RESEARCH

authoritarian consolidation
christian göbel
Centre for East and South East Asian Studies, Lund University, Scheelevägen 15D,
S-223 70 Lund, Sweden
E-mail: Christian.Gobel@ace.lu.se

doi:10.1057/eps.2010.47; published online 24 December 2010

Abstract
Authoritarian consolidation is conceptualised as a deliberate state project
to improve a regime’s capabilities for governing society. It is hypothesised
that the durability of an authoritarian regime increases to the extent that
regime elites manage to substitute coercion for governing by organisation,
regulation and the management of discourses. This provides them with
a broader – and less costly – range of options to address social problems
and regime challenges than merely intimidating or cracking down on
opponents.

Keywords authoritarian consolidation; government effectiveness; state

infrastructural power; political terror

T
rends of democratisation can be
equalled to a force of nature. They
harbour great potential for change,
but their momentum is unpredictable.
This is true also for the third wave of
democracy, which affected nearly every
continent, but ebbed out sooner than
expected (Diamond, 1996). Summing up
the findings of the 2008 edition of the
FreedomHouse Report, Arch Puddington
even wonders if ‘the tide is turning’
(Puddington, 2008). To be sure, it is less
a reversal in the number of democracies
that prompts this concern than the ‘ne-
gative impact of powerful autocracies on
its smaller, less powerful neighboring
countries’ (ibid.). The combination of the
number of liberal democracies having not
increased in 10 years and the perceived
growth in influence of autocracies such as
China and Russia has prompted an up-
surge in scholarship on autocratic rule
(see Bank, 2009; Köllner, 2008). The
paradigm that autocracies are inherently
unstable is gradually being called into
question.1
A range of competing arguments has
been proposed to explain the different
patterns of regime persistence and a
collapse among the world’s non-democra-
cies, invoking factors both endogenous
and exogenous to these regimes. However,
this article will argue that many of these
propositions suffer from two misconcep-
tions. First, they mainly address intra-elite
interactions as the main driving force of
regime stability. Second, they focus on
overly narrow understandings of power,
thereby missing a large range of possible
resources of regime stability and frailty.

