Are Autocratic Regimes Inherently Unstable?
Exploring authoritarian stability/instability and authoritarian resilience theories, and the implications...
Preface:
The dissolution of the Soviet Union has long been treated as the cornerstone case for arguments about authoritarian regime stability under modernization. It anchors both claims of inherent instability and discussions of authoritarian resilience, and for that reason serves as an especially appropriate test of the dominant narrative.
This paper begins with a conventional structure; a review of the relevant literature followed by a detailed case study, but the material itself leads in a different direction. The authoritarian instability and resilience literatures do not function as competing hypotheses. Instead, they largely share the same foundational assumptions: that liberal democracy represents the only sustainable long-term pathway to modernization, and that authoritarian durability, where it occurs, reflects a temporary deviation or postponement rather than robust alternative equilibria. The resulting literature review is therefore inherently disjointed, as it maps two strands that ultimately affirm the same underlying teleology.
Re-examining the mechanisms behind the Soviet collapse reveals a more contingent story. The regime achieved rapid modernization from a feudal base, sustained decades of relative prosperity and social order for much of its population, and managed its nationalities question under successive leaderships — until Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost reforms reopened and amplified latent structural vulnerabilities embedded in early Bolshevik nation-building policies. This sequence does not map neatly onto expectations of inevitable authoritarian incapacities.
The broader implication is that the absence of a more granular, type-agnostic framework for understanding regime stability and instability leaves significant perceptual vulnerabilities. Assumptions of liberal inevitability can create an undue sense of security, blinding analysts and policymakers to shared mechanisms of fragility (such as identity cleavages, reform sequencing risks, and the bypass of institutional constraint) that operate across regime types. In a world of proliferating hybrid systems, these blind spots increase the risk that the very destabilizing dynamics states might seek to exploit in rivals could rebound on their own societies.
Conventional wisdom:
While to my knowledge there isn’t really a concrete theory on authoritarian states being inherently unstable or doomed to fail, it is a prevailing narrative in present day international politics that warrants exploration.
Autocracies are “fundamentally constrained by deep-seated incapacities” and are not viable, cannot be successful (Deudney. p.78). Autocracies will inevitably move toward liberalism, and any limited success they see are a function of their access to the liberal international order due to “powerful logic that connects modernization and liberalization” (Deudney, p.79). Liberal democracy represents the sole pathway to sustained modernization, the only successful model (Deudney,pp 79-80). Rising living standards will inevitably create a middle class whose interests will eventually conflict with those of the ruling class, and independent rights in the economic sphere pose an intrinsic limitation upon state power, and the specialization and complexity that comes with an industrialized economy creates a divergence of interests which demands for competitive elections (Deudney, pp.83-84).
Where the fundamental incapacities of authoritarian systems are concerned is defined in three parts. First, rampant corruption which due to the parasitic relation between the state and private firms will lead to calls for increased accountability. The second is deep contradictions related to inequality. Autocracies are unable to meet the needs of the working class like democratic parties are (Deudney, pp.84-85). The third is the performance-limiting effect of insufficient flows of information; closed political systems are prone to policy mistakes due to censorship and the lack of open policy debate (Deudney, pp.85-86). Statistically, democracies are longer lasting than autocracies (Gates, p.900).
Dictatorships are capable of maintaining political order after a fashion due to the monopoly on violence and ability to restrain and suppress dissent. They are able to withstand domestic pressure through co-opting, corporatism or outright purges. there is no pluralism to threaten the monopoly on political power (Tusalem, p.10) Rentier states are able to resist forces of democratization (Tusalem, p.11). Inability to control dissent renders authoritarian states more likely to collapse as do threats to legitimacy (Tusalem, p.11). Although Tusalem concedes that autocratic states are less likely to foster political stability, they also attest that no clear patterns can be gleamed from this analysis. There are many intervening variables, such as economic development, religious fracturing, institutional arrangements, ethnic discord, etc that affect the dependent variable (Tusalem, p.23), though many of these variables can be observed to be lessened in states with high levels of democracy (Tusalem, p24). Tusalem also suggests that the very tools that afford autocracies their resilience -- repression --can increase instability (Tusalem, p.32)
It is also argued that a richer society and growing middle class will ultimately lead to democratic reform (this collapsing an authoritarian regime) but this presupposes that freedom is an innate right yearned for by all individuals (Lee, p. 103). Lee suggests that as the middle class grows it will extend more control over economic power and become less dependent on the state in pursuit of the “good life” in other countries which inately constrains the state due to its independence on the emerging middle class to generate economic growth (Lee, p.104). While modernization theory has not been disproved, authoritarian resilience remains poorly understood (Lee, p.106).
