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Abstract
Severe natural disasters encourage the international community to donate humanitarian aid (materials and personnel) to the affected country, which is critical for its human security. Some authoritarian regimes, however, rationally reject such aid despite the dire situation of their people. When an authoritarian regime decides whether to accept foreign humanitarian aid for severe natural disasters or not, it considers two political factors: (1) the risk and (2) the need to accept aid, which is a type of exogenous shock that may threaten the stability of the regime and its survival. This paper considers the factors of risk (regime type, domestic struggle, and international pressure) as inherent and contingent determinants of regime stability, and the need factors by looking at the different types of sources from which the regime gains its legitimacy (electoral mandate, economic development, or ideology). If the risk is less and the need is more, the regime is more likely to accept the aid, otherwise not. The two authoritarian regimes hit by severe natural disasters – the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and the 2008 Cyclone Nargis–caused floods in Myanmar – are considered as salient cases for the external variation between authoritarian regimes. This paper also finds some critical internal variation within an authoritarian regime and its differing responses during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and two other disasters – the 1976 Tangshan earthquake and the 2010 Qinghai earthquake.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Eun Mee Kim, Ian Holliday, all participants of the International Academic Symposium ‘Myanmar: 2010 Election and Beyond’ (The University of Hong Kong, 23–25 June 2010), multiple Chinese and Myanmarese experts and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. This research was supported by the WCU (World Class University) program through National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Korea (Grant No. R32-20077).
Wooyeal Paik is an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea, and visiting researcher at the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Previously, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Political Science, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, China. He received a BA in political science from Yonsei University, an M.Phil in public and social administration from City University of Hong Kong, and an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Specializing in comparative politics and international relations, his recent research focuses on the comparative authoritarianism, political economy and state-society relations of contemporary China and other East Asian countries, and international security in Northeast Asia. His recent publications include ‘From autonomous areas to non-autonomous areas: the politics of Korean minority's migration in contemporary China’ (Modern China, forthcoming January 2012), ‘I want to be expropriated!: The politics of Xiaochanquanfang land development in suburban China’ (Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming March 2012), and ‘Economic development and mass political participation in contemporary China: determinants of provincial petition (Xinfang) activism 1994–2002’ (International Political Science Review, forthcoming January 2012).
Notes
1. This paper only considers these two regime types for theoretical simplicity to show the two ends of the spectrum, leaving out personalist and other hybrid regimes, which should be considered in future study.
2. This logic comes from a loose version of ‘the size of ruling coalition’ theory – see for example De Mesquita et al. (2003).
3. Note that there are other sources (foreign patronage/protection, charisma, politically defining moment, and so forth) and different approaches to the subject of regime legitimacy, see for example Alagappa (1995: 11–68). For more conceptualization of legitimacy, see Barker (Citation1990); Scott (1985: 331–40); Weber (1947; 1978). For the relevance of ‘legitimacy’ in social scientific research, see Alagappa (1995: 3–8).
4. An authoritarian regime certainly derives its legitimacy from multiple sources, just like these three East Asian regimes. Admittedly, this makes the theoretical framework more complicated and should be addressed in future works.
5. A Chinese disaster relief expert who was deeply involved in the government's reconstruction in the Sichuan earthquake–affected areas said, ‘The Party finally understood that it can get more benefits than suffer losses by opening up the disaster areas and actively seeking for outside [foreign] help. Doing so, it vastly improved its legitimacy and showed its confidence to international community’ (interview, Beijing, 22 October 2009). Several other Chinese experts agreed with this evaluation (multiple interviews, Beijing and Chengdu, 23–26 October).
6. For a historical background, see McCarthy (Citation2006).
