Disabling dissent: the colour revolutions, autocratic linkages, and civil society regulations in hybrid regimes

ABSTRACT

State elites in hybrid regimes have increasingly sought to manipulate the legal regulation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as part of the growing backlash against democracy assistance in nondemocratic countries around the world. Sophisticated laws detailing burdensome NGO registration procedures and complex regulations enabling invasive government oversight of NGOs represent upgraded forms of civic curtailment and democracy resistance. This paper analyses these significant developments in a systematic, cross-national fashion over time by constructing a new dataset of NGO legal barriers in hybrid regimes from 1995 to 2013. It demonstrates that the expansion of repressive NGO regulations are shaped by international factors, particularly autocratic linkages, in the form of trade or defence pacts with Russia and China, as well as authoritarian learning from the colour revolutions. It thus contributes to debates on autocracy promotion and authoritarian resurgence by moving beyond the regime level to focus on the sub-regime dimension of freedom of association.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid regimes
• civil society
• colour revolution
• autocracy promotion
• authoritarian learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Leah Gilbert is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Lewis and Clark College. Her research and teaching interests include democratization, civil society, regime theory, post-communist politics (with an emphasis on Russia), and European politics (with an emphasis on Germany). She speaks German and Russian and has conducted intensive fieldwork in both languages.

Gilbert, along with Payam Mohseni, is the author of an article that introduces a new conceptual map and taxonomy for hybrid regimes published by Studies in Comparative International Development (September 2011). An earlier version received recognition in the form of the Honorable Mention, Sage Paper Award for Best Qualitative Methods Paper Presented at the American Political Science Association, 2009. In addition, she has published several articles on the development and impact of civil society on democracy in Russia and Europe. Currently she is working on a project that explores states’ legal regulation of non-governmental organizations in hybrid regimes.

Payam Mohseni is the Director of the Iran Project at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a Lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University where he teaches Iranian and Middle East politics and is a multiple recipient of the Harvard Excellence in Teaching award. Mohseni serves as a scholar and member of Harvard’s Iran Working Group, which he co-chairs with Professor Graham Allison, and manages the Belfer Center’s Special Initiative Iran Matters, a premier outlet for policy analysis on all aspects of contemporary Iranian affairs. Mohseni is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York.

Mohseni’s research focuses on Iranian foreign and domestic policymaking, ideology and sectarian conflict in the Middle East, and the politics of authoritarianism and hybrid regimes. Mohseni is fluent in Persian and travels frequently to Iran. His analysis has been featured in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, The National Interest, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Bloomberg, U.S. News and World Report, and MSNBC, among others, including prominent international and Iranian media outlets. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University.

Notes

1 NGOs are non-profit and voluntary civic groups that are independent of the state. They encompass

various types of organizations, which may include associations, foundations, non-profit corporations, public benefit companies, development organizations, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, mutual benefit groups, sports clubs, advocacy groups, arts and culture organizations, charities, trade unions and professional associations, humanitarian assistance organizations, non-profit service providers, charitable trusts, and political parties (ICNL & WMD, 2012, p. 8). We do not consider trade unions and political parties as NGOs.

2 For discussions within this literature, see Carothers (2006), Diamond (2006, 2009), Gershman & Allen (2006), ICNL & WMD (2008, 2012), Plattner (2009), Stewart (2009); Risse and Babayan (2015).

3 For the authoritarian literature, see Diamond (2006, 2009), Heydemann (2007), Ambrosio (2010, 2016), Polese and Beacháin (2011); Finkel and Brudny (2012), Von Soest (2015).

4 We build on scholars such as Tolstrup (2013), who emphasize a focus on specific regime indicators when researching external influence on democratization.

5 Competitiveness is measured as electoral turnover in the legislature or executive in four electoral cycles or twenty years.

6 Dissent refers to ‘a sustained, organized … effort making collective claims of target authorities’ (Tilly, 2004, p. 53).

7 For example, see Carothers and Brechenmacher (2014).

8 For example, on the role of elites in shaping state-society relations, see Radnitz (2010), Robertson (2010), Teets (2014).

9 See footnote 3.

10 See footnote 2.

11 The ‘colour revolutions’ refer to a series of colour-based oppositional mobilizations that occurred at the time of elections and resulted in a change in the incumbent party in countries such as Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Kyrgyzstan (2005), and Lebanon (2005).

12 See for example the symposium edited by Finkel and Brudny (2012).

13 For the Russian perspective, see Cordesman (2014).

14 For example, Jackson (2010) documents the way in which Russian state elites used security alliances such as the Commonwealth of Independent States to promote their vision of NGO regulation to leaders in Central Asia after the colour revolutions.

15 We do so because we are interested in analysing NGO regulations in hybrid regimes irrespective of the form of nondemocratic regime into which they evolve. The closing down of hybrid regimes may in many ways be related to NGO curtailments, and we are interested in seeing what explanatory factors drive them to erect NGO barriers.

16 Exceptions include those dealing with LGBT issues or those addressing issues for minorities comprising less than 10% of a country’s population.

17 For the challenges NGOs have come to pose for development and democracy, see Sabatini (2002), Carothers and de Gramont (2013), Choudry and Kapoor (2013), Lang (2013).

18 We gather the intercapital distance data from Gleditsch and Ward (2001). We build on Bach and Newman’s (2010) use of 2,000 kilometres as a metric to assess policy diffusion across states.

19 As a robustness check, we also examined whether in the last three years there were riots or protests after an election. The results for our main variables of interest are not different. We also tested an alternate measure of the number of anti-government protests of at least 100 people in a given year as measured by Banks (2008). We also examined civil conflict as a dummy variable using the Uppsala and PRIO Armed Conflict dataset; Gleditsch, Wallensteen, Eriksson, Sollenberg, and Strand (2002). Our main variables of interest remain unchanged.

20 These results are robust to different cut-offs. The exception is trade at its mean value.

21 We ran a series of alternative models in order to verify the robustness of these findings. First, we ran the same models without Russia. Without Russia the only change to our main variables of interest is that the colour revolutions were no longer significant in Model 1. Second, we ran the same models while including dummy variables for the years in our analysis. There was no change in significance on our main variables of interest. Third, we tested the same models with trade, development assistance, and Western FDI at their mean and median values. The colour revolution variable is no longer significant when running models 1 and 3 at their mean and median values. There were otherwise no other changes to our main variables of interest. Lastly, we ran the same models while controlling for those cases that became more authoritarian over time. The colour revolution variable was no longer significant in Model 1, but otherwise our results remain unchanged on the main variables of interest.

22 For all predicted probabilities, we use the Clarify programme: Tomz, Wittenberg, and King (2001).

23 These numbers are 19% and 43% respectively for countries with or without significant trade with Russia and China.

24 We ran a series of alternative models in order to verify the robustness of these findings. First, we ran the same models excluding Russia without observing any changes in significance on our main variables of interest. Second, we ran the same models while including dummy variables for the years in our analysis without any changes in significance on our main variables of interest. Third, we tested the same models with trade, development assistance and Western FDI at their mean and median values. There were no differences at the mean levels, but at the median levels the colour revolutions was only significant at the .05 level. Lastly, we ran the same models while controlling for those cases that became more authoritarian over time without observing any change in the main variables of interest.