Modern Authoritarianism and Geopolitics: Thoughts on a Policy Framework

okay, hello, hello everyone, it's great to see people in the room, you know, without a mask, so I don't know why since we can do it, this is kyokshin, director of the schweinstein research center in asia and the peaceful, I heard from the staff of the university, so this is a special seminar that joins three of cbd iran and schweinsteiger, so I am very happy to introduce you to professor steve karkin from the penitentiary university, so he will talk about the

thoughts

modern

authoritarians and geopoliticians about the political

framework

, so I think even what is happening in the world, especially in Ukraine, this seminar couldn't be more timely, okay, so I'm going to introduce our speaker and also introduce our moderator, catherine stoner, drugs or cbd, just so you know, professor sivaki. is a john orclund, professor of history and international affairs at the university of corrections, as well as a senior fellow at the hoover institution, here in stanford, for which he directs the princeton institute for international and regional studies and co-directs its program in the history and practice of diplomacy he founded, he also founded a Princeton global history initiative.

Our scholarship covers

geopolitics

and authority regimes in history and Professor Cocky has currently published two three-volume volumes. The history of the world is seen through Stalin's desk, the paradoxes of power uh 1878 to 1928 and waiting for hitler 1929 to 1941 the final volume of totalitarian power 1941 to 1990 is underway write reviews and essays for foreign affairs the times are literally supplements in the wall street journal and serve as business reverence for the sunday business section of the new york times is an occasional consultant to our government and some private companies, for which he earned a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, so after professor uh khaki speaks, uh, dr. catherine store will be motivating, so she send her questions to uh q a. button uh if you're joining virtually so without further ado let me welcome our professor khaki thank you thank you thank you very much for the opportunity today, I think this is the first presentation I've done that is not expressly about the war in Ukraine during the last month, so it's a chance to get away from each other for a bit before getting closer again.

This is based on a course I have been teaching for many decades here at Princeton University and the work I have been doing as a consultant. Today I am going to divide myself into three parts. I'm going to give an introductory discussion about

modern

authoritarianism

and how we understand it and then I'm going to delve into what I consider the five main elements for a

policy

framework

and then in the third section I'm going to talk in more detail about

geopolitics

or one of those five elements in the framework, so now in the first section everyone will know that studies on

authoritarianism

really took shape in relation to the dictatorships of the 20th century, especially the right. the Nazi and Soviet dictatorships where these totalitarian regimes came from what distinguished them and what we could do about it sometimes the Mussolini regime was included sometimes it was not included even though the Italian fascists were the ones who invented the concept of totalitarianism but in reality , it is mainly about the Nazi and Soviet regime.

Totalitarianism has always been and remains unmatched in its power to discredit a regime as evil. When you call something totalitarian, it's the worst thing in the world, and so as a political tool, totalitarianism has been invaluable, but the concern. with hitler and stalin with these special types of dictatorship it made it difficult to understand the other types and so enters juan lintz juan lentz the sociologist lince was born in the weimar republic he grew up in spain his mother was spanish he studied at the university of madrid he got his doctorate in the Columbia University, near me, in New York, and he taught at Yale since 1968, and what Lentz did was say that we have these two categories: democratic and totalitarian, but Francisco Franco's regime in Spain was neither completely democratic nor completely totalitarian.

It was something else and he presented it in a research paper at a conference in Finland in 1963, the international conference of political sociology that was organized by Ramon Around and in 1964, the following year, Linz published this Spanish colonist and the authoritarian regime and in many meanings This Lens article from 1964 is the beginning of non-totalitarian authoritarian tricks. The problem, however, was that Lentz had a largely negative definition of authoritarianism. He didn't really have an ideology. A unique ideology. He actually didn't have a mass mobilization. it really had a single concentrated source of power, it had multiple sources of power that reflected many interest groups, so authoritarianism was not totalitarianism in general, now that is what Linz presented with the negative qualities of authoritarianism, totalitarianism had a central or monistic center of power. an official ideology had a massive mobilization eleven years later Lynch tried to refine this difference in an essay called totalitarianism totalitarian and authoritarian regimes 1975 in the political science manual essay of more than 250 pages once again had some problems differentiating the positive qualities from the negative to distinguish authoritarianism, Lintz tried to make typologies and co-edited a book on the so-called sultanist regimes, for example, as a typology of current authoritarianism that would be very problematic, since in part it was then as an orientalist terminology of sultanist regimes.

Still, Lynch had difficulty with typologies of authoritarianism of different types and was not alone in this difficult time. We had all kinds of attempts to give a typology of authoritarianism during the last decades. Right-wing semi-democracy. Virtual democracy. Electoral democracy. democracy for a while eventually became illiberal democracy and then semi-authoritarianism soft authoritarianism electoral authoritarianism and then the beautiful designation of Freedom House as partially free, so I don't think we're going to do better than Juan Lintz and I don't think I mean , we bow to a Lintz and I don't think we're going to solve this typology problem very easily, so I propose a political approach, a political framework, in the same way that totalitarianism is an incredibly powerful political tool against certain regimes.

I'd like to come up with a useful

policy

framework for authoritarianism that doesn't satisfy those who prefer strict definitions and typologies, but can be very useful in combating authoritarian regimes in the policy world, so let me start and finish the first part of this. uh with an introduction uh sorry and the introduction here with a definition a basic definition the basic definition we have comes from 1981 from someone called amus paramooder and Pearl Mudder was a Middle Eastern scholar and he defined authoritarian authoritarianism modern. in the way he said that the initial version of authoritarianism was ruled by a few in the name of a few, but modern authoritarianism is the rule of a few in the name of the many and I think this is a very powerful definition of rule by a few. few in the name of the many uh de tocqueville had dismissed the claims of authoritarians alexis de tocqueville had dismissed their claims to hide behind constitutional facades and try to create the illusion that they could combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes of popular rise precisely the The definition that Pearl Motor would propose 150 years later, Tophill was right about many things, but he was wrong about this.

