner sanctum. It reviews previous decades of research, highlighting the recent institutionalist turn in comparative authoritarianism, but also traces back debates about neo-patrimonialism, clientelism, patronage, and corruption. The chapter introduces the conceptual distinction between co-optation in formalized arenas like political parties and parliaments as well as in the shadowland of informality. It argues that intra-elite cohesion can be secured via reactive and preventive measures as well as by absorbing new members (widening) or by interweaving interests and instilling a feeling of reciprocity (deepening) among the elite members. The chapter ends by explicating concrete operationalization advice for empirical research.

The Introduction outlines the main arguments of the book. While democracies can be aptly characterized as systems of “ruled open-endedness, or organized uncertainty” (Przeworski), autocratic rule attempts to do the opposite by trying to square the circle and organize certainty. Autocracies fear surprises and do everything they can to rule out chance. They want to control what the people think, and they want to repress dissent and co-opt potentially deviant elites. Yet, they face trade-offs and hard budget constraints. Against this backdrop, the two-logics theory is introduced. The theory argues that certain configurations of forms of legitimation, repression, and co-optation go together better than others, resulting in an ove-rpoliticizing or a de-politicization logic. While the former aims at mobilization, the latter aims at political apathy. The Introduction also familiarizes the reader with the empirical material that the book draws upon. It analyzes forty-five autocratic regime episodes in East Asia, ranging from 1945 to 2008.

This chapter addresses the challenge of endogeneity, testing Master Hypothesis 4. Some critics of the grievance-based literature argue that endogeneity may undermine the link between exclusion and conflict, and by implication the opposite one linking inclusion to peace. Endogeneity derives from the fact that the governments' decisions to include or exclude could be motivated by the anticipation of conflict. We counter this threat to inference by articulating a causal pathway that explains ethnic groups' access to power independently of conflict. Focusing on postcolonial states, we exploit differences in colonial empires' strategies of rule to model which ethnic groups were represented in government at the time of independence. This identification strategy allows for estimating the exogenous effect of inclusiveness on conflict. We find strong and systematic evidence that - at least for the post-colonial world - inclusion in governmental power sharing systematically reduces the likelihood that ethnic groups become involved in ethnic civil war. Our instrumental-variable analysis confirms Master Hypothesis 4, because we have found that governments tend to co-opt potential rebels rather than excluding them.

In this chapter, we explore an actor-centric approach that emphasizes strategic interaction and offers an alternative to IV-estimation to pursue the evaluation of Master Hypothesis 4. We proceed in two steps. First, we introduce a simple formal model that captures the most important strategic dimension and highlights what is crucial for reverse causation: The conditions under which governments are likely to share power depending on the level of threat posed by a domestic challenger. As we have shown in Chapters 3 and 6, previous research on the origins of power sharing highlights either government incentives for the co-optation of threatening challengers through power sharing arrangement or risk-diversion by means of exclusion so as to avoid perilous infighting. Rather than favoring either consideration at the expense of the other, the model presented here unifies these mechanisms and shows that both have their place - depending on the challenger's level of threat as well as the government's ability to provide credible guarantees. In a second step, the chapter provides a novel statistical estimator that closely mirrors the strategic logic of the theoretical model, but also accounts for the selection on unobservables. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups around the globe since World War II, the model offers strong evidence that governments do indeed strategically use power sharing as a way of managing the risk of conflict. In short, power sharing is systematically endogenous to conflict as suggested by Master Hypothesis 4. Moreover, the results reaffirm that power sharing systematically causes peace, and that naïve analyses that do not account for endogeneity tend to underestimate this effect.

Civil society in the Arab region successfully mobilized dissent during the 2011 uprisings. In particular, youth and women movements, surprised many international and domestic audiences by leading massive peaceful protests against their authoritarian regimes. Despite their initial success, these movements failed to bring liberal reforms or facilitate democratic transitions and soon lost their momentum and popular support. Chapter 5 highlights how civil society in most parts of the Arab world was undermined and why it failed to play a more consequential role in constitution-making and democratization. It first examines why the characteristics of constitution-making process matter if civil society is to succeed in its democratizing role. The chapter also looks at both endogenous and exogenous factors impacting civil society’s failure that persist across the region. The endogenous factors hindering the work of most CSOs in the region include lack of organizational capacity as well as lack of public legitimacy. The two exogenous factors that contributed to civil society’s failure in playing a more prominent role in democratization are the negative impact of societal cleavages and conflict on the work of civil society as well as the undemocratic forces of the military or international interventions.

Chapter 3 examines the political opportunity structure in Tunisia, followed by three more closed regimes (Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Zambia), and ending with Brazil. In each comparative case, we trace the effect of the political opposition structure to the adaptations and strategies adopted by different political groups within the constraints the state placed upon them.

Based on a case study on Germany in the first half of the twentieth century, this chapter addresses the administrative dimension of liberal-democratic backsliding by examining the role the state bureaucracy played in the process of system transformation from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi regime. It shows how the state bureaucracy in Germany was approached and transformed by illiberal politicians in the late Weimar Republic and under Hitler. Despite the existence of a professional Weberian bureaucracy with strong regulative barriers against politicization in the Weimar Republic, the civil service did not function as a safeguard of the democratic system. Instead, many civil servants welcomed the roll-back of democratic principles, which facilitated the radical transformation and politicization of the bureaucracy in a short time. This case study underlines the significance of institutionalizing democratic values in the civil service in processes of democratization in order to strengthen its resilience to attempts of eroding liberal democratic institutions.

In Nakivale, the institutional context can be characterised as ‘co-optation’. Many refugees accuse UNHCR and its implementing partners (IPs) of ‘stealing’ their better ideas. Some IPs have justified independently pursuing ideas generated with refugees on the grounds of the limited capacity or competence of RCOs. UNHCR’s limited faith in the capacity of RCOs means that there are few opportunities for RCOs to work with them or their partners beyond being arbitrarily included in events or activities organised by formal providers. This chapter explores how the reaction of refugees to this distrust has been a mutual ‘scepticism’: they lack confidence in the formal organisational structures and thus often disengage. Many community leaders are reluctant to register their CBOs or to work collaboratively with UNHCR and its implementing partners when opportunities do arise. Where possible, RCOs prefer to retain their independence rather than risk their ideas being ‘stolen’ by IPs and used as evidence for their commitment to community-led development in order to attract further international funding.

In this concluding chapter, I briefly recap the main findings and then examine their broader implications. The case of Wukan Village shows how the strategy of informal control can be effective in the short run but backfire in the long run. The most effective check on autocratic state power is unlikely to come from the state itself, but from an adversarial relationship between local civil society and the state. Independent community leaders and activists who can mobilize their groups and threaten officials with broad-based political mobilization can even the balance of power between the state and society, and create meaningful incentives for responsiveness.

In this chapter, I turn my attention to the dynamics of co-optation of local notables. One might expect that the inclusion of communal elites in local political institutions might strengthen the voice of villagers and make local governments more responsive. By contrast, I argue that when communal elites are included in formal political institutions in rural China, they help the state control their group. Drawing on evidence from case studies, an original experiment, and a national dataset, I show how the inclusion of local elites in formal political bodies allows the state to requisition land and enforce family planning policy while forestalling collective action. Case studies from Scotland and the United States suggest that this mechanism of informal control may have applicability beyond China. When the leaders of communal groups remain outside the state, however, they can help to organize resistance against it.