176 european political science: 10 2011

(176 – 190) & 2011 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/11 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps/
 This article addresses these issues by
proposing a conceptual framework that
focuses not on the regime type, but the
quality of authoritarian regimes. In parti-
cular, it focuses on three different dimen-
sions of power utilised by states and
categorises increases in non-despotic
capabilities to interact with social, politi-
cal and economic groups as processes of
‘authoritarian consolidation’.2 It starts out
by arguing that despite its many merits,
the existing scholarship on authoritarian
regime survival offers no convincing
explanations as to why certain author-
itarian regime types have higher survival
chances than others. It then provides
evidence that many of the challenges
democratic and authoritarian rulers face
are actually quite similar: both must aim
at establishing and upholding universal
rules of the game to prevent splits in
leadership, secure society’s compliance
and gain support if the regime is to
become sustainable (See Migdal, 1994:
24). This reduces the need to apply
coercive means, which is extremely costly
in terms of legitimacy and always a sign of
state weakness. Building on these find-
ings, this article then elaborates on the
similarities and differences between de-
mocratic and authoritarian consolidation.
Finally, it builds on existing scholarship to
suggest an analytical framework that can
be used to study processes of authoritar-
ian consolidation. Seeing authoritarian
consolidation as a deliberate project of
the ruling elite to enhance its capacities to
govern society, it distinguishes between
building up capabilities to wield three
different kinds of power: the power to
coerce one’s will on the people (despotic
power), the power inherent in regulating
society through institutions and organisa-
tions (infrastructural power) and the
power to make people want what the
government wants them to want (discur-
sive power). It is hypothesised that the
durability of authoritarian regimes is in-
creased to the extent that regime elites
‘y many of the
challenges democratic
and authoritarian
rulers face are actually
quite similar’.
manage to enhance their infrastructural
and discursive capabilities, as this pro-
vides them with a broader range of
options to address social problems and
regime challenges than merely intimidat-
ing or cracking down on opponents.
AUTHORITARIAN REGIME
SURVIVAL: FINDINGS AND
PUZZLES
Theories explaining authoritarian long-
evity invoke both structural and institu-
tional factors. While the former examine
how rents derived by natural resources
are used to buy off the potential opposi-
tion, or how ‘authoritarian’ political cul-
tures make people tolerant to strongman
rule, the latter analyse elite configura-
tions, institutional innovations and state-
society relations.
Rentier-state approaches (Beblawi and
Luciani, 1987; Ulfelder, 2007) or theories
of neopatrimonialism (Bratton and van de
Walle, 1997; Engel and Erdmann, 2007)
link the survival of authoritarian regimes
to the availability of rents to stabilise
patron-client networks. While these ap-
proaches convincingly explain the contin-
ued survival of the Middle Eastern oil
monarchies, they are far less successful
in accounting for the large number of
enduring autocracies in Asia. Others high-
light the role of regional and international
factors, such as the influence of Western,
pro-democratic countries (Levitsky and
Way, 2006a, b) and the dynamics of
global patron-client relations (Jourde,
2007; Yom and al-Momani, 2008). Finally,
culturalist theories argue that some
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 177
 cultures are more conducive to democ-
racy than others. Among the classics are
accounts that view certain (Asian, African
or Arab) mentalities as particularly com-
patible with society’s subordinate role in
authoritarian systems (see, e.g., Pye,
1985; Bayart, 1993). However, they are
usually accorded little explanatory power,
not least with regard to the problem
of measurement (Hinnebusch, 2006:
376–377). There are some recent con-
tributions that focus on the legitimacy of
authoritarian regimes (such as Gilley,
2006 and Schlumberger, 2004, 2008),
but this line of research, while promising,
is yet in its infancy and empirical results
are scarce, again due to the difficulties of
operationalisation and measurement.
There can be no doubt that the avail-
ability of rents and certain patterns of
political culture are important intervening
variables when it comes to explaining the
stability or demise of authoritarian re-
gimes. Given, however, that regimes that
are located in very similar contexts can
have very different capacities to with-
stand exogenous shocks such as an
economic crisis, regime survival and de-
mise are primarily determined by factors
endogenous to the regime. Exogenous
shocks can put the capacity of a regime
to test, but it is the quality of the
regime, and not the size of the shock,
that determines if a regime survives or
perishes.
An influential line of scholarship ex-
plains the endurance of authoritarian
regimes by the institutional configuration
of intra-elite interactions, and there is
wide agreement about the survival
chances of certain regime types. For
example, Barbara Geddes has shown that
among authoritarian regimes, single-
party regimes are more likely to survive
than military regimes (Geddes, 1999:
133). More recently, Axel Hadenius and
Jan Teorell have confirmed this finding
and have further shown that monarchies
tend to outlive all other regime types
178 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation
‘y independent of
regime type there is
indeed a strong tendency
for political terror applied
to a lesser extent
where the government is