Authoritarian regimes have been able to simulate constitutionalism and democracy while promoting illiberalism and achieving massive political incorporation without empowering the people to this power. The democratic façade also has tremendous vulnerabilities and perhaps we will get to that in the end, so for To summarize this first section, a policy framework is one way, not the only way, to approach the issue and that is the way I am approaching this today, section two, the five dimensions of an authoritarian regime, the political framework that I am proposing, the first dimension will not surprise anyone and it is the coercive mechanisms, obviously, you need police, you need a military security apparatus and, in fact, what we see In authoritarian regimes there is an almost infinite variety of coercive mechanisms, Many of the coercive mechanisms overlap, they have different purposes, they fight against each other, sometimes they are a little more integrated, but often they are not precisely because if they become too strong, it can overthrow whoever is in power and therefore Therefore, there are many incentives to face having a fractured or fragmented course of mechanisms and, when pitting them against each other, you can't get very far without coercive mechanisms in an authoritarian regime, so it is a kind of cinequan of every authoritarian regime and They are better and worse at this and vary, as I said, not only in structure but in quality, the course of the mechanisms.

I think this point does not need further clarification, but I am happy. Going back to this in the questions, the second dimension that I would point to is revenue streams, income streams or cash flow. Many of us have been really dismayed by the discussions about the so-called social contract between the people in an authoritarian regime and the regime. The idea, for example, that people traded their freedom in exchange for a higher standard of living for some kind of GDP growth and that this was almost, if not a real contract, a kind of quasi or de facto social contract , it is a right that we understand that we have.

We are giving up some of our freedoms, but in exchange we are doing better financially, there was never any contract between an authoritarian regime and the public because if the regime failed to provide economic growth, if it failed to raise living standards, it was not going to do so. . Tell the people: Oh, I'm sorry, we violated our side of the deal, we violated the contract, we are going to leave power now and the people would not be able to enforce the so-called contract on the regime if the regime failed to generate the growth that it could. just increase repression, use those coercive mechanisms and use other tools that you had, so it's not about economic growth.

Regimes can survive without economic growth, but they cannot survive without cash flow. The best version of cash flow is the one that emerges. from the ground, the kind that Mother Nature laid down several hundred million years ago and all you have to do is extract it, which could be hydrocarbons, which could be diamonds or other precious metals and minerals if it's underground and everything that you have to do is extract. You're not dependent on the consent of the population at all, so it's very convenient to have that source of cash flow, and as I said, cash flow is absolutely critical for an authoritarian regime.

Economic growth is fine, but cash flow is much more important. Well, number. three the third dimension what I call control over life opportunities the more the regime can deny or control your life opportunities, for example your employment, if there is state employment instead of a private sector, a very high percentage of employment state, perhaps even one hundred percent of jobs are state jobs if the education system is state if the possibility of traveling abroad is controlled by the state if the possibility of going home on vacation if your housing is controlled by the state In other words, the more the state controls your life chances the more power the state has over you and the less power you have, so this control over life chances will also vary sometimes state employment will be a smaller number 20 30 40 will sometimes be a bigger number 80 90 and so if for example you don't like the scheme and you may not want to cooperate with the scheme it's okay if you run your own business potentially it's okay if there are private schools to send to your children it is potentially fine if there is a private housing market where you can buy and rent housing or you can do anything else you want privately with a large private sector, however with state control over life opportunities any opposition The regime could affect not only you but the rest of your family or other associates, so this is a really big and important aspect, so if the first is the political mechanisms, the coercive mechanisms, then the second is the economic history, the flow of income, especially one that can be easily extracted from the ground, and the third is really the sociological part of it the control over life chances the fourth dimension in my five dimensions is what I call the stories the uh the uh narratives that also vary greatly between these regimes, but there are certain patterns in the stories and the narratives will involve external enemies and internal enemies a great past will evolve a story of national greatness that was lost or suppressed by enemies and needs to be recovered somehow a way in which this national greatness was potentially denied by enemies but can be revivedor is being revived by overcoming humiliations and the mistreatment of what about ism and morality and there are many other dimensions to these stories, the narratives of the fourth piece, the type of humanist piece, the stories are ultimately much more powerful that coercive mechanisms, much more than coercive mechanisms, you can't get by without coercive mechanisms, but ultimately, stories and narratives really do have the power and, furthermore, people don't accept stories and narratives, they don't accept propaganda unless that are willing to believe it, first of all, propaganda is very ineffective unless there is some acceptance within the population to receive it I must say that sometimes we consider censorship the denial of information and certainly it does suppress information but censorship also It involves promoting a lot of information and certain ways of seeing the world and that's where stories and narratives come in.

This is an inexhaustible dimension of authoritarian regimes and we have seen quite a bit of ingenuity and intelligence in recent decades in this category. Well, the fifth and final dimension is the international environment. system the international order is conducive or corrosive to authoritarianism and here I would say that the international dimension the international order is simultaneously conducive and corrosive to authoritarian regimes, but the degree to which it is taken and, therefore, the type of Western complicity or the The democratic regime, the liberal order, the empire of order, complicity with opacity and other systems that allow authoritarianism, have now come to the fore with the latest events in the world, but it has been a problem of long-standing, so if we take these five dimensions, political institutions, economics, cash flow, sociological life chances, humanistic stories, narrative, and then international relations theory or the international system, You get in many ways what I think is a comprehensive framework for understanding authoritarian regimes. but more importantly to combat authoritarian regimes, think carefully and potentially implement policies that reduce the reach of authoritarian regimes, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weaknesses rather than enabling them.

Well, now let me move on to the third and final section of the presentation, which is geopolitics and I'm going to open up this fifth dimension: is the international system conducive or corrosive to authoritarian regimes. There are many aspects of the fifth dimension, for example, the fertile ground of anti-Western ideology. Anti-Western ideology in various forms is probably the most global. resonant ideology in the world and has been for the last two centuries anti-westernism takes many different forms anti-imperialism communism was a big package of anti-westernism and still is, but not just communism, so we could talk quite a bit about anti-westernism No I'm going to do that right now, ironically, democracy promotion in the United States has also been a problem for favoring authoritarian regimes due to its occasional perverse and unintended consequences.

