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UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANODipartimento di Scienze Sociali e PoliticheGraduate School in Social and Political SciencesDoctoral programme in Political Studies (SPS/04)CITIZENS’ WELLBEING INCOMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIANREGIMESCandidateAndrea CassaniSupervisorProf. Giovanni Marco CarbonePh.D. Programme DirectorProf. Antonella BesussiDoctoral CommitteeProf. Matthijs Bogaards, Prof. Stefano Sacchi; Prof. Claudius WagemannAcademic Year 2012/2013XXVI Cycle
ContentsIntroduction.p. 4Chapter 1. Competitive autocracies: A definition, their classification, andp. 10measurement.1.1 How to define, classify, and measure competitive authoritarianism.p. 111.1.1 Conceptualization.p. 111.1.2 Classification.p. 121.1.3 Operationalisation.p. 131.2 Defining competitive authoritarianism.p. 141.2.1 Political regime.p. 151.2.2 In the background of competitive authoritarianism: The identityp. 17question.1.2.3 Defining competitive authoritarianism.1.3 Classifying competitive authoritarianism.p. 19p. 231.3.1 CA vs. Democracy.p. 241.3.2 CA vs. Mass-based regimes.p. 271.3.3 CA vs. Non-inclusive regimes.p. 301.4 Measuring competitive authoritarianism.p. 331.4.1 Periods of no authority.p. 331.4.2 Open regimes: Competitive authoritarianism and democracy.p. 351.4.3 Full authoritarian regimes: Single-party, hereditary, and militaryp.37regimes.1.5 Checking validity.p. 38
1.5.1 Comparing alternative measures.p. 401.5.2 Competitive autocracies: Origin, diffusion, duration.p. 41Appendix 1.A: Coding Rules.p. 47Appendix 1.B: List of Political Regimes.p. 51Chapter 2. Competitive authoritarianism and citizens’ wellbeing: Theory andp. 56hypotheses.2.1 Literature review.p. 572.2 Citizens’ well-being: Concept and measurement.p. 612.3 The consequences of competitive authoritarianism on citizens’ wellbeing.p. 642.3.1 A premise.p. 642.3.2 Incentives.p. 652.3.3 CA vs. Democracy.p. 672.3.4 CA vs. Full authoritarian regimes.p. 712.4 The role of time and context.p. 832.4.1 Consolidation of competitive authoritarianism.p. 832.4.2 Regional context.p. 90Chapter 3. Empirical analysis: Evidence from a TSCS analysis and a cross-p. 104regional comparison.3.1 Dataset.p. 1053.2 Dependent variable(s).p. 1063.3 Control variables.p. 1103.4. Statistical model.p. 115
3.4.1 Main alternative dynamic specifications.p. 1163.4.2 Application.p. 1183.5 Analysis.p. 1233.5.1 Hypotheses.p. 1243.5.2 Diagnostics and robustness checks.p. 1263.6 A note on tables.p. 1293.7 Findings: Hypotheses 1 and 2.p. 1333.7.1 CA vs. Democracy.p. 1343.7.2 CA vs. Full authoritarian regimes.p. 1373.7.3 CA vs. Full authoritarian subtypes.p. 1423.7.4 Robustness checks.p. 1463.7.5 Control variables.p. 1483.8 Findings: Hypothesis 3.p. 1493.9 Findings: Hypothesis 4.p. 153Appendix 3.A: Descriptive Statistics.p. 157Appendix 3.B: Short- and Long-term Effects.p. 159Appendix 3.C: Marginal Effects Analysis.p. 167Appendix 3.D: Regression Analysis.p. 174Chapter 4. Whether, how and to what extent competitive authoritarianismp. 194counts: Drawing conclusions.Bibliography.p. 206
IntroductionThe idea that living in countries ruled by different political regimes matters beyondthe political sphere is a fascinating one. It echoes in the words of politicians,international agencies’ practitioners, non-governmental organizations’ activists,journalists. Recently the issue has also become object of thorough academic research.In both cases, however, the debate has been characterized by a marked ‘democraticbias’. We naturally tend to associate improvements in citizens’ material livingconditions with democracy. We thus tend to focus, exclusively or so, on democraticreforms. In doing so, we are implicitly consigning about half of developing world toneglect and hopelessness at once. In a even more superficial way, we are overlookingthe complexity of the processes of political transition occurred in the past threedecades. Democracy is only part of the story. The present research aims to startfilling this void, by studying the consequences of political change short ofdemocratization on the wellbeing of citizens.(re-)Introducing competitive authoritarianism.Between the mid 1970s and the first half of the 1990s, a sensational number oftransitions from authoritarian rule took place in close sequence all over the globe.One after the other, a wave of democratization overwhelmed Mediterranean Europe,Latin America, Eastern Europe, part of Asia, and finally reached the shores of Africa.Beyond that evocative image reality was much more varied. Many of these processesof regime change effectively resulted in the introduction of political democracy. Forseveral others the outcome was less certain. Often the crisis of an existingauthoritarian regime caused its collapse, started a phase of transition typicallyaccompanied by the partial opening of the political system, yet it did not lead todemocracy. Not always the call of free multi-party elections, nor their4