perceived as effective’.
(including democracies), whereas author-
itarian multi-party regimes are the least
likely to survive (Hadenius and Teorell,
2007: 150). There is no agreement,
however, as to why this is so. Explana-
tions range from mechanisms of leader-
ship succession and the mediation of elite
disputes (Geddes, 1999) to power shar-
ing within the ruling coalition (Svolik,
2009; Magaloni, 2008), the supportive
rule of single parties (Brownlee, 2007a),
the existence of semi-competitive
elections (Schedler, 2006), and semi-
competitive parliaments to ‘capture’
organised societal interests and head off
public grievances (Gandhi, 2008; Gandhi
and Przeworski, 2007).
This article argues that the root of this
disagreement is the unsuitability of cate-
gorical approaches to the study of author-
itarian regimes in discerning differences
in the quality and long-term viability
of regimes. As Geddes herself admits,
classification can be a challenge with
certain regimes (Geddes, 2003: 74–75).
This is especially problematic with respect
to cases that combine features of a
single-party and a military regime, which
Geddes holds to operate on very different
functionalist logics. Cases cited by
Geddes include Egypt and post-1963
Syria, Indonesia under Suharto (classified
as a hybrid Single Party/Military/Personal
regime), Paraguay under Stroessner and
Burma under Ne Win (ibid., 227–232).
One might want to add China under Mao,
Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek, Vietnam
under Ho Chi Min and more generally
Table 1: Regime types and FSI regimes contains some variation, including
values both Vietnam (77.8) and North Korea
(97.7), while both Singapore (33.0) and
Regime type N Mean Std. Zimbabwe (110.1) belong to the group of
Deviation multi-party regimes (Fund for Peace,
2009). These examples illustrate that
Monarchy 12 69.28 15.11
Military 13 93.78 9.92 there is much more variation in terms of
One-Party 7 86.21 7.54 stability within the subtypes of authori-
Multi-Party 48 84.81 12.86 tarian regimes than there is between
Democracy 87 56.09 21.38 them. Examining these regimes for their
Others 8 93.40 15.20
consolidation might help account for
Global 175 75.9 23.20
these differences and explain the large
Source: compiled by the author from variation within the classes. It is possible,
Hadenius and Teorell (2007) and Fund
for example, that building infrastructural
for Peace (2009).
and discursive power is easier for some
regime types than for others. In addition,
the variation might be a function of
most Leninist political regimes in which the regimes within one group being in
party, government and military are inse- different stages of consolidation.
parably interwoven.
Another problem with the typological
approaches just mentioned lies in their VIOLENCE AND
reliability. The fact that certain regime GOVERNMENT
types survived longer than others does EFFECTIVENESS
not mean that they are also more stable.
This becomes clear if we examine the Through an attempt to ascertain why
scores of the Failed States Index (FSI), a some authoritarian regimes are more
proxy for regime stability, for the various enduring than others, much can be
regime types as classified by Hadenius learned by fusing two largely separate
and Teorell (2007). The results are pre- strands of literature – those concerned
sented in Table 1. with state power and democratic consoli-
FSI values range from 0 to 120, with dation. As to the former, Joel Migdal
higher scores indicating a higher risk of examined states not in terms of their
state failure. The results confirm earlier democratic or authoritarian character,
research findings that democracies are, but of the degree to which a central
on average, more stable than autocracies government manages to ‘accomplish
and that monarchies tend to outlive other comprehensive authority’. Migdal disag-
authoritarian subtypes. There is little gregates state and society into various
difference between military, one-party groups such as government agencies,
and multi-party regimes, although mili- political factions, business associations
tary regimes seem to have a somewhat and clans and tribes that all strive to
higher risk of state failure. Each of these appropriate or extend their power to
types also contains a diverse set of define rules, procedures and goals
individual cases. Among monarchies, for inside – and even beyond – the state
example, Oman (FSI score 45.5) is much territory. Only when the central govern-
more stable than Nepal (FSI score 93.6), ment manages to incorporate such social
while the category of military regimes groups, enforce the parameters of social
spans from Algeria (75.9) to Sudan relations that are the defining features
(113.7). Even the small group of one-party of the polity (Migdal, 2001: 87), steer
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 179
 processes of change (ibid., 88) and estab-
lish itself as a vital core component of an
‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983),
can it said to have achieved ‘integrated
state domination’.
Notwithstanding the vastly different
degrees of freedom granted to the gen-
eral populace to decide upon rules, goals
and procedures that constitute states,
both democratic and authoritarian re-
gimes strive to achieve such integrated
domination. In either regime, this can be
temporarily achieved by coercing parts of
the population into subservience, as the
non-tolerance towards threats to the
national interest in both democracies
and autocracies amply illustrates. Long-
term regime survival, however, must
depend on other means, as coercion is
very costly in terms of domestic and
international legitimacy. In fact, even
authoritarian regimes will resort to non-
violent means of control if they can avoid
coercion.
The latter argument is supported by a
simple analysis. In Figure 1, the values of
two indices for 176 countries are con-
trasted for the year 2008: the World
Bank’s Government Effectiveness mea-
sure (World Bank, 2009) and the Political
Terror Scale (Political Terror Scale, 2009).
The former quantifies how various eco-
nomic and social groups perceive the
government’s performance in a country,
with measures ranging from 2.5, or not
effective at all, to þ 2.5, or very effective.
Figure 1 Government effectiveness and political terror, 2008.
Source: based on World Bank 2009, PTS 2009.
180 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation
The latter evaluates human rights reports
by Amnesty International and the US
State Department to measure the scope
and extent of government-sponsored
political terror on a scale from 1 (political
imprisonment, torture, disappearance,
political murders do not happen at all or
are isolated incidents) to 5 (systematic
terror against the whole population)
(Wood and Gibney, 2010).
As Figure 1 makes clear, independent of
regime type, there is indeed a strong
tendency for political terror to be applied
to a lesser extent where the government
is perceived as effective (r ¼ 0.611).3
This does not mean, however, that re-
gimes that have improved these capaci-
ties automatically live longer than those
which have not. Given that the size of the
challenges a regime faces are relative to
its capacities to deal with them, and that
many of these challenges are unique to
a group of regimes or even only one
regime, survival is hard to predict. For
example, a highly repressive regime with
a low degree of effectiveness, such as
North Korea, has endured for 51 years,
while the far better institutionalised
Suharto Regime in Indonesia survived
for barely 30 years. Another interesting
Asian outlier is Laos, whose government
is not perceived as particularly effective,
but which displays a very low level of
violence against its own population. This
might be the result of fear instilled by
previous terror still holding the population
in its grip or, what is far more likely, the
important role of clans and other social
forces structuring local rules of the game
in this predominantly rural country.
What is of significance to the ensuing
discussion, is that the Government Effec-
tiveness Scale is not based on the actual
degree of institutionalisation of a regime,
but the perception of effectiveness. The-
oretically, these perceptions might be
the result of actual experiences made by
the respondents, as the designers of the
scale think they are, but they could also
be the result of other factors. For exam-
ple, it is possible that such beliefs are
the result of opinion formation in peer
groups and/or successful government
propaganda.
Both elements, the building up of in-
stitutions that help increase effectiveness
and the generation of propaganda that
can increase perceptions of effectiveness,
are potentially relevant for the consolida-
tion of authoritarian regimes. The following
section contrasts processes of democratic
and authoritarian consolidation.
DEMOCRATIC AND
AUTHORITARIAN
CONSOLIDATION
When discussing democratic consolida-
tion, it is important to first note that there
are two rather distinct understandings of
the term, one denoting a state of ‘con-
solidatedness’, the other a series of dif-
ferent processes that might or might not
cause a regime to become consolidated
in the static sense. As to when a regime
can be considered consolidated, the most
widely quoted answer is provided by
Linz und Stepan: ‘Essentially, by a
“consolidated democracy” we mean a
political regime in which democracy as
a complex set of institutions, rules, and
patterned incentives and disincentives
has become, in a phrase, “the only game
in town”’ (Linz and Stepan, 1996: 16).
While this definition is intuitively compel-
ling, it is very hard to operationalise
when democracy has indeed become
‘the only game in town’ (see Svolik,
2008; Diamond, 1999: 67–68; Mainwaring
et al, 1992: 4–5; Huntington, 1991:
266–267 for various attempts and
Schneider, 1995 for a critique).
As for the processual understanding, to
which this article generally adheres, con-
solidation starts right after democratisa-
tion and paradoxically only ends with a
regime breakdown. A useful classification
of such processes is provided by Andreas
Schedler’s (1998) division of democratic
consolidation into five distinct processes
(‘avoiding democratic breakdown’, ‘avoid-
ing democratic erosion’, ‘completing
democracy’, ‘deepening democracy’ and
‘organising democracy’). This classifica-
tion entails two different kinds of
processes conforming to Pridham’s dis-
tinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’
consolidation (Pridham, 1990: 15). While
negative consolidation describes main-
taining passive elite support for the
existing regime in the absence of a
viable alternative, positive consolidation
denotes genuine legitimisation by elites
and the general population alike (see also
Tilly, 2007 and Svolik, 2008 for a valuable
suggestion on how to distinguish concep-
tually between determinants of consoli-
dation and for reasons for breakdowns).
Just like their democratic counterparts,
authoritarian regimes are faced with the
task of preventing breakdown, deepening
and organising the regime and generating
legitimacy among elites and the popula-
tion. Both kinds of regime have to move,
as Gramsci put it, from a ‘war of man-
oeuvre’, where the political system itself
is contested, to a ‘war of position’, where
political and social elites ideally agree
upon the nature of the political system
and seek to improve it on the basis of this
consensus (Gramsci et al, 1971: 243). If
this consensus cannot be reached, then
the regime (whether democratic or
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 181
 authoritarian) might utilise coercion or