It can be argued that the attempt to democratize Iraq. The Iraq war. You can argue this. I am not suggesting that everyone has to accept this, but it can be argued that this attempt to overthrow Saddam's regime and travel to the Middle East by establishing a democratic legal order in Iraq had perverse and unintended consequences that facilitated many authoritarian movements and consolidations in the middle. This is arguably a worse outcome in some ways than Saddam's regime, just as horrible and brutal as Saddam's regime. I am not going to talk in depth about the fact that the promotion of democracy has had many consequences, not only perverse and unintentional.

A third thing I could talk about would be commodity prices the good thing about this is that the instability of the authoritarian regime raises commodity prices they often benefit themselves for example you can invade your neighbor and as a result of which the price of oil can skyrocket and your balance of payments can increase considerably and your budget can have a surplus, that is what we are seeing today obviously in the Russian case and therefore there are many ways in which oil prices Raw materials are a decisive factor in favoring or corroding authoritarian regimes. The Soviet regime had many problems when raw material prices fell.

Oil prices plummeted in 1985 86 just as Gorbachev came to power. I must say that in this commodity pricing package, the ability to take advantage of money laundering and reputation services, which has long been the case for authoritarian regimes, was true throughout the cold. Warfare leveraging money laundering and reputation services in the world has been very conducive to authoritarian regimes and still is, although there have been some revelations about this recently. A fourth possibility here in the fifth dimension of international relations in this story of geopolitics is The History of Technology Transfer Authoritarian regimes rarely create their own major high-end technology, but they do import technology, so the question of Technology transfer and export controls are absolutely vital in determining whether the international order is conducive or corrosive to authoritarian regimes, the easier the technology transfer.

The more conducive and stricter the export controls are, the more export controls are imposed, the more difficult it is for authoritarian regimes. I must say that the soviet union, the first two five year plans, every technology used in stalin's first and second five year plan each and every one of them was imported with the sole exception of synthetic rubber, so the best western states companies United France Italy Germany were the ones that transferred the technology to the Stalin regime and allowed that regime to become the totalitarian superpower. For a time there was an irony in the fact that during World War II all that technology was used by the Soviet regime to produce weapons and fight Nazi Germany, so we often talk about the Lend-Lease contribution, which was very substantial. to the Soviet war effort, but before that, all the technology transfer from the internal war's five-year plans allowed the Soviets to develop a military-industrial complex in which, people say, the Soviets made all of their own weapons during war for the most part and the leasing of len was relatively less important on the weapons side, more important on the supply and daily life side and that is partly true because, except for the fact that that technology was transferred to the Soviets with the ones that they used and that they used to make those weapons anyway, go ahead, so there is a kind of how to say this best practice authoritarian diffusion authoritarian learning this is another important dimension vladimir putin's regime became a kind of authoritarianism school worldwide how to make a kleptocracy work how to fake an opposition how to fake NGOs how to criminalize foreign financing and influence, how to employ state television and information warfare and then, of course, demonstrate audacity in assassination brazen targeting of perceived enemies of the regime, even on foreign soil, which was hugely popular and still is among authoritarians globally, as if casting a spell. as a strongman and therefore the existence of an apparently successful authoritarian regime is as important, perhaps more important than all the previous factors that I just named in this fifth dimension, the geopolitical dimension, finally let me get to the story of China and here I want to spend a little time and this will be where we will summarize the entire presentation of the history of China as an authoritarian regime as an alternative for other countries in the world that do not want to be under the Western umbrella or subjugated by the West. interests or bowing to Western promotion of human rights or democracy, China has created a huge gap in the system, so now let me back up a bit and talk about this Chinese regime in a broader East Asian context.

Everyone knows the story of how the East Asian countries The story begins with Japan rising from the ashes of the destruction and defeat of World War II and becoming the second largest economy in the world for a time, and it did predominantly, not exclusively, but predominantly gaining access. to the American domestic market and to be able to manufacture and export quality goods at reasonable prices that the American middle class was happy to acquire, so this model of broad non-reciprocal access to the American domestic consumer market plus its ability to manufacture those goods that the Americans wanted and would pay for the rights of Romania and Poland in the Cold War were not able to manufacture the kinds of things that were in high demand by Western consumers, even if they had similar access to the American consumer market, so you have to give the Japanese enormous credit for This ability, but also the gigantic size and insatiable greed, if you ask for it, on the American middle class side, is really a big driver here, this was then reproduced in many ways. ways in South Korea and Taiwan, as you know, so you have Japan.

For example, the South Korea example, the Taiwan example, all of which get pretty significant access to the American consumer market and all of which figure out how to make those products to sell in that market, so the American middle class to some extent way it is built. the postwar middle class in japan, south korea and taiwan the story is more complicated than that, of course, there are many other factors, it is not the history of political economy that is most interesting to me today, although it is a important story, I want to talk about the political side in terms of institutions and democratization, so we can argue to what extent the model of getting rich by building your own middle class through accessing and exporting manufactures to the American national middle class was a factor among others, but I don't think it can be excluded as a factor, what was very interesting about this phenomenon, however, is that Japan was a democratic rule of law regime, but of course South Korea was not and Taiwan was not democratized for a long time, they ended up becoming democratized and that is the story.

How South Korea and Taiwan were democratized is a hugely important story, as is the story of political economy, and it misled us here. I want to bring in mainland China, so what we have with mainland China is another complicated story of political economy where Donk Xiaoping lived. really across a very short body of water from Japan and I saw Japan go from the defeated and destroyed power of World War II to this colossal post-war success through this access to the American domestic market and Deng Xiaoping practically said, " You know, that's for us too." and then he went to the united states, the first communist leader, as you know, who went to the united states at the invitation of jimmy carter in 1979 and decided that mainland communist china would follow this pattern of latching onto the american economic engine to gain access . to the American domestic market and achieve a history of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan on a potentially even larger scale, thus communist China was granted most favored nation trade status already under the Carter administration in late 1979 and early 1980 and then that was renewed, as you know, until it finally became permanent much later, but it still worked, there were many other factors of course, and we can talk about those other factors and the balance between the different factors, but There is no denying that the Chinese communist regime embarked on this massive geopolitical shift from the Soviet economic model to the American domestic market through Japanese-style manufacturers to export to American consumers now that South Korea and Taiwan have democratized, as We said, really important processes that we're taking a look at right here, a lot of people assumed that communist China was in on this.