Ideological democrats will tend to blame the party in power, non-ideological democrats will tend to blame the system as a whole when democracies fail to meet public expectations (Lee, p.107). The presence of a strong autocratic power, present day China, in Lee’s estimation (and presumably the USSR in the era prior to stagnation) have the passive effect of making autocracy in general more resilient (Lee, p.108). The line of thought that prioritizes practical outcomes over individual rights without regard for consequences also adds to this resilience, as well as laxing of regulations to invite foreign investment (Lee, p.109-111)
Literature review:
Case Study:
Why did the Soviet Union collapse?
Arms Race, Strategic Defence initiative, and spending gap:
While the strategic defence initiative figures heavily into the discussion of the arms race and the USSR spending itself into oblivion, a detailed examination of its specifics are outside the scope of this paper. Suffice to say that the USSR had been independently developing similar technologies (Perle, p. 27) and that the technologies required to make Reagans speech on the subject even vaguely realistic (Panofsky, p.36). We will instead focus on defence spending and the supposed “spending gap”.
There is little, if any empirical evidence to lend credence to suggestions that American and Soviet spending and defence policy were reactive to one another in a macro sense (Ostrom, p.819). American military spending nearly tripled from, $77 billion in 1968 to $238 billion on the mid 1980s. Estimates of Soviet spending between 1972 and 1980, and up to 1986 were significantly lower than US expenditures (Ostrom, p. 820). Figures based on Soviet reporting were unsatisfactory and led to the development of the CIA’s own metrics for determining military expenditures – translating the cost in US dollars for the US to replicate observed Warsaw Pact activity, which led to a substantial upwards re-estimation of Soviet spending in 1979, based on the assumption that the USSR was willing to spend as much as 13% of its GDP on such expenditures, while overestimating the Soviet cost of production. As a result, these new estimates showed the US being outspent by 45% (Ostrom, p.820). Needless to say, these re-estimates were interpreted as a substantial increase in Soviet expenditures, though it can be shown that US spending was reactive to CIA estimates, the conclusion drawn, and Soviet spending estimates can be called into question via the CIA reports that it had overestimates the increases it reported through the whole of the 1977-83 period (Ostrom, p.838). By this point, CIA estimates had Soviet military expenditures at 20% of GDP (Steinberg, p.675). There are suggestions that “strategic” organizational biases influenced these overestimations resulting in nearly a doubling of US expenditures (Ostrom, p.839).
Western European analysts contested these figured based on the incapacity of reconciling them with Soviet net material product accounts, which pegged Soviet defence spending at a maximum of 9 or 10% of GDP (Steinberg, p.675). Soviet economists were split on expenditures being in line with American figures (roughly 15% of GDP), based on the Soviet economy being less than half of America’s with the same amount of resources required to maintain parity (Us spending being 6%/GNP) and taking in mind lower Soviet worker productivity (Steinberg, pp. 676-7), and much lower estimates based on economic growth reports through little growth and economic stagnation through the ‘80s (Steinberg, p. 676). In 1989, Gorbachev revealed Soviet defence spending to be SUR 77.3 billion ($106.76 billion in 1989 USD) -- less than half of the CIA estimates just 5 years prior – with zero growth in the military budget for 87-88 and a spending reduction by SUR 10 billion in 90-91 (Steinberg, p.677). And additional SUR 11 billion on the Buran program and the Ministry of internal affairs (Steinberg, p. 678). It is also noted that Soviet conscripts received no wages, and production costs were vastly different than American costs, factor into vastly different spending totals. These figures were also corroborated by the Chairman of the General Staff, who emphasized a preference for technological sophistication in US naval vessels and helicopters resulting in more expensive systems, combined with lower component costs and profits due to the command economy on the Soviet side (Steinberg, p.677). A reduction of 40% was expected through 1991-94. Steinberg rejects Ryzhkov’s figures citing CIA estimates and inflation (Steinberg, p.685) but does not account for overestimations identified by Ostrom. In brief, Soviet estimates used different metrics (national economic balances and utilized national income) rather than GDP, making difficult to estimate costs using American methods (Steinberg, p. 691).
Reconstructed Soviet input-output tables show defence spending increased from 63.5 billion SUR to 120 billion SUR from 1975 to 1987 (Steinberg, p.689). Ultimately, Steinberg concludes that Soviet defence spending was at 19.5% of GDP, arguing that Gosplan was deceiving the Soviet leadership (Steinberg, p. 696).