institutionalization as the main instrument to gain political power corresponded to thedemocratization of a country.Contrary to the sequence theorized by Huntington, however, the partial failure ofthese democratic experiments did not represent an ebb. Rather than getting reversed,many of the new multiparty systems survived. The explanation of the non-lineartrajectory of political change followed by these regimes differed from one case toanother. Scholars focused either on the absence of economic, social, cultural prerequisites (Diamond et al., 1989 and 1995), on political elites’ merely instrumentalcommitment to democracy, the lack of linkages to the West (Levitsky and Way,2010), or on a combination of them. Invariably, however, the result was theinstitutionalization of some hybrid form of political regime, characterized by coexistence of formally democratic institutions with persistently authoritarian practicesof governance. The side-effect of this wave of democratization has been theformation of a “gray zone” between democracy and autocracy (Carothers, 2002).By the end of the 1990s, hybrid regimes became the predominant institutional settingof the developing world (Schedler, 2006), although they took differentconfigurations. In several cases multi-party elections failed to reduce the rulingparty’s hegemony and its control of political power, In Kazakhstan, for instance,President Nursultan Nazarbayev postponed multi-party presidential elections until1999, while his People’s Unity party won 1994 and 1995 legislative electionsvirtually unchallenged. In many others, a larger degree of political competition wasallowed. Sometimes this corresponded to replacement of the old ruling elite, as ithappened with the victory of Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party in 1992 Albanianelections. Typically, however, this took place under the medium-to-long term reignof the same party, be it the Movement for Multi-party Democracy in Zambia orthe Kenya African National Union in Kenya.These latter competitive variants of authoritarianism are regimes in which “formaldemocratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining andexercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an5
extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards fordemocracy” (Levitsky and Way, 2002: 52).Research goals and meralnature,competitiveauthoritarianism has triggered a lively academic debate. The relative novelty of thispolitical phenomenon challenged most consolidated theories of democratization andraised many new questions. Researchers studied the origins of these regimes,theorized about their functioning, and analyzed their ability to endure. These worksmade a valuable contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon. We learnedabout the causes of its recent spread in conjuncture with the end of the Cold War. Wediscovered that, rather than a source of fragility, the interaction of democratic andautocratic institutions may even strengthen incumbents’ hold on power.To date, however, relatively little attention has been paid to another relevant issue:the consequences of this form of political regime on the wellbeing of citizens livingunder its rule. The reversal of the usual perspective – treating competitiveauthoritarianism as the explanatory factor of something else, rather than the object tobe explained – represents a new ramification of the debate. It may improve thecomprehension of the phenomenon by providing insightful feedbacks for the study ofboth the functioning and the future prospects of these regimes. More generally, it hasbeen anticipated, research on the topic also adds to the debate on the consequences ofdemocratic reforms. Given its hybrid nature, competitive authoritarianism representsthe ideal place where to compare the effects of the fundamentally differentinstitutions – democratic and authoritarian – that within it coexist, to evaluate theconsequences of their interaction, to weigh their respective impact.Beyond the academic debate, studying the consequences of competitiveauthoritarianism on citizens’ wellbeing sheds light on issues of even moresubstantive interest. First, the phenomenon currently affects about one-fourth ofpeople living in so-called developing countries. To study the socioeconomic impactof this form of political regime means to evaluate how the living conditions of a6
remarkable share of world population have been changing during the last two/threedecades as a consequence of recent political transitions. Has political change, albeitlimited, brought any meaningful improvement in people’s material quality of life?Specifically, is the introduction of some degree of political competition in a contextof persistently authoritarian governance enough to determine a change in powerrelationships between rulers and ruled, so as to make the latter’s need moreimportant? Has it merely represented a new dress for old settings? Or did theincomplete nature of the political changes recently occurred even produce morelosses than gains for citizens?Second, an in-depth analysis of the topic offers the opportunity to reconsider thenormative dimension more or less explicitly