The same path, that is, that Japan would follow in the first instance, South Korea and Taiwan, first through economic liberalization and then through political liberalization in some version of modernization theory. However, I have argued and I have been arguing for a long time that that was not going to happen and the reason why that was not going to happen was not because communist China lacked some kind of cultural characteristics and eight characteristics that the others had. , in fact shares many cultural characteristics. My argument was that China was a communist regime and there is no balance of political reform in a communist regime communist regimes can open up economically they can undergo liberalizationeconomic certainly for a while and this is generally done to strengthen the communist monopoly but they cannot be liberalized politically because you cannot be half communist just as you cannot be half pregnant or you are a communist monopoly or your monopoly begins to crumble.

We saw this in Hungary in 1956 in Prague in 1968 under Gorbachev in the 80s and of course the communist regime spent a lot of time studying the Soviet collapse and teaches it in party schools and understands this reform the lack of a balance of reform If you try to democratize within a party what happens is that people decide to use that democratization to say I don't like this party I want other parties in other words, the communist monopoly is threatened. Political liberalization is a form of self-liquidation, so communist regimes that embark on political liberalization end up destroying themselves in self-liquidation or causing internal repression to reverse political liberalization.

In fact, over time they also worry about the economic situation. liberalization because the accumulation of independent wealth and therefore power by individuals also in the economy also threatens the communist monopoly and that is why they begin to reassert their power in the economy and reverse economic liberalization. They cannot live without economic liberalization because it is the engine of GDP, it drives GDP growth, it creates jobs, it is enormously important if you want to grow the economy, but it is an ipso facto threat to the regime's monopoly, so we will see how political liberalization comes under pressure at a certain time of the year. a communist regime and therefore, if we look at the history of East Asia, it is really important that in my opinion we did not understand the possibilities, at least of political liberalization in China, instead what we did was a massive transfer of technology and construction and access to the US consumer market. and many other ways in which we built bridges to allow the growth of power of an authoritarian regime that could not be liberalized politically without entering into this problem of balance without reform and potential self-liquidation, so it seemed like it was a great story and certainly in the case Post-WWII Japan Post-WWII Japan South Korean Taiwan has been an incredible story and has been crucial to the world system and to democracies in general, not just those individual countries as large as it has been in those countries, so we now face a situation where anti-Western ideology has this fertile On the ground, it has global resonance where democracy promotion had some perverse and unintended consequences, as well as some positive consequences, where the Money laundering and reputation services are very lucrative and widely available, where technology transfer rather than export controls has been predominant and where we have had a regime in Russia that has taught other authoritarians or would-be authoritarians how to do it. and how to be cheeky about it and, most important of all, we have the china shop which, as I said, is a very big space in the international system right now.

In my opinion, it is not a story that says that everything China is and does is bad. This is not a China-bashing story. China, like Russia, is an extraordinary civilization, as is Iran. They have made tremendous achievements in the last few decades from what the Chinese have done in their country. It's just amazing, there's no other word for it, at the same time, however, it's not the kind of regime that favors the values ​​and institutions that the people of the United States and our allies hold dear, so now we have to figure out how making the international order how to make the international system have this fifth dimension more corrosive to authoritarian regimes and less conducive.

I could talk about the vulnerabilities, but at this point I think I'll stop. Thank you and I will return to the moderator, the president. If there's any questions, okay, we're just going to unmute, steve, we're on mute, we're on, can you hear me, steve, yeah, it's Stanford, I know the technology is very difficult for you there, but the technology in It's actually surprising, yeah, sure, okay, so thank you very much. It was really stimulating and interesting, especially for me, since we and maybe some of my colleagues at cgrl have been doing a group once a month on Thursdays and our loose topic has been authoritarianism and democracy and erosion. of democracy, so the framework is really interesting.

I know my job is, of course, to moderate the questions, and in fact, we have hundreds of people online listening to this, so I'm going to take the moderator's prerogative and ask as well. question or two since no one is taking my microphone away from me so I have to choose between my questions. On the one hand, the dimensions. Five dimensions seem very reasonable to me, but on the other hand, you know that the recommendation is you. What I know is basically what or the description is basically a really broad right wing so big states highly coercive national mythology perpetuated by propaganda and technology and something triggers global disillusionment with liberalism so it doesn't seem terribly different to me of what we were.

Hearing about totalitarianism with uh, you know, Hannah Arendt and others, um, after World War II and also some democracies, of course, have these characteristics, that is, a large state, a certain degree of coercion, a national mythology, you know, propaganda machines, I guess, um, or the media, um and Well, you know, and the same thing in the face of the same international environment, so why do some states that have those dimensions become the government of a few over the many while others maintain a liberal democracy in the face of the same geopolitical tension? So that's one aspect and then the second. you didn't say much about the role of ideology um and at the risk of invoking my colleague who i think is online frank fukuyama i was starting to teach my class understanding of russia this term and last night i reread the end of the story article often misquoted and misunderstood, basically those who say that it is not that this is the end of non-democracies but that it is the end of alternative ideas or ideologies to democracy, this is the type of authoritarian framework that you are describing, it seems that there are an ideological there is no ideology um or that produces a model of government that can be perpetuated throughout the world um and and why is that why is there no role for uh as you said the values ​​um that we hold dear there is no there is no ideology, there is no a kind of set of philosophical principles in these modern authoritarian regimes as you describe them, so those two questions yes, thank you, so the biggest enigma is where do liberal orders come from, where does the government of It's not such a conundrum. big question about where authoritarian regimes come from and how they survive.