Franklin D. Holzman argues that the CIA and DIA grossly overexaggerated Soviet military expenditure estimates in part to spur increased American military spending as well as ostensibly for the purpose of justifying the considerable sum of resources expended for the purpose of making these estimates, he pegs Soviet military expenditures at 9-11% of GDP (Holzman, p.27-8). The CIA adjusted its findings, Holzman alleges, to conform to DIA estimates, and the methodology based on “building blocks” consists of attempting to ascertain the physical quantities of everything that may (or may not!) be considered part of the defence effort, and the quantities priced out in first 1970 constant Rubles, then in 1982 constant Rubles, while pricing out components in USD (not knowing the costs in Rubles), then converting to constant Rubles. Furthermore, CIA estimates included expenditures for costs that the United States did not consider to be military expenditures (Holzman, p.28).
Events leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
There are many theories as to what ultimately was the main impetus for the dissolution of the Soviet Union raging from simplistic and diametrically opposed ideologically driven arguments of either the Soviet system not being democratic or liberal enough, or not being socialist enough, or not being the right variant of socialism (D.N., pp.2443-2444). Others, like Rafael Reuveny cite the Afghanistan War as the ultimate catalyst by means of accelerating Glasnost’s effects and undermining the KPSU’s legitimacy regarding non-Russian Soviet ethnic groups, instilling the idea that the Red Army could be defeated (Reuveny, p. 695). The argument however is predicated on the Soviet leadership acknowledging that their system was unsustainable but not realizing it until the mid-to-late 1980s (Reuveny, p.696).
Alexander Dalin attributes the dissolution to Gorbachev’s failure to implement clear economic reforms and failure to address the nationalities question and respond adequately to innumerable warnings of betrayal by political allies (Dalin, p.925-6) which ultimately caused the erosion of his authority and loss of support. Ron Hill corroborates these arguments in naming Gorbachev’s ill-conceived domestic policies as the main driver of dissolution (Hill, p.38). Following up on the Soviet system’s successes in managing inflation and unemployment from the ‘30s through to the ‘70s, the elite grew complacent, many Soviets viewing this period as the most prosperous of their lives. Though industrial growth had slowed and the economy stagnated to the point where the USSR with its vast agricultural resources could no long feed itself (Hill, pp.36-8). Natural resources had been exhausted, the soil salinated, rivers polluted, made for a breeding ground for social and environmental catastrophes. While it is clear that something needed to be done to reverse these trends as early as the 1970s (Hill, p.38), Hill singles out Gorbachev’s policies enacted as a means to do so as what ultimately led to the Union’s dissolution. Both ultimately attempts to liberalize the Soviet system. First, Perestroika, which in attempting to dismantle the administrative command system and the command economy, placed the burden of setting prices on more than 24 million products on the State Prices Committee, rendering it impossible to respond to shifting supply and demand, compounding and compounded by other reforms and lacklustre support from outside the Communist Bloc. Inflation obliterated savings, further compounding worsening economic conditions (Hill, p.39).
Second, with Glasnost aimed to attack what he deemed the KPSU’s “infallibility complex” and allowing the state press to unmask and expose corruption among the apparatchik, thus alienating them, and making the premier many powerful enemies. Gorbachev used these policies to remove political opposition and appoint like-minded liberal reformers in their place creating a feedback loop (Hill, pp.39-40). Not unlike a reformist version of Stalin’s purges a half-century prior. These actions faces resistance, led by traditionalist Yegor Ligachev on the right, and Boris Yeltsin on the left. Party discipline quickly was consigned to the past (Hill, p.40). Ligachev’s position is perhaps best exemplified by a 1988 Sovetskaya Rossiya article penned by Nina Andreeva, in brief accusing the new policies as seeking to destroy the legacy of attempts to undo Stalin’s industrial society in selling out to the west, and abandoning the values and discipline of her generation (Hill, p.41). Andreeva, and in extension, Ligachev were the voices of millions who felt their lives and their life’s work was being destroyed, their suffering in the Great Patriotic War, spat on. The party was deeply divided, and Gorbachev deemed democratization the solution (Hill, p.41).
Gorbachev tried to lead from the centre and bring the left and right in line, he attempted to achieve this by creating a (too) strong presidency which say him simultaneously holding the positions of president, general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the defence council to name only a few, created detractors even from his supporters. The whole system depended on the faculties of one overburdened man, who additionally faced several challenged from below (democraticization extended beyond the party) to his retention off control (Hill, p.41).