the distribution of rents to avoid a break-
down or erosion. However, this article is
more interested in the processes that
Schedler names as ‘completing’, ‘deepen-
ing’ and ‘organising’, as only they increase
the capacities of a regime to react to
major challenges from within or without.
For this reason, only these processes are
part of the authoritarian consolidation
concept introduced here. According to
Philippe Schmitter (1995: 539),
Regime consolidation consists of trans-
forming the accidental arrangements,
prudential norms and contingent solu-
tions that emerged [y] during the
uncertain struggles of the transition
into structures, i.e. into relationships
that are reliably known, regularly
practiced and habitually accepted by
those persons or collectives defined as
participants/citizens/subjects of such
structures.
Even though Schmitter is speaking of
democratic regimes, building and refining
such ‘accepted structures’ is no less
important for authoritarian regimes.
Furthermore, ‘stateness’ and ‘a viable
bureaucracy’, the two most important
preconditions for democratic consolida-
tion according to Linz and Stepan (1996:
24), are as relevant for authoritarian
regimes as they are for democratic ones.
As mentioned above, they provide politi-
cal elites with a wider range of choices
than the costly use of force to react to
crises and other challenges.
Finally, the subject matters of consoli-
dation are quite similar. Based on the
work of Linz and Stepan (1996), Merkel
(Merkel, 1999: 145–169) distinguishes
between four connected levels of conso-
lidation: the constitution, an intermediate
level (parties and associations), elite
behaviour and a ‘citizen culture’ or, put
more broadly, the institutional structure,
modes of participation and political cul-
ture. These levels lend themselves quite
182 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation
well to the conceptualisation of author-
itarian consolidation. However, I suggest
starting out from different premises than
those that tend to be held by scholars
of democratic consolidation. First, as the
focus of the latter lies mainly on institu-
tions and organisations enabling and
channelling participation,4 an implicit
assumption seems to be that the public
is happy with whatever participatory in-
stitutions are presented to them as long
as these are democratic and enable them
to influence policy-making. Two fallacies
are inherent in this view. First, it over-
emphasises the role that political partici-
pation plays in the life of most people.
Other direct and indirect contacts with
state organisations, engaged with it on a
day-to-day basis, might be much more
important in an individual’s evaluation of
the government’s performance, but they
receive scant attention. Examples include
the job market, the fiscal system, the
legal system, the police or public trans-
portation.5 Second, the evaluation of
institutions by individuals takes place in
a social setting. Hence, attitudes and
beliefs are formed not only by personal
experience but also, and perhaps
mainly, by discourses within peer groups,
media reports, statements by political
elites, etc.6
A second difference pertains to what
happens in the three different levels.
Unlike the democratic consolidation lit-
erature, which tends to see the processes
occurring in the three levels as con-
nected, but nevertheless rather self-
referential, authoritarian consolidation
is understood to be a deliberate state
project driven by political elites seeking to
secure their ruling position. In other
words, the three levels are conceptua-
lised as arenas in which capabilities to
exert different kinds of power are formed.
The concept of power employed here is
not limited to the chance of making
people do something which they would
not otherwise do (‘power over’), but also
to the chance of providing structural
incentives for certain types of behaviour
(‘power to’). In particular, a differentiated
concept of state power combining three
dimensions is utilised: (1) the traditional
Weberian understanding of power as get-
ting someone to do something he would
not otherwise have done, that is, the
application of coercion; (2) the power of
structuring the incentives of social actors
by means of accepted institutions; and
(3) the power of making people ‘want
what you want them to want’ (Lukes,
2004). Thus, Michael Mann’s (1984) dis-
tinction of ‘despotic power’ and ‘infra-
structural power’ is augmented with
another dimension of power, which is best
conceptualised in Steven Lukes’ (2004)
‘radical view’ of power, which will be
referred to here as ‘discursive power’.7
Table 2 breaks down consolidation pro-
cesses in democratic and authoritarian
regimes where the macro-, meso- and
micro-levels correspond to the institu-
tional structure, state-society relations
and political culture. Absent from the table
is despotic power. Mann defines it as ‘the
range of actions which elites can under-
take without routine, institutionalised
‘y authoritarian
consolidation is
understood to be a
deliberate state project
driven by political elites
seeking to secure their
ruling position’.
negotiation with civil society groups’
(Mann, 1984: 188), that is, power over
civil society. Although despotic power can
thus broadly be equalled to an absence of
the rule of law, for analytic reasons it is
defined here more narrowly as politically
motivated, arbitrary coercion applied by
agents of the state. In this way, concep-
tual overlaps with infrastructural power,
an important part of which is the exis-
tence of laws and regulations, is avoided.
Despotic power often entails the use or
threat of physical or psychological coer-
cion. It is exemplified, among others, in
politically motivated murder, plain-
clothes security agents causing regime
opponents to ‘disappear’ in the middle of
the night and then subjecting them to