However, let me point out here that a liberal order, a rule of law order, involves restrictions. on the executive power and those limitations are not circumstantial, they are not limitations, for example, that arise from the fact that the country is large or the communications network is primitive or whatever else the leader may be is a they are not circumstantial restrictions on executive power their constitutional and value institutional constraints on executive power and authoritarian regimes lack institutional constraints on executive power except when they introduce them themselves because they fear that coercive mechanisms will become too strong, for example, and threaten the leader or to the leadership group right, for the most part the differential is the presence or absence of restrictions on executive power and that is a category that allows a very wide variation instead of one or the other, or allows a massive variation so that it can have stronger and weaker restrictions on executive power. power, for example, in the totalitarian versus authoritarian problem, so if you have 100% control over life chances, you are more on the totalitarian side of the equation than on the authoritarian side of the equation;

In other words, if employment is only the state and education is only the state and every house and food, all your sustenance is only the state, then you have the possibility of totalitarianism, but for the most part control over the opportunities of life is much less than under totalitarian regimes so it is never absolute but it is very far from absolute at the moment in most cases and China has a huge private sector and even Russia had for a time a private sector , although it is difficult to say what they have now or what they will have in the future, so we do not want to seem that everything is totalitarian or not, because that is a way of attacking regimes, but for me it is a very high bar to reach totalitarianism .

The difference could also be described as that in a totalitarian regime you are forced to actively participate, while in an authoritarian regime passive acquiescence to the regime is more than fine for the vast majority of people; In other words, you don't necessarily oppose it, but you don't have to get up and make a speech every day or denounce everyone else or affirmatively participate in the regime in the same way. you are in a mobilization or in a totalitarian regime, but let's get to the more important question of ideology, so my fourth rate stories and narratives are ideology and, as I said, it is by far the most powerful dimension of an authoritarian regime If you have stories that you are able to tell about yourself and that have conquered the population, those stories are almost always anti-Western, authoritarian regimes are anti-Western, almost without exception, there are a handful of possible exceptions and we can argue about them, so which is a deep debate worldwide. resonant ideology that is shared by some non-authoritarian regimes such as, for example, how is India characterized?

There is certainly a lot of anti-Westernism running through India, but in general the power of the West produces a reaction that is fertile ground for the possibility of an ideology that is denied national greatness and that is common in almost all authoritarian regimes, so that the ideological dimension is fill in the blank what is my national greatness who are my enemies who denied my national greatness where is my cult of the right leader and so on it goes and so it is a package of narratives and stories that you could call ideology if you want, The problem with calling it an ideology is once again the immediate association with totalitarian regimes and I'm trying to describe authoritarian regimes so I call them stories and narratives that may be fictional, most of them are lies or 50 lies, half truths, so I think there are powerful ideologies that are rooted in the fertile ground of anti-Westernism and national greatness, external internal enemies, fifth column things and then various other pieces in addition to that right to For example, the elites betray and the people, the blood , the people close to the ground, correct or pure, or let's get rid of the intermediate institutions that frustrate the will of the leader who is trying to work on behalf of the people, so the judicial means, all the intermediate institutions.

They are bad, that is also part of the very successful package and yes, it is not limited only to authoritarian regimes and that is a problem and it is a problem to combat it. We are not suggesting that there are completely separate categories of regimes, good regimes and bad liberal democratic regimes. one hundred percent orders and one hundred percent authoritarian regimes our framework allows you to do political work within the rule of law orders as well if you start to see some of these attributes some of these behaviors etc. I wouldn't go too far with that and put them on some kind of moral equivalence, but that's what the policy framework allows us to do now, again, this is a policy framework and I think it leads to very practical, very practical options. , very practical, so for example, if cash flow and income streams are a fundamental dimension, then deny that cash flow block those income streams block access to the reserve currency block access to the financial system international and the entire sanctions package that we have developed correctly attacks revenue streams, for example, information warfare attacks narratives and stories that don't I didn't do it in the same way that we did with radio uh free europe and deutsche beautiful and etc., but that was clearly aimed at stories and narratives and one could continue here on the ways in which the dimensions open up towards the actionable.

I know practical political measures that are applicable for better or worse. Two regimes depending on their size and how much influence they have on the international system. I don't know if I've answered your questions, but they sparked those

thoughts

. about me, okay, no, that was very helpful, okay, so we have some questions in the room and then we have questions that are piling up online, let's go to 130. let's go to two, oh, let's go to two, okay, sowe have some time. Um, okay, so, Tom Finger, why don't you start us off here in the room and introduce yourself to see if Tom Finger is a partner here aside?

Um, Steve, I think this approach, the policy framework, is fantastic, I approach it like my old trader. In government I think it's a very, very useful way to approach it. What I would like you to say a little more about is the interactions between the pillars of authoritarian regimes, which are also the vulnerabilities of these regimes and the use of China a little bit as An illustration: China, like the other eastern tigers of Asia, has no resources, the only resources are human. That makes it different from the Middle East or rental economies elsewhere. Why do we think China is successful, important or influential?

It is due to economic performance. that it has achieved, that it is slowing down even without deliberate attempts to slow its growth, that it has produced responses in other pillars, more coercion and greater control over what you call life choices, prevent these bad ideas from preventing foreign news from undermining the narrative. Well, the narrative is a mix of party, only the party can save China, and greatness or national identity, so the two specific questions I have are: do you have or have you thought about some of the interactions about how one is affected? or another pillar? authoritarian regimes compensate and correct in other areas and what those of us were involved in crafting what became known as the China engagement policy, as we thought about it, was that there was going to come a point where Chinese leaders They would have to choose between the party and the nation that preserving the party or achieving national greatness that by doing things to reimpose control slowed growth that did not meet the public's expectations and undermined it, but I'll stop there, I hope we have a continued dialogue, but the interaction between the pillars is the key question.

