Control over Militaries is the Forgotten Landmark of Democracy after Imperialism

Organiser: Freedom House Hager Ali (Speaker)

Invited talk with Hager Ali on the Blog-Series "Autocracies with Adjectives", the most recent Nations in Transit-Report, and Hybrid Regimes.

The study of regime types, Hager Ali argues, is imbalanced. Theories and concepts of democracy have received attention for decades. But amid the resurgence of autocracies, scholars of authoritarianism still do not have the luxury of nuanced typologies to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes. In this series, edited by Hager Ali, authors cover a wide range of institutions, cases, and issues in a written exchange to advance to study of authoritarianism.

The study of regime types, Hager Ali argues, is imbalanced. Theories and concepts of democracy have received attention for decades. But amid the resurgence of autocracies, scholars of authoritarianism still do not have the luxury of nuanced typologies to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes.

ECPR General Conference 2024, University College Dublin, Dublin Hager Ali (Speaker)

GIGA Researcher Hager Ali discusses public scholarship and advisory by scholars on democracy and democracy promotion.

ECPR General Conference 2024, University College Dublin, Dublin Hager Ali (Speaker)

GIGA researcher Hager Ali presents a paper that applies her research on authoritarian regimes and military behavior to the study and evaluation of democracies

ECPR Joint Sessions 2024, Leuphana University, Lüneburg Hager Ali (Speaker)

To investigate how both military and civilian autocratic rulers regulate their armed forces, this paper introduces a new dataset.

Done With Democracy? How Military Coups Have Changed Africa’s Political Landscape, GIGA, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, 20354 Hamburg, and online Organisers: German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) Hager Ali (Speaker)

Since 2021, a wave of military coups d’état have upended Africa’s political landscape. The Sahel countries have come under the control of military juntas aligned with Russia. In this GIGA Forum, our experts discuss the implications for democracy in Africa and for Europe’s foreign policy towards the region.

ECPR General Conference 2023, Charles University, Prague Organisers: European Consortium for Political Research Hager Ali (Speaker)

Hager Ali presents her paper "Autocracies with Adjectives: The Need for Better Classifications of Autocratic Regimes" at the ECPR General Conference 2023 in Prague. The presentation is part of the panel "Classifying Contemporary Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes: Old Questions, New Data, and Salvaged Concepts", co-chaired by her.

When citizens develop grievances, autocrats try to deflect blame to retain popular support. Scott Williamson argues that regime type influences strategies and success rates of autocrats, who shift blame when confronted by popular discontent.

Party-based regimes are the most durable autocracies. Although there exist stronger and weaker ruling parties depending on the elite-leader relationship, the attitude of party-based regimes towards citizens also matters to their nature. Fabio Angiolillo argues that ruling parties’ recruitment strategies in autocracies can facilitate a much deeper understanding of party-based autocracies.

ECPR General Conference 2023, Charles University, Prague Organisers: European Consortium for Political Research Hager Ali (Chair)

Panel Organisation and Co-Chair for the Panel "Classifying Contemporary Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes: Old Questions, New Data, and Salvaged Concepts" in Section 2 "Advancements and Innovations in Research Design and Methods: New Conditions or New Challenges?"

Resistance to autocratisation is not limited to democracies. In fact, Luca Tomini, Suzan Gibril, and Venelin Bochev demonstrate that the main actors resisting autocratisation and their strategies vary across regime types.

Observers were quick to call the events on 8 January in Brazil a coup attempt. But Jonathan Powell and Salah Ben Hammou caution against conflating coup advocacy with coup attempts. Authoritarianism scholars should also note that usage of the term 'coup' has varied through history

Dissolving former ruling parties and purging institutions breaks with old regimes. But, Hager Ali, building strong political parties to govern after ousting long-time rulers takes far more time than new incumbents have, especially when they face severe crises.

We need to move on from dichotomising regimes into democracy and not-democracy, and study authoritarian systems at face value. As Hager Ali argues, we need to develop a language capable of categorising and comparing individual authoritarian practices.

The fashion for seeing all authoritarian regimes through the lens of ‘democratic backsliding’ or ‘autocratisation’ has overshadowed our understanding of classic authoritarians' strategies. Thareerat Laohabut focuses on Thailand to illustrate this problem.

In line with Hager Ali’s introduction to this series, it is clear that we do not have the full range of 'nuanced typologies [needed] to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes'. Looking systematically at the structural variation formatting institutions under authoritarianism complicates our analysis.

Political purges are dramatic, yet common, events in dictatorships. Sometimes bloody and very consequential. By dissecting the sequence of decisions behind these events, Austin S. Matthews shows that the way a dictator goes about a purge can determine outcomes like regime survival and risk of a coup.

Legislatures are at the centre of democratic politics, but also take on crucial roles in authoritarian regimes. Felix Wiebrecht illustrates how a multidimensional approach helps us to understand their role in dictatorships and paves the way for more research.

Hager Ali notes that we need better typologies of authoritarian regimes. The same applies to their legislatures. They can differ from each other as much as from their democratic counterparts.

Hager Ali proposes a better scholastic categorisation of authoritarianism. Without differentiating between authoritarianisms, some avenues used by autocrats to consolidate their power, like going through courts, escape detection. 

Hager Ali and Catherine Owen argue in their contributions to this series, there are multiple types of authoritarian regime and autocratic public policy. Thus, we cannot always expect the implementation of an authoritarian regime to have the same effect on policy.

Hager Ali opened this Autocracies with Adjectives series by asserting that political science structurally fails to treat autocracies with the same diligence it uses for democracies. She argues in particular that the discipline is even missing accurate data and terms to categorise autocracies adequately. The Arab Gulf countries are an excellent example.

Organiser: Freedom House Hager Ali (Speaker)

Invited talk with Hager Ali on the Blog-Series "Autocracies with Adjectives", the most recent Nations in Transit-Report, and Hybrid Regimes.

The study of regime types, Hager Ali argues, is imbalanced. Theories and concepts of democracy have received attention for decades. But amid the resurgence of autocracies, scholars of authoritarianism still do not have the luxury of nuanced typologies to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes. In this series, edited by Hager Ali, authors cover a wide range of institutions, cases, and issues in a written exchange to advance to study of authoritarianism.

The study of regime types, Hager Ali argues, is imbalanced. Theories and concepts of democracy have received attention for decades. But amid the resurgence of autocracies, scholars of authoritarianism still do not have the luxury of nuanced typologies to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes.