Patron-client state relations and the geopolitics of authoritarian survival and breakdown: evidence from the MENA countries

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explain how the international relations of authoritarian regimes shape their reaction to nonviolent popular mobilisation. We identify four main strategies of authoritarian survival and argue that – from the incumbents’ perspective – repression and democratic opening are riskier than informal and formal co-optation. Thus, we ask why some nondemocratic rulers select riskier rather than safer strategies. Although recent studies have devoted much attention to the relevance of international factors in shaping domestic politics, this proposition has not been thoroughly theorised nor scrutinised empirically. We focus on authoritarian regimes that have established patron–client relations with foreign powers and argue that patrons’ regimes influence the selection of specific survival strategies by threatened clients. We hypothesise that dictators with democratic patrons are induced to adopt riskier strategies of survival, whereas clients of autocracies are more likely to select safer strategies. We test our hypothesis on MENA countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarian regimes
• foreign patrons
• breakdown
• strategies of survival

Acknowledgements

This paper is a revised version of a manuscript we presented on various occasions: at the ECPR Joint Sessions Workshop in 2019, at the XXXIII Italian Society of Political Science Annual Conference in 2019 and at the 72nd Political Studies Association Annual International Conference in 2022. We thank all discussants for their suggestions. We would also like to thank Stefano Costalli and Ruth Hanau Santini for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Finally, we would like to thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their time and constructive comments that helped improve the manuscript. We remain responsible for all errors and omissions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Even acknowledging that strategies of survival are not always mutually exclusive (Gerschewski, 2013), we treat different strategies as substitutes rather than complements for three main reasons. First, during crisis the lack of reliable information and the need to react swiftly may induce dictators to opt for a dominant strategy rather than for a combination of tools in order to rapidly tackle actual challenges. Second, some strategies are clearly incompatible with others. For instance, widespread repression cannot be used in conjunction with democratic opening, or with the introduction of institutions supposed to increase participation and representation. Finally, focusing on particular responses allows us to investigate the specific conditions under which a certain strategy is employed in more detail.

2 In the MENA a client of both a democracy (the U.S.) and an autocracy (Saudi Arabia) is Bahrain.

3 One example of a MENA country with two autocratic patrons is Syria, whose main sponsors are Russia and Iran.

4 We treat states that have both democratic and autocratic patrons as clients of autocracies, given that under these circumstances, the strategies adopted by the latter are supposed to prevail.

5 Due to space limits and the specificities of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia (2011), the Jordanian protests (2011) and February 20 movement in Morocco (2011), we discuss these cases separately in the online appendix (File- A, available at the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sl7G-rUIU-p3H9CeJMAGu1apsv5mqAN2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111261853203062674151&rtpof=true&sd=true).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Loretta Dell’Aguzzo

Loretta Dell’Aguzzo is a research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Florence, Italy. Her research focuses on authoritarianism, democratisation and state formation with a regional focus on post-communist and Middle East countries.

Emidio Diodato

Emidio Diodato is Associate Professor of International Politics and Political Science in the Department of Human and Social Sciences at University for Foreigners of Perugia, Italy. His research focuses on geopolitics, foreign policy and international relations theory. His latest publication is Berlusconi. The Diplomat (Palgrave – MacMillan 2019).