Thank you very much, uh, Tom, it's great to see you even if only virtually. It is precisely for people like you that I first developed this framework and it is precisely for people like you that I have been discussing this framework for. By now, about 20+ years, this question has come up before. Let me tell you that the framework I presented for discussion purposes was a simplified version to meet the time requirements and interactive quality as well as the complexity of the systems. The theoretical version of the international system and how actions in one place affect actions in other places with non-linear causality, etc., that is also a very important part of the framework, but it is a little too complex for today's presentation, but It needs to be worked out now. let's talk about the pillars, so my opinion would have been that there would not be a choice between party and nation, precisely because the party can integrate into the nation in a way that is successful in those fourth rate stories and narratives and be able to use the coercive mechanisms, as well as the economic resources of cash flow, income and, of course, control over life opportunities and therefore that choice was not going to be something that they had to face and, if they have to face it , which may be the case in the future because, for example, the growth model has hit a wall because, as its own Scott Rozelle demonstrated. in that brilliant book, the middle income trap is a very serious challenge facing the communist regime, the demographic issues that you know and then the fact that the party cannot tolerate alternative sources of power like an empowered private sector, so that now we are going to Let's see to what extent his long-term vision here, where the party and the nation were in contradiction and a decision had to be made, now we are going to see if that is the case or because the international system is conducive, not corrosive , that is to say.

Technology transfer continues, especially high-end technology transfer continues because the stories and narratives about national greatness continue to function and be associated with the party and because the repressive and coercive mechanisms continue to be excellent and have been refined and improved only in the past. last years. It's been a long time since you left government in many notable ways and they were already quite successful while you were in government, so it may well be that the media is there and that we continue instead of being corrosive and trying to separate party and nation. we continue to transfer cutting-edge technology that all these regimes fundamentally depend on to make or break, so maybe you're right and maybe this contradiction will be insurmountable in the short term if the regime can't get its five and a half years. percentage growth you won't get even though we'll lie about it uh and then test your theory.

My view is that it could well be that the regime survives, provided that technology transfer now continues to the end. that the pillars and the interaction are correct, what we see is that greater repression is resorted to when economic problems arise, economic challenges, so one of the things that I have been discussing with some government bodies is the Senkaku Island problem, they are all focused on Taiwan, but as you know better than me, the senkaku islands are controlled by the Japanese, uh, but they are also claimed by China, which has a different name for them and, in my opinion, the ability to employ the Anti-Japanese nationalism in China is almost unlimited if executed.

When faced with any economic hardship at home, you can turn on the anti-Japanese tap and let it go full throttle or you can let it go too far for a couple of reasons, one of them being that the Japanese will tolerate an enormous amount of anti-Japanese sentiment. in China and continue trading with China and exchanging technology with China and the other is that it is inexhaustible among the Chinese population in general. What I see is that it has problems with the economy and makes an amphibious landing on the Senkaku Islands, which opens a station weather you know, a weather station in a box, it's a civil weather station, it's for peace purposes and it's just to help the whole region and it's like the coral reefs in the South China Sea, where you know we are, we are not.

It's really being militarized and so it starts out as a weather station and then it becomes some kind of military installation and neither the Japanese nor the Americans are going to go to war over this complete fatality of the takeover and potential militarization of the Senkaku Islands and Furthermore, the internal anti-Japanese nationalism very successfully intensifies and drowns out some of the issues that have to do with potentially hitting a wall on the economic side, so in my opinion that would be an example of the interaction of the pillars on which the policies are found. options as a regimen and you just need the audacity to try them to implement them and you can also turn them off if they are counterproductive, you can tone it down because you have control to turn them on and off, which you trust.

In your coercive mechanisms, you rely on your narrative stories, both suppressing certain types of information and promoting other types, so if you encounter internal difficulties, you have options to transform or make more use of some of the other pillars. of the equation now. uh, the biggest problem for China is not Japan. This is something that I think is a tool for them. The biggest problem for China, of course, is Europe and this is where, uh, um, the regime has really gotten into big trouble. Chinese grand strategy has recently gotten involved. If we are going to disagree with the Americans, that is inevitable because they are trying to keep us in their sights, we cannot expect anything better from them, their Americans are innately given to global domination and therefore will never be able to tolerate.

The rise of China, so yes, that has been lost, although we do not want to complete decoupling because we still need cutting-edge technology transfer in the short and medium term and we may need it even longer, but we have Europe as our ace in the future. hole you see because we drove a wedge between the Americans and the Europeans and the Europeans are a trade-first entity or, as one of those long-standing German chancellors once said, you know, Vandal Handel, that kind of illusion through which you can change. trade and that is why the Europeans were ready to absorb almost any insult or misconduct on the part of the poor part of the Chinese, but please do not interrupt economic relations, commercial relations that are enormously important for daily life, the quality of life among Europeans, etc.

Now China has put this at risk because of its perception, the global perception, that it is complicit in the Russian invasion of China, so what had been a rift between the United States and Europe is now solidarity on the China issue, not only on the issue of Russia, and that puts the entire world at risk. game for China and that is much worse than the demographic challenges at home, for example, than having to lie about 5.5 growth when you are well below that number, if they lose the trade relationship with Europe, their grand strategy will not has nowhere to go in terms of technology transfer. even if they keep the Japanese on their side, which they have been able to do and will be able to do in my opinion, so this is where I see the fifth factor: the geopolitical dimension, the corrosive enabling international order that the behavior of the Chinese has put in place danger.

They risked what had been a very conducive international environment for them and it would have cost them very little to ensure that the gap between Europe and the United States remained open or perhaps even widened, but instead Xi Jinping has made the bromance with Putin, uh, more important than the trade relationship with Europe at least for the moment and, for me, that interaction of the errors of an authoritarian regime of the despotism of an authoritarian regime of the lack of corrective mechanisms, as you know, there is debate, There is a blossoming, in fact, below the level of Xi Jinping, in fact, they are incandescent, many people about what is happening in China's grand strategy, but despotism is so far immune to that, so you know, That's a long answer to your important question, but that's me.

