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ABSTRACT
Authoritarian conflict management (ACM), conceptualised by Lewis et al. (Citation2018), is an analytical framework aimed at understanding how authoritarian regimes respond to violent domestic challenges in ways that reject liberal conflict resolution practices that have emerged since the 1990s. Operationally, the authors define ACM as having three pillars: discursive control, spatial control and authoritarian political economic practices. Quantitative methods have not yet been broadly applied to ACM. This study quantitatively examines violent intrastate conflict in the Middle East and Central Asia to test several assumptions undergirding ACM, namely ACM’s prevalence over time and impact on governments’ ability to garner external support in domestic conflicts. I find that regimes in these regions deployed full ACM in fewer than half of cases, and the prevalence of ACM has not increased over time. Discursive and spatial control practices were employed more frequently than authoritarian political economic interventions. Finally, regimes that deployed full ACM were more likely than regimes that did not to have received external authoritarian support; no such difference was observed vis-à-vis support from external non-authoritarian countries.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Matteo Fumagalli for his wonderful feedback at every stage of this piece. I am also grateful for the support of Raymond Hinnebusch and other members of the University of St. Andrews MECCASS department, as well as to Marika Mikiashvili. All errors are mine alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Lesch, Syria, 41.
2. Pinto, ‘Syria’, 206.
3. Aita, ‘Syria’, 294.
4. Pinto, ‘Syria’, 208.
5. Heydemann, ‘Beyond Fragility’; Daher, The Political Economic Context of Syria’s Reconstruction.
6. Batrawi, Drivers of Urban Reconstruction in Syria; Calabrese, China and Syria; Van Veen, ‘The Geopolitics of Syria’s Reconstruction’.
7. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 491.
8. Ibid., 495.
9. Ibid., 498.
10. Ibid.
11. Heathershaw and Owen, ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management in Post-Colonial Eurasia’, 270.
12. Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’.
13. Danilovic and Clare, ‘The Kantian Liberal Peace (Revisited)’.
14. Peceny et al., ‘Dictatorial Peace?’.
15. Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, 4.
16. Ibid., 15.
17. Doyle, ‘Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace’; Chandler, ‘The Uncritical Critique of Liberal Peace?’; Newman, ‘“Liberal” Peacebuilding Debates’; Sabaratnam, ‘The Liberal Peace?’.
18. Campbell et al., ‘Introduction’; Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace.
19. Campbell et al., ‘Introduction’; Chandler, ‘The Uncritical Critique of Liberal Peace?’; Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’.
20. Paris, At War’s End; Caplan, ‘Who Guards the Guardians?’; Jarstad and Sisk, ‘Introduction’; Paris, ‘Critiques of Liberal Peace’.
21. Paris, ‘Alternatives to Liberal Peace?’.
22. Richmond and Pogodda, ‘Introduction’, 2; Zürcher, ‘The Liberal Peace’.
23. Bain, ‘In Praise of Folly’, 525–527.
24. Chandler, Empire in Denial, 7; Cooper, ‘Review Article’.
25. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, 33–34; Newman, ‘“Liberal” Peacebuilding Debates’.
26. Jahn, ‘The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy’.
27. Pugh, ‘The Political Economy of Peacebuilding’, 23; Richmond and Franks, ‘Liberal Hubris?’, 27.
28. Encarnación, ‘The Follies of Democratic Imperialism’; Richmond, The Transformation of Peace; Pugh, ‘Towards Life Welfare’; Richmond and Mac Ginty, ‘Where Now for the Critique of Liberal Peace?’.
29. Belloni, ‘Hybrid Peace Governance’; Jarstad and Belloni, ‘Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance’.
30. Curtis, ‘The International Peacebuilding Paradox’; Wilén, ‘A Hybrid Peace’.
31. Mac Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace’, 406; Wallis, ‘A Liberal-Local Hybrid Peace Project in Action?’, 760–761.
32. Boege, ‘Hybridisation of Peacebuilding at the Local-International Interface’; Hameiri and Jones, ‘Against Hybridity in the Study of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding’.
33. Hameiri, ‘A Reality Check for the Critique of Liberal Peace’; Soares de Oliveira, ‘Illiberal Peacebuilding in Angola’.
34. Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous Peace-Making Versus the Liberal Peace’, 159.
35. Soares de Oliveira, ‘Illiberal Peacebuilding in Angola’; Höglund and Orjuela, ‘Hybrid Peace Governance and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka’; Russel, ‘Ramzan Kadyrov’s “Illiberal Peace” in Chechnya’; Piccolino, ‘Winning Wars, Building (Illiberal) Peace?’; Smith, ‘Illiberal Peace-Building in Hybrid Political Orders’.
36. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 487.
37. Ibid., 488.
38. Ibid., 491.
39. Ibid., 489.
40. Smith et al., ‘Illiberal Peacebuilding in Asia’.
41. Kluczewska, ‘Tajikistan’s Atomised Peace’; Chalermsripinyoray, ‘Dialogue Without Negotiation’; McCargo and Senaratne, ‘Victor’s Memory’; Lewis, ‘Sri Lanka’s Schmittian Peace’.
42. Geis and Wagner, ‘How Far Is it from Königsberg to Kandahar’.
43. Cederman, ‘Back to Kant’; Quackenbush and Rudy, ‘Evaluating the Monadic Democratic Peace’; Hegre et al., ‘Toward a Democratic Peace?’; Binningsbø et al., ‘Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006ʹ.
44. See Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy.
45. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’.
46. See Toft, Securing the Peace; Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy; Jarstad and Sisk, ‘Introduction’.
47. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 487; Heathershaw and Owen, ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management in Post-Colonial Eurasia’, 269.
48. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 491.
49. For example, Kubicek, ‘Authoritarianism in Central Asia’; Bellin, ‘Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East’; Schatz, ‘Access by Accident’; Costa Buranelli, ‘The Heartland of IR Theory?’.
50. Walt, The Origins of Alliances; Halliday and Rogan, The Middle East in International Relations.
51. Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001ʹ; Pettersson and Öberg, ‘Organized Violence, 1989–2019ʹ.
52. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 494.
53. Ibid., 493.
54. Ibid.
55. Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, ‘Spatialising Peace’; Demmers and Venhovens, ‘Bluffing the State’.
56. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 495.
57. Ibid., 495–496.
58. Björkdahl and Kappler, Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation.
59. Magdi, 1; Young, South Sudan’s Civil War, 4.
60. Reid, ‘The Postage Stamp’; Sacranie, ‘Image Politics and the Art of Resistance in Syria’.
61. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 498.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 487.
65. Hinnebusch, The International Politics of the Middle East.
66. Hicks, ‘Iran’.
67. Magdi, ‘If You Are Afraid for Your Lives, Leave Sinai!’.
68. Heathershaw and Owen, ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management in Post-Colonial Eurasia’, 269.
69. Lewis et al., ‘Illiberal Peace?’, 487; see also Heathershaw and Owen, ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management in Post-Colonial Eurasia’, 269.
70. Heathershaw and Owen, ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management in Post-Colonial Eurasia’, 270.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Keen
Michael Keen is a researcher whose work focuses on political violence in the greater Middle East. His first book, Azawad’s Facebook Warriors: The MNLA, Social Media, and the Malian Civil War (Peter Lang), will be published in July 2021.