Table 2: Levels of democratic and authoritarian consolidation

Democratic Authoritarian Power dimension

consolidation consolidation

Macro-level Constitution Communication Infrastructural

bureaucracy bureaucracy legal power: density
(legal system) system and reach of state
organisations
Meso-level Party system civil Meritocratic Infrastructural
society networks power:
semi-competitive embeddedness
elections mass
organisations
complaint
mechanisms
Micro-level Attitudes and Attitudes and Discursive power
behaviour behaviour (elites,
(elites, population) population)
Source: author.
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 183
 torture, the military mobilised against
anti-regime demonstrations, the illegal
confiscation of private property, opposi-
tion newspapers shut down and whole
neighbourhoods deterred by govern-
ment-sponsored thugs from attending
elections. Applying coercion can help
prevent regime erosion and breakdowns
and even contribute to building up infra-
structural and discursive power. However,
since authoritarian consolidation (as de-
fined here) is mainly concerned with
improving capabilities other than coercive
means to address social demands and
react to crises, the build-up of despotic
power capacities will not receive further
treatment here.
MACRO-LEVEL
CONSOLIDATION:
CREATING
INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER
At the macro-level, studies of democratic
consolidation look at how apt a constitu-
tion is in structuring political life and if it
was passed by public mandate. As just
pointed out, these approaches tend to
overemphasise representative institu-
tions and neglect those that structure
everyday life. In fact, authoritarian re-
gimes are not much different from
democracies in that the existence of a
dense network of institutions provides
citizens with incentives to behave in
certain ways and thereby reduces com-
plexity and improves predictability.
Furthermore, such a network also enables
the regime to react flexibly to social
grievances. Hence, the state generates
reservoirs of infrastructural power when it
builds up such institutions. Infrastructural
power denotes the ‘logistics of political
control’ (Mann, 1984: 192), the ‘capacity
of the state to penetrate and coordinate
civil society, and to implement logistically
political decisions throughout the realm’
(Mann, 1984: 189). This definition refers
184 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation
to three approaches to infrastructural
power, namely ‘state capabilities’, their
‘subnational variation’ and their impact on
society, that is, the ‘weight of the state’
(Soifer, 2008: 236–242).
The first dimension is the ‘resources at
the disposal of the state for exercising
control over society’ (ibid.), which is
comparatively easy to measure along
indicators such as the size of state
revenues as a percentage of GDP, and
the share of expenditures for defence,
internal security, administration, capital
construction, infrastructure building rural
development and welfare and so on, but
also includes surveying technologies that
make societies comprehensible to state
institutions such as census data (Scott,
1998). As Dan Slater has shown, even
electoral registers can serve to increase
legibility and therefore help regimes to
sustain their rule (Slater, 2003). Inti-
mately related to this is organisational
coherence. This applies to the size and
quality of the bureaucracy, which entails
aspects such as meritocratic recruitment,
an efficient division of labour and chan-
nels of communication that can help
prevent slack and waste. In a related
manner, organisational coherence also
encompasses the existence of rules and
mechanisms for elite-level power-sharing
and leadership turnover, as factionalism
and splits in the leadership have torn
many authoritarian regimes apart (Svolik,
2009; Magaloni, 2008; Brownlee, 2007b;
Geddes, 1999). Finally, as the case of
Singapore amply illustrates , the dense
regulation of social life by means of laws
and regulations can serve to keep a non-
democracy in power even without exces-
sively relying on coercion. It is on this
level that the tasks faced by democratic
and authoritarian regimes are at their
most similar.
The second dimension is the ‘territorial
reach’ of the state, that is, the ability to
penetrate society not only with respect to
policy issues, but also to maintain a state
presence in even the remotest parts of
the state territory (Soifer and vom Hau,
2008: 222). A lack of territorial reach
can manifest itself in a regime whose
power is restricted to a few cities without
extending to the countryside, or in a
government which only holds sway in
particular regions within a country.
MESO-LEVEL
CONSOLIDATION:
ENHANCING
EMBEDDEDNESS
While the first two approaches are readily
compatible and denote the extent and
scope of the state apparatus, the third
relates to the actual impact of state
organisations, processes and policies on
individual behaviour both in society and
within the state apparatus. As Soifer
points out, this is especially demanding:
since ‘we have no independent measure
of the increased weight of the state apart
from its effects’ scholars need explicitly to
test alternative explanations of the ob-
served effects (Soifer, 2008: 247–248).
Existing literature on the ‘weight of the
state’ tends to focus on allegedly success-
ful cases (e.g., Weber, 1976) or explains
failures (as Scott, 1998). Here, a more
nuanced classification of possible out-
comes of state attempts to penetrate
social networks is applied. With Migdal, a
distinction is made between (a) the de-
struction of social forces, (b) their incor-
poration in the regime, (c) social forces
capturing the state or (d) complete failure
of penetration (Migdal, 25–26). Of special
interest to the meso-level, where demo-
cratic consolidation studies are concerned
with intermediaries between the state
and society (such as parties and civil
society associations), is outcome (b).
Authoritarian regimes will not strive to
build up a competitive, institutionalised
party system, a highly diverse civil so-
ciety and an autonomous media sector.
‘Embeddedness not
only facilitates the
implementation of
government policies,
but also feeds the
preferences and
grievances of different
social groups back into
the policy-making
process’.
However, a dense state apparatus with a
wide reach can serve to link state and
society by means other than parties and
pluralist associations, as Evans (1992,
1995) has shown in his discussion of the
‘embeddedness’ of the developmental
state. Embeddedness not only facilitates
the implementation of government poli-
cies, but also feeds the preferences and
grievances of different social groups back
into the policy-making process. This in
turn enables the government to react
adequately to such demands and thereby
increase its legitimacy (Mann, 1984: 111
and 133).
For example, Evans has illustrated the
effectiveness of professional and merito-
cratic bureaucracies that utilise personal
networks knit in elite academies. He