attached to any discourse on democracyand democratization. Newly democratic and competitive authoritarian regimes sharea common background: they emerged from the political and economic failure ofrepressive dictatorships. Likewise, the early days of their respective lives wereinvariably accompanied with the same aspirations and demands for a ‘better future’:freedom, self-determination, human rights, prosperity, development. For citizens ofcompetitive autocracies established in the past three decades some of theseaspirations have already been betrayed. They asked for more democracy, theyobtained less authoritarianism at best. Were these aspirations a single package, an allor nothing? Is democracy and citizens’ empowerment a necessary condition to solicitrulers’ commitment to social welfare? Or is it possible to conceive that other politicaldynamics, only distantly related to a genuine democratic process, may have positivespill-over effects in terms of citizens’ wellbeing? Is there any bright side of thisstory? Even more blatantly, is there any reason to see the transition from closed tocompetitive authoritarianism (rather than to democracy) as a glass half full?For number and complexity, these are way more questions that can be possiblyanswered in a single work. For this reason, the research reported by the presentmanuscript focused on more circumscribed issues, namely whether, how, and towhat extent competitive authoritarianism influences citizens’ wellbeing. Thesequestions have been addressed from both a theoretical and empirical point of view.7
To do it, the research has followed a comparative approach. Competitiveauthoritarian regimes, and their socioeconomic consequences, have been contrastedwith their respective full authoritarian and democratic counterparts.Outline.The manuscript consists of three main chapters.Chapter 1 delves into a few preliminary issues: the conceptualization, classification,and measurement of the notion of competitive authoritarianism. To be sure, the pointis not to re-define the concept. Levitsky and Way (2010), the authors who coined theterm, have already handled the issue in a perfectly satisfactory way. The concepthowever has been originally conceived within the framework of a comparativemultiple case-study research design, while in the present analysis econometricstechniques have been preferred. The aim here is thus to adapt the concept and itsmeasurement to the exigencies of a different research strategy. To maximize thetransparency of this operation, the analysis proceeds in a rather systematic way.Beyond the obvious imperfections that the translation entails, this effort could favourthe future advancement of research on the topic by bridging the gap betweenqualitative and quantitative analysis.Chapter 2 brings the discussion to a more substantive level and lays the theoreticalfoundations on which the subsequent empirical analysis will rest. The main argumentis that, despite their apparent incompatibility, democratic and authoritarianinstitutions may interact in ways that elude conventional wisdom. These institutionstend to mitigate their respective effects. Specifically, the democratic dimension – asrepresented by institutionalization of multiparty elections for both executive andlegislative office and, more generally, the opening of political arena to oppositionparticipation – may compensate for some of the failures caused by the authoritariancomponent. The discussion then proceeds to evaluation of the reach of competitiveauthoritarian institutions effects. Attention is focused on two ‘interferences’, ormediating factors, namely the consolidation of a competitive autocracy and the8
regional context to which it belongs. Each segment of the theoretical analysis leadsto the formulation of a testable hypothesis.Chapter 3 presents the research empirical results. The four hypotheses have beentested by means of a time-series cross-sectional analysis conducted on a sample of132 developing countries observed from 1980 to 2008. As dependent variable twentyalternative indicators of human development, referring to the sectors of educationand health care, have been selected.The last section of the manuscript (Chapter 4) draws conclusions. The empiricalfindings illustrated in previous chapter are commented from a more substantive pointof view. Their interpretation will lead to evaluate the explanatory potential of thetheory that has been set out in second chapter. In the light of empirical evidence, inparticular, a few indications concerning how the theory could and should be refinedare outlined. These may represent as many recommendations to orient futureresearch on the topic.9