Expanding on Dalin’s point regarding the Nationalities question, the Glasnot era’s open political debate, Hill stipulates, made dissent meaningless, the lack of repercussions to challenging Moscow, resulted in Union Republics, led by Lithuania, and followed by Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and even, eventually the Russian SFSR to begin to openly call for secession from the Soviet Union. In some Union republics, the Communist Party even had to break from Gorbachev to remain in power, in others, it allowed free elections, which removed it from power. It was open season on Soviet laws and policy (Hill, p.41-2). All of this was arguably manageable until the election of Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, who sought to claim as much sovereignty as he could, and urged his counterparts in the other republics to do the same. Moreover, Yeltsin’s performance during the failed coup conferred to him authority and credibility at Gorbachev’s expense. He banned the KPSU from operating in the Russian SFSR, implemented policies that openly challenged Moscow, and finally, along with representatives from the Belorussian and Ukrainian SSRs established the Commonwealth of Independent States, essentially declaring independence from the USSR (Hill, pp.42-3). Shortly thereafter, Gorbachev had no choice but to formally dissolve the Soviet Union despite the all-union referendum results.
How did we get here (The nationalities problem)?
The Soviet Union was internally structures as having 5 tiers starting with the supranational union itself, and in descending order, the Union Republics, Autonomous as national or subnational units, and the Autonomous Oblasts and National Autonomous Okrugs (subnational or sub-subnational) (Scherbak, p7). Nationalism, perhaps counterintuitively, was central to discourse among self-professed internationalist Bolsheviks during the creation of the USSR, as they had mobilized a support base along ethnic and national lines within the former Russian Empire, promising self-determination as a measure of autonomy as well as a form of protection against assimilation into the Russian majority, in acknowledgement of the Tsars’ policies of russification (Scherbak, p.7).
The Russian empire, a unitary state did not account for sub nationalism in its structure or administration. Regional policy was conducted top-down from Petrograd. The last couple of Tsars, however (Aleksandr II and Nicholas II) themselves moderate nationalists, attempted to repress certain nationalities. The overarching Tsarist nationality policy was one of hybrid pan-Slavism and Pan-Orthodoxy, with only Finland and Poland having a semblance of autonomy (Scherbak, p.9)
The Bolshevik position made sense in the aftermath of nearly two dozen territories declaring independence during the Russian Civil War. Any other position could have risked being interpreted as a continuation of Russian colonialism. Bolshevik policy at this time would be characterized by siding with local nationalism against Russian nationalism (Scherbak, pp. 9-10).To policymakers in the nascent USSR, nation building and colonialism went hand in hand, both deemed a necessary transitionary step in the evolutionary timeline – peoples must first nationalize in order to eventually decolonize (Hirsch, pp.202-3). Whereas Western colonial powers were defined in opposition to their colonies, the USSR defined itself as the sum and an extension of its constituent parts. It is in this context that so-called “backward people” were to be transitioned into nations within new boundaries to foster cultural and national consciousness within the framework of a unified Soviet state (Hirsch, p. 204).
The policy of double-assimilation extended not only to central Asia and other regions, but to the elites within the communist party who were assimilated into these new official nationalities as well, and those, in turn, into the Soviet state and wider Soviet society (Hirsch, p.204). Curiously, these new nationalities were neither intrinsic nor fully arbitrary, and eventually became something manifestly real, be it via official policy or regional initiative in learning to manipulate policy for their own purposes. Self-determinations was used as a cover for organizing state administrative infrastructure as drawing boundaries along economic or industrial grounds would be interpreted as imperialist and exploitative (Hirsch, p. 205). On one hand these policies were a demonstration of benevolent colonialism where the colonizer assists the colonized in attaining cultural, economic, and industrial development in a non-imperialist mode contrary to the capitalist mode of colonialism, and on the other, a glorified affirmative action program favouring non-Russians over ethnic Russians (Hirsch, pp.207-8).