I'm just trying to show that it's the right question and that I have something of an answer and that I hope we can talk more in person. Well, thanks Steve. We have many questions here. the room and also online, so I'll go online and then go back to my colleagues in the room. um, andy, this is from uh andrew walder, who you know, um, who's asking how the self-volunteer story works. The liquidation we observed in Poland and Hungary in 1988-89 fits his analysis, which could be characterized as autocratic permanence under certain conditions, if not authoritarian resilience, so the Polish and Hungarian regimes gave up, handed over the ghost they knew, the East Germans. to some extent a similar argument could be made, although not as strong, they knew that they lived in a world dominated by the West and they knew that they had lost the geopolitical competition and they also knew that the only way out was greater repression, that coercive mechanism that they were not sure if they would be loyal and obedient to them, so what the Polish regime tried to do and failed was to stay in power through a deal: it had an unpayable debt in foreign currency and tried to buy the legitimacy of the opposition to having that debt forgiven or at least reduced and to be able to get out of the routine in which they found themselves in the dependency in which they found themselves with the enormous debt in foreign currency contracted to buy imported consumer goods and they were surprised when they entered into the deal with the opposition how spectacularly the population rejected the communist regime in 99 of the 100 seats they were allowed to compete for and although the communist regime in Poland retained the majority it had already emptied, it was led by a general only the repressive mechanisms were still there and they used those mechanisms repressive.

They weren't sure they used them in 80 in 1981, as you know, on December 13, 81 and they bought themselves some time, but they decided not to use them again. The Hungarian case is fabulous because the Hungarian regime had to help rally the opposition in order to get the round table across. On the other hand, there was an opposition in Hungary, but it had not been as organized as that in Poland, since there was less solidarity, more fragmentation, etc. the hungarian communists worked hard to help unite the opposition, you know the history of east germany with the peace marches and the accidental, partly accidental opening of the wall, so what we have is a capitulation, an implosion among the elites of the eastern bloc who knew the game was over and did not have the means to hold out, while in the Chinese case, of course, you have John on Month almost at the same time and, in fact, the mobilization is much greater in China than in Poland or Hungary, in 89 there is no comparison of the type of mobilization that is had in China compared to Poland and Hungary, but the elites gave up, they also knew the story of the springof Prague and they also knew what Gorbachev was doing at the national level, so there is a loss of will, but also a loss of corrosion or emptying of the instruments, let us remember that these regimes lived under the so-called communism, in their mind the exploitation of workers and under capitalism and imperialism and yet all their status symbols were imported goods from the capitalist world, the clothes they wore.

They dressed the food they ate, the vehicles they drove, the furniture in their apartments, everything was capitalist, that was a status symbol in these regimes, it undermined their will, they had the problem of debt, what I call the kiss of debt, and they imploded in part because the Soviets decided not to respect them, so what I would say to Andy Walder and I've had so many good conversations with him and I've learned a lot and his books on China are absolutely fundamental to me. I would say that the history of the Chinese regime is not about justice, Tom Finger was pointing out, okay, very good, thank you, back to the room, scott sagan, yes, I'm scott sagan, professor of political science and co-director of several international security cooperation centers, one of our sister centers here at fsi, um, More than once I said that stories in narrative are more important than the coercive mechanisms that authoritarian states use and I would like to know how you know that how you measure one is more powerful than the other, especially since the chords and mechanisms are often I used to try to prop up stories that are patently false and you see it every day in Moscow today, so what is the relationship between, I guess, your number one factor and number four and how do you know one is more important than the other?

I guess potentially I was wrong because what I was trying to say is that you can't do without coercive mechanisms without coercive mechanisms, you have nothing, you are helpless in an authoritarian regime, but if you only have coercive mechanisms or if you rely only on coercive mechanisms coercive you are finished without the stories and narratives that reinforce the coercive mechanisms and vice versa, just as you have said, you end up like the Eastern European regimes that implode, your stories and narratives fail and, in fact, their failure turns out to help you be hollow. The coercive mechanisms, so what I was trying to say is that what is decisive not only for the survival and functioning of these regimes, but even for the coercive mechanisms, are persuasive stories that have penetrated the population and also among the elites.

Look at the situation in Russia today and you will see that you watch Russian television like me, you are on the Russian Internet like me and you talk to Russian people who are still in Russia like me, it is very clear that the stories they tell. Listening through these media, the idea that the West is to blame resonates with them. The idea that NATO expansion came at the expense of Russia. The idea that the West is suppressing Russia's greatness. The idea that Russia is a special civilization with a special mission. in the world and what could happen, then those stories have very considerable purchase and could even have purchase if there was more alternative information available to people that is not available because of this censorship, so in the category of story narratives there It's where I put the censorship. what I call both suppression of information and promotion of information, but I said that for that to work for propaganda to work there has to be a certain receptivity, not one hundred percent receptivity in any way, you also have our migration, emigration, like that that your p people who fled five to ten million Russians depending on whether there is no census but depending on how you count live abroad live outside Russia who have left in the last two decades who do not participate in opinion polls and they didn't vote in the elections and they left for some reason, whether they were forced to leave or they felt like they couldn't stay there anymore or they were looking for economic opportunities, but in any case, that is a lot of potential opposition to the regime, however, even among many of those people who are now in voluntary or involuntary exile they will hear some of the themes that they also hear in the internal propaganda under the repressive coercive censorship of the putin regime and that is why I believe that I do not disagree with what you are saying that coercive exile mechanisms are essential, they are a dinner quan non, I think I use that term, but without narratives and stories, which are both suppression and promotion, they can become empty and are a limited instrument for a period of longer time without the dimension of that history.

So when I said that's why it's more important, that's what I meant, it's not a substitute for the course of the mechanics, which is nothing. I only have time for two more questions, but let's see how we do it. This one is from Andrew von Nordenflick and asks: create a more corrosive international system by giving that meaning to authoritarianism? corrosive to authoritarianism by hindering technology transfer, denying access to Western finance. systems, etc., that inevitably creates fuel for an anti-Western narrative within authoritarian countries, so is it circular? Can anti-authoritarian politics advance both pillars at the same time?