Chapter 1Competitive Autocracies: A definition, their classification,and measurement.To study whether, how and to what extent competitive authoritarian regimesinfluence the wellbeing of citizens, we should know exactly what we are talkingabout in the first place. Starting a research without having clear the actual nature ofthe object of our interest prevents us from reaching any meaningful conclusion. Thenotion of competitive authoritarianism makes no exception. Indeed, we will see, itrepresents one of those essentially contested concepts that not infrequently hamperthe accumulation of knowledge in social sciences.This is essentially the goal of this preliminary phase: to analyze this specific form ofpolitical regime, thus laying solid foundations for its subsequent study. Specifically,in this chapter competitive authoritarianism will be (1) defined as a regime type, (2)distinguished from other, more or less similar, types of political regime, (3) measuredempirically.The chapter is organized as follows. The first section (1.1) briefly reviews what theoperations of defining, classifying, and measuring a political phenomenon consist of.The discussion is meant to outline a few guidelines that in the following sections(1.2-1.4)arefollowedwhen dealingwiththeconceptof competitiveauthoritarianism. As a validation test of the measurement phase, finally, the lastsection (1.5) concludes by presenting the results of a descriptive analysis of thephenomenon of competitive authoritarianism.10
ritarianism.Studying a given political regime requires the prior definition of what it is. Studyingit following a comparative approach requires the enlargement of our perspective andan in-depth scrutiny also of what this regime is not. We should include it in a broaderanalytical framework. We should clarify how this specific political regime relates toothers, seize differences and similarities, because they may prove essential for theunderstanding and assessment of the relationships under examination. Since in thenext chapters these two goals will be pursued from both a theoretical and empiricalpoint of view, this early stage of research requires also the measurement ofcompetitive authoritarianism and the identification of a sample of such cases.1.1.1 Conceptualization.Concepts represent the abstraction of empirical phenomena and are essentialinstruments for the acquisition of knowledge about the latter. Conceptualization isthe process whereby a specific definition, or systematization, of a concept isformulated. Definitions are “conveyances of meaning expressed as an equivalencebetween a definiendum (what has to be defined) and a definiens (what serves todefine)” (Sartori, 1984: 75). The starting point of this procedure is the backgroundconcept, or “the broad constellation of meanings and understandings associated witha given concept” (Adcock and Collier, 2001: 531). In very practical terms, theanalysis of the background concept provides an overview of the range of alternativesavailable with reference to two main kinds of decision that have to be taken whendefining a given object.The first issue has to do with the identification of the properties that together formthe intension (Sartori, 1984: 24) of the concept under examination. Here, the rule ofthumb is to be minimal but not minimalistic, i.e. to “avoid the extremes of includingtoo much or too little” (Munck and Verkuilen, 2002: 8-9). Minimal definitions focus11
on what is important about a given entity, and treat as accompanying variables allthose characteristics that are not strictly necessary for its identification. This is not toplay the import of this phase down. Indeed while selecting a concept’s secondarylevel dimensions, its core attributes, researchers are actually working on “a theory ofthe ontology of the phenomenon under consideration” (Goertz, 2003: 27). Theiridentification, moreover, proves crucial in the subsequent phases of research. Theyorient the study of how a given phenomenon relates and interacts with others(ibidem: 28).The second stage of this ontological effort refers to the clarification of the internallogical structure of a concept, or how its defining attributes are combined. Thestandard options, in this case, are essentially two: either a classic necessary andsufficient condition structure, or a family resemblance one. The ultimate point is tofix the rules to identify the referents forming the concept’s extension (Sartori, 1984:77). While the former approach suggests a crisp view of the concept, “wheremembership is all or nothing” (Goertz, 2003: 29), the latter is more flexible. The onlyprescription is one of “sufficiency without necessity” (Goertz and Mahoney, 2005:504); the concept applies to a given empirical object insofar as “m of ncharacteristics are present” (Goertz, 2003: 36). In the absence of an ultimate bestoption, of alternatives that are intrinsically correct or wrong, Collier and Adcock’s(1999) pragmatic approach is recommended: choose in the light of the resea
UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche Graduate School in Social and Political Sc
Intelligenza Artificiale e analisi dei dati Introduzione e macchine a stati finiti Alberto Borghese Università degli Studi di Milano Laboratorio di Sistemi Intelligenti Applicati (AIS-Lab) Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione alberto.borghese@unimi.it Corso di Laurea in Scienze cognitive e Processi decisionali A.A. 2015-2016 2/70 Sommario
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