The ‘puzzle’ of autocratic resilience/regime collapse: the case of Cuba

Abstract

Why do some authoritarian regimes abruptly collapse, whereas others display remarkable resilience and durability? This article addresses one particularly striking example. Why did the Batista regime in Cuba unexpectedly and suddenly disintegrate in 1958 under challenge from the small guerrilla force that Fidel Castro had established in the Sierra Maestra, whereas – over half a century later – the Castro regime has not only survived as the most long-lasting system of personalist rule in existence but has actually displayed a plausible capacity to perpetuate itself after the inevitably approaching death of its founders?

Keywords:

• Cuba
• political change
• transformation
• reforms
• socialism

Notes

1. Quoted in Leogrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 367, which also quotes the president declaring in October 2007 of Cuba that ‘the dissidents of today will be the leaders of tomorrow’. Ibid.

2. Whitehead, “On Cuban Political Exceptionalism.”

3. Although the ‘personalist’ features of the regime are unmistakable, too much emphasis on the comandante and his brother distract attention from the underlying structure. Some have therefore argued that the Cuban Revolution created a ‘totalitarian’ regime and this school can reasonably cite the energetic promotion of atheism and Marxism, and official determination to create a ‘new man’, as supporting evidence. But even at its most ambitious the Castro regime allowed more debate, and tolerated more private dissent, than this terminology would suggest, and over time the intensity of its drives to secure conformity has diminished until by the past two decades it had eased into a comparatively ‘soft’ version of authoritarian rule. While the state-controlled media have always been dismally conformist, the same has never been true of Cuban culture (eg cinema and music). The regime’s adaptability and relative flexibility have undoubtedly contributed to its resilience, and reflect its over-riding focus on survival. In formal terms – as set out in the 1976 socialist constitution and reaffirmed in a 2002 amendment – it is a ‘one-party’ regime subject to the leadership role of the Cuban Communist Party, although the Party is actually only one factor among several that make up the true power structure. For more on theregime's background see Bethell 1993, Domínguez 1993, Mesa-Lago and Pérez-López 2014, Svolik 2012, and Thomas 2001.

4. Escriba-Folch and Wright, Foreign Pressure, provides an up-to-date overview of the political science literature that also recognises the distinctiveness of the Cuban case.

5. Dominguez, “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” classifies the Batista regime as becoming progressively more ‘sultanistic’, though never fully of that type, and ascribes its collapse to this tendency.

6. Journal of Democracy, April 2015, 126–127.

7. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty.

8. US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2014.

9. Dimitrov, Why Communism didn’t Collapse.

10. Leogrande, “After Fidel,” 60.

11. Daniel Bell, quoted in the Financial Times, June 22, 2015.

12. Levitsky and Way, “Linkage and Leverage.”