stresses the importance of ‘corporate
coherence’, by which he means beliefs or
mentalities tying the aspirations of bu-
reaucrats and, one might add, entrepre-
neurs to the goals of the state (Evans,
1992: 163). Arguably, the presence of
such coherence distinguishes more con-
solidated regimes from rentier regimes,
which are to a far larger degree based on
utilitaristic networks (and often corre-
spond to outcome (c)).
As regards connecting other social
groups to the regime, there exists an
important line of research tying stability
to semi-competitive elections (see
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 185
 Schedler, 2006). Unfortunately, compara-
tive studies on the integrative role of
the authoritarian equivalent of civil so-
ciety associations, that is, corporatist
mass organisations, are few and far
between and are a promising avenue
for future research. Finally, case studies
have shown the trust-building role of
providing opportunities to petition the
government and complain about (local)
government misconduct, especially if
the government acts on these complaints
(for case studies on China, see, e.g., Li,
2004, 2008; Cai, 2008).
MICRO-LEVEL
CONSOLIDATION:
CREATING DISCURSIVE
POWER
The third level is devoted to attitudes,
beliefs and behaviour of the general
public (studies on elite-level political cul-
ture, unfortunately, are scarce). Here, the
literature on democratic consolidation
stresses that a ‘democratic political cul-
ture’ needs to be established by replacing
authoritarian values with democratic
ones. Empirical research has shown that
support for democracy correlates signifi-
cantly not with the short-term perfor-
mance of the regime in dealing with
economic and social problems, but with
how it delivers on its ‘promises of freedom
and democracy’ (Diamond, 1999: 192–193).
The implicit assumption of this model is
that individuals directly translate experi-
ence into attitudes and beliefs. This
neglects the role that ready-made as-
sessments of regime performance dis-
persed through education, the media and
peer groups play.
In order to capture this aspect of
authoritarian consolidation, the concept
of ‘discursive power’ is introduced. Dis-
cursive power denotes a ‘means of secur-
ing the active complicity of the subjects
of power in their own self-regulation’
186 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation
(Jessop, 2008: 147). As Lukes rhetori-
cally asks, ‘is it not the supreme and most
insidious exercise of power to prevent
people, to whatever degree, from having
grievances shaping their perceptions,
cognitions, and preferences in such a
way that they accept their role in the
existing order of things?’ (Lukes, 2004:
28). In contrast to institutionalist ap-
proaches where power is mainly asso-
ciated with the means to change the
political rules of the game, the notion of
discursive power alerts us to the means to
change (or at least influence) the cogni-
tive filters through which strategic envir-
onments are interpreted (Hay, 2001).
Such power derives from capabilities in
the form of a coherent and consistent
official ideology or the ability to create
authoritative, yet compelling narratives
of crucial events. In other words, suc-
cessful political propaganda shapes
political and social realities, but to a
certain extent also needs to correspond
to these realities to be effective (Jessop,
2008: 240).
CONCLUSION
This brief contribution has provided a
conceptual framework that allows a dis-
tinction between different authoritarian
regimes, not according to how many civil
and political liberties they allow or accord-
ing to elite configurations, but according
to their quality, that is, the extent and
scope of the infrastructural and discursive
power at a regime’s disposal. The concept
lends itself to both qualitative and
quantitative analysis, and Figure 2 sum-
marises the indicators suggested for
checking the extent (and change) of the
various power components.
This conceptualisation not only aids
us in classifying authoritarian regimes
according to their quality. Furthermore,
the idea of authoritarian consolidation
(and, conversely, stagnation and
Figure 2 Indicators for the three power dimensions.
Source: author.
de-consolidation) also helps us to grasp
and compare developmental pathways of
autocracies. Finally and in a related man-
ner, it is also relevant for cases where
regime changes have occurred. Here, it
allows us to examine how the quality of
the authoritarian predecessor regime in-
fluences the character and consolidation
process of the young democracy,8 which
is not only of academic but also practical
relevance, that is, for development- or
democracy assistance.
Needless to say, this brief introduction
leaves many questions unanswered and
opens avenues for further research.
Among the most important issues to be
addressed is the question on how the
three power dimensions influence and
reinforce each other; how discursive
power, a dimension that has so far been
neglected in political science, can be
operationalised; why some regime elites,
but not others, engage in authoritarian
consolidation; and under what circum-
stances an institutionalised autocracy
transits to democracy. Research direc-
tions currently pursued by the author
and various collaborators include small-n
studies with cases drawn from East- and
Southeast Asia to analyse how capabil-
ities are built up and employed by various
regimes, and how capacities formed dur-
ing authoritarianism effect the chances of
‘The systematic violation
of human rights and
effective government do
not go well together’.
democratic consolidation. A large-n study
is being designed to examine the impact
of various power configurations on the
duration of authoritarian regimes.
Already at this stage it is clear that a
‘mapping’ of the world along these dimen-
sions will look fundamentally different
from, say, the FreedomHouse map. Al-
most by definition, the extent of author-
itarian consolidation will probably not
correlate strongly with the degree of
political and civil liberties granted. Still,
even in authoritarian regimes popular
inclusion must be extended to address
an increasingly complex array of social
interests if large-scale protests are to
be prevented. As has been shown, the
systematic violation of human rights
and effective government do not go well
together.
Acknowledgements
For valuable comments and suggestions
I am grateful to Björn Alpermann, Andre
Bank, Axel Hadenius, Thomas Heberer,
christian göbel european political science: 10 2011 187
 Geir Helgesen, Patrick Köllner, David
Kühn, Daniel Lambach, Julia Leininger,
Philippe Schmitter, Jan Teorell, Michael
Wahman and the participants of the
workshop ‘Authoritarian Consolidation’,
Duisburg, 14–15 May 2009. Financial
support by the Research Programme
‘Change of Contemporary Societies’ of
the Department of Social Sciences, Uni-
versity of Duisburg-Essen, is gratefully
acknowledged, as is the logistical help of
Alexandra Kessler and Christian Sprenger.

Notes

1 Carothers 2002, Karl 1995, 2005. Compare this to the literature on civil wars which finds that
autocracies are as stable as democracies and much more stable than hybrid regimes (see, e.g., Hegre
et al 2001).
2 The usage of the term ‘authoritarian consolidation’ has gained fashion, although this is not yet
underpinned by a theoretical concept. At the time of writing, Google Scholar listed 131 references for
‘authoritarian consolidation’, forty of which originated between 2001 and 2005, and another forty
between 2006 and 2009. They are all used descriptively, however, and none of them was formulated as a
genuine concept.
3 The significance is constant across time. A simple bivariate correlation of the values 1996–2008
(n=1750) yields r=-0.620. It is slightly less significant when applied to non-democracies only (r=-0.539
for 2008).
4 See for example Diamond (1999) which is a classic on this topic. This position is made especially clear
on pages 74–75.
5 Diamond rightly points out that a ‘crucial and commonly overlooked arena of state strengthening
involves the system of justice and the police’ (Diamond, 1999: 94). He, however, lays far more emphasis
on legislatures and the rule of law than on the substance of the laws themselves (ibid., pp. 111–112).
6 See for example the vast social-science related literature on ‘framing’.
7 Our understanding of ‘discursive power’ differs from the concept as elaborated by Foucault. Instead of
understanding the concept in terms of social relations, we follow a more traditional view of power and see
discursive power as power employed by agents of the state through/on discourse. Our view of discursive
power has some parallels with the aspect of hegemonic power as the alteration of substantive beliefs
identified by Ikenberry and Kupchan (1990).
8 Svolik (2008) has provided an approach in that direction, which hypothesises that the combination of a
military predecessor regime and a low level of economic development is an impediment to democratic
consolidation.

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About the Author

Christian Göbel is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for East and South East Asian Studies at
Lund University. His research interest lies in the change and persistence of political systems.
In particular, he has published on Taiwan’s political transformation, central-local relations
and governance in China’s multi-tiered administration, and reforms of rural taxation and
administration in China.

190 european political science: 10 2011 authoritarian consolidation

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