Yes, you can know that everything cuts both ways, right there, all things that have benefits have costs and vice versa you will never get any clean political tools if you have ever been within a government decision making capacity or even From an institution like Stanford you know that the right choice entails negative risks and also costs, right? so that is clearly the case, let me say that the number one tool for corroding authoritarian regimes is the shining example of the excellent functioning of a liberal rule of law, constitutional order, if the people see it and they don't even need to do propaganda, but admire and I think it works very well and it is impressive and it delivers on its promises, it is enormously powerful, as we know, so democracy promotion is a tool, but the example of democracy, the example of success, the example of pluralism , functions with a high standard of living and grows.

Standard of living is ultimately the most important of all potential factors in making the world more conducive. If the values ​​enacted and practiced are not hypocritical but successful, that's really powerful, it's not the only thing, but it's really powerful, I think everyone is at the center. for democracy and the rule of law at Stanford they understood that in the cradle and that's why they joined, you know, in the cradle, uh, at birth and that's why they joined that institute, but you know, you just have to remember that everything has these Disadvantages run the risk of having perverse and unintended consequences, so you can never do anything 100 percent right, so if general technology export controls are applied they cannot be enforced and are simply It shows that you are incompetent to apply specific export controls to just a handful of them. of really vital technologies and instead you extend your hand on other technologies that you are willing to export, so there are controls and then there is an openness that is practiced simultaneously and that goes a long way to reducing anti-Westernism, not only in the country. is targeting, but in all other countries in the audience, such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, the African continent, Latin America, etc., so general technology export controls, general confrontation, decoupling general is, of course, very impossible to implement effectively and also counterproductive in many ways, okay, great, thank you, okay, don emerson, yes, my name is don emerson, I work in Southeast Asia.

I'm fascinated by your presentation and I think one can approach it from several different angles here and I'm just going to pick one angle boiled down to its absolute essence, you offer us a five-part taxonomy, however implicit that may be in your treatment of the taxonomy that is at the service of the causal explanation, the dependent variable being the success or failure of the regime, the structure and the agency, the contrast. between the two immediately come to mind: are you in fact ruling out removing from the scene the personality of the individual who has compiled this massive power that normally he and not she uses to maintain the authoritarian regime?

I mean, obviously, I'm not recommending for a long time. -Psychoanalysis at a distance, but it seems to me that precisely because of that concentration and power, the less we can afford to ignore the role of personality, including the rogue role of personality, because let's remember that those five options offer us a rational choice. rationality and structure and I'm talking about irrationality and agency, does this somehow ruin the explanatory power of what you offer? Well, thanks for that question, I don't think you're going to get a denial of agency, individual agency in a regime for me after so far 2,000 pages on Stalin with a thousand, so I think there's a mind meld here about this question and the Authoritarian leaders are competent and incompetent and that is a spectrum that is neither one nor the right and they learn and grow and get better and get worse and over time the system is also affected by them;

In other words, the system can improve or worsen as can the leader and they can decline together or they can go in opposite directions where the performance of the system ironically improves but the performance of the leader worsens there is no structure without agency without agency structures do not happen no they are enacted they do not begin to set in motion they do not have consequences in the same way And yes, the only thing I would say under the rubric of personalities matters enormously, so there is complete agreement that the personalities that emerge within these structures are not random and that there is a way in which systems select for certain types of people and so on, for example.

Stalin Mao, the Kim dynasty and now Xi Jinping, it can be argued that yes, they all have personalities and yes, it is essential to analyze their personalities if analyzing a policy framework because influencing their decision making or understanding the weaknesses and strengths of their decisions is essential. but at the same time there are accidents, but it is not random that these type of people arise, but the most important thing is that they retain power for a long period of time because sometimes people can arise and they are not very impressive and it is semi-accidental, but their ability to stay in power and grow in power indicates more than just accident or randomness, so I would answer this both ways: do personalities matter enormously and do systems have a way, at least partially, of selecting certain types of personalities and that's not necessarily a complete solution? formed personality, you see, one of the main arguments of my work on Stalin is that Stalin was not a fully formed person and then he came to power and started wreaking havoc.

Stalin came to power and then the Stalin we know was formed into that position of being. a despot within and directing Russian power in the world our Eurasian land empire in an Anglo-American sea power trade first dominated the global right and so the system, when it somehow selects, molds and shapes the person who gets there, gets to that position they see what the limitations are, they see what the policy options are and sometimes you get a pattern there plus an interesting personality um okay yeah thank you okay so we really have time if you can answer in a short question with a short answer and I'm not sure if you can, but I'm not sure what exactly this person means, if it is modernization theory, but the question is: can you touch on the connection between modernization and They put it in quotes and authoritarianism? you could interpret that as again the lipstick modernization theory, it's true that it's a certain level of wealth, but that theory would predict democracy um or you could interpret the question as whether or not mod authoritarianism is, as you've described. , is clearly modern. phenomenon yes, I think there is everyone you know in the room and many of the people online know the history of modernization theory in its most simplistic form, that is, you get economic development and then that has implications for political development , often political development. economic development follows not in all cases, but in many cases, and that could be true, let's say it could be true or not in general terms, but in the communist case it is not clear if that is true due to the enigma of not to be able to liberalize politically without liquidating yourself, it may be that the Chinese communists realize this and find some reformist balance that no one else has found.

I am not a theorist, I am a historian and there has not been a version of modernization theory in history that works. for communist regimes maybe there could be something like that in the future, but we don't have any historical cases that lead us to think that it's probably okay, well, steve, uh, it's my job, I guess you also want to thank you on behalf of the center for the development of democracy the state ofright and a park as well as our partners here um and thanks to my colleagues here in the room thanks to Amy for setting this up and especially thanks to our friends online and for hanging in there um steve thank you thank you so much for taking the time to what I know which is a very busy schedule to talk to us. um, a really inspiring, thought-provoking presentation on a really important topic, thank you, thank you everyone.