The Belorussian SSR was created in pursuit of political ends, serving as a buffer between the USSR and independent Poland, as well as a counterweight to nationalistic tendencies in the Ukrainian SSR as well as a demonstration of goodwill to ethnic Polish Belorussians. This, despite protestations of Belarussians who, citing historical ethnographic data identified as culturally, ethnically, and linguistically Russian (Hirsch, pp.209-10). Conversely, Ukrainian claims on the Voronezh and Kursk regions, citing those same ethnographic records were rejected on the grounds of those regions’ industrial and economic infrastructure being integral to the Russian SFSR (Hirsch, pp.211). There were also outcomes distinct from the outright Belorussian rejection and eager embrace by pre-existing national consciousness, where the Soviet initiated policy was taken by the target minority and run with as a local movement. For instance, the creation of the Khakass Okrug out of a consolidation of various western Siberian clans and tribes which did not previously define themselves as either Khakass or even as a singular interrelated people. Nevertheless, a Khakass intelligentsia emerged, rallying the disparate tribes around this newly invented Khakass nationality. The Khakass people, by the end of the decade opposed a push to eliminate Okrugs inconsequential to union-scale economic development and consolidating their territories into autonomous oblasts, as encroaching on their national rights, the Khakass representatives arguing for the ethnographically distinct nature of the Khakass nation warranting recognition in an official treaty (Hirsch, pp.212-14).
Soviet Central Asia say some extreme cases as well, where prior to this Soviet-led nation-building initiatives and the concept of official nationalities could monopolize natural resources and land, and though there was no conception of nation, nor did the people of Turkestan, Bokhara, and Khiva define themselves in such terms. A diverse populace lived interspersed over vast areas, most at one point or another nomadic, people commonly claimed multiple identities at once. In point of fact, Vasiliy Bartol’d, a Soviet ethnographer, described the initiative as “an adaptation of a nineteenth-century West European historical tradition, alien to the region” (Hirsch, p. 213-14). While the intention was to equalize power relations between “advanced” and “backward” peoples, the net result was the creation of minority nationalities as an underclass of sorts within each new national republic. The official nationalities which understood the system, re-framed their concerns and interests in the official language f nationality as a means to consolidate territories, resources, and power, complete with the trappings of such dynamics. Majority nationalities used force and intimidation to inflate census numbers, while new national minorities faced discrimination, assimilation and the loss of land and livelihood as a consequence of linguistic, cultural and physical differences (Hirsch, p.214).
Settlements in the “wrong” national territories petitioned the state to further redraw borders on the basis of injustice. In Tashkent, now self-styled Kazakhs submitted appeals to be joined to the Kazakh SSR as the Uzbek SSR neglected and discriminated against the Kazakh region. Just a decade prior the same people commonly used compound identities such as Kazakh-Uzbek or Tajik-Uzbek. It was through Soviet nationality policy that Kazakh, Tajik, and Uzbek became distinct identities. *Hirsch, p.215). In the case of the Aimsk region’s petitioners’ narrative, the stakes became increasingly urgent over time, escalating from concerns of loss of land, to fear for their safety as Uzbeks with a Kyrgyz republic. It is unknown whether the people in question legitimately believed that they were part of a distinct Uzbek nationality (Hirsch, p.216) -- which once again, did not exist at the beginning of the decade. In the beginning of the post-Soviet period, scholars and politicians in Central Asia were denouncing Soviet nationality policy as a means to repress Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik and Kyrgyz national aspirations (Hirsch, p.202) which came into existence only as a direct consequence of Soviet nationality policy. It is ironic that throughout the Cold War, western observers denounced the SSSR as a “breaker of nations” (Hirsch, p.201)-- which there is prime example of below, in Burant -- only to acknowledge the opposite (Hirsch, p.202) when the political impetus changed.
Keith Darden correlates the intensity of OUN/UPA insurgent activity in Western Ukraine 1946-52 and pre-Soviet schooling in the regions of Stanislas where Austrian authorities endorses Ukrainization, and Transcarpathia, where Hungarian authorities opposed Ukrainization; with a similar level of education and density of social organization resulting in a growth of pro-Russian sentiment and as such a complete absence of anti-Soviet insurgency in Transcarpathia after World War II (Shcherbak, p.7). It is of little surprise then, that affirmative action policies favouring local nationalism vis-a-vis Russian nationalism reached its peak resulting in increased nationalist and anti-Soviet sentiment, precipitating the return to “great-power Russian nationalism” as official policy under Stalin (Scherbak, p. 11). This new Soviet nationalism emerged as a factor in explaining the Soviet people’s great courage and morale in defeating Germany in the Great Patriotic War (Eulau, p. 25), further Eulau argues that the constructive Soviet style of nationalism – as opposed to what he terms the destructive Tsarist nationalism that preceded it -- is a function of Stalin’s policy of Socialism in one country, and the removal of internationalist revolutionary socialism with the ousting of Trotsky, via isolationism until the rise of Hitler, collective security and popular front policies up until the onset of the Second Worth War, and finally the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Eulau, pp.25-27).
the policies of affirmative action favouring local minorities over the