Johannes Gerschewski

What autocracies say (and what citizens hear): proposing four mechanisms of autocratic legitimation

ABSTRACT Autocratic governments make claims about why they are entitled to rule. Some autocracies are more talkative than others, but all regimes say something about why they deserve power. This article takes seriously these efforts by introducing and interrogating the concept of autocratic legitimation. After engaging in a definitional discussion, it traces the development of autocratic legitimation in modern political science by identifying major turning points, key concepts, and patterns of inquiry over time. Ultimately, this introductory article aims to not only argue that studying autocratic legitimation is important, but also to propose contexts, concepts, and distinctions for doing so productively. To this end, the article proposes four mechanisms of autocratic legitimation that can facilitate comparative analysis: indoctrination, passivity, performance, and democratic-procedural. Finally, the essay briefly introduces the five original articles that comprise the remainder of this special issue on autocratic legitimation. The article identifies avenues for further research and identifies how each article in the issue advances down productive pathways of inquiry.

Legitimacy and Protest under Authoritarianism: Explaining Student Mobilization in Egypt and Morocco during the Arab Uprisings

ABSTRACT Political protests constitute a major concern to authoritarian regimes. Existing research has argued that they indicate a lack of regime legitimacy. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between legitimacy and protest participation remains rare. Based on new survey data from Morocco and Egypt, this study investigates whether legitimacy played a significant role in student mobilization during the 2011 uprisings. In doing so, we first develop a context-sensitive concept of legitimacy. This allows us to differentiate the ruler’s legitimacy claims and the citizens’ legitimacy beliefs. Furthermore, we distinguish between two different objects of legitimacy: the broader political community and specific regime institutions. Our empirical analysis suggests that legitimacy had an independent and significant impact on students’ protest participation, yet in more nuanced ways than generally assumed. While protest participation was driven by nationalist sentiments in Egypt, it was motivated by dissatisfaction with the political performance of specific regime institutions in Morocco.

Demokratische Transformationen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

In seinem weit rezipierten Werk The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century hat Samuel P. Huntington drei Wellen identifiziert, in denen es zu einer bemerkenswerten Haufung von Demokratisierungsprozessen kam. Nach dem Auslaufen der ersten beiden Wellen folgte dabei je eine autokratische Gegenwelle (Huntington 1991). Datiert wird die erste (lange) Demokratisierungswelle auf die Zeit zwischen 1822 und 1925. Sie ist im Kontext der Entstehung demokratischer Staaten nach dem geistigen Vorbild der amerikanischen und franzosischen Revolution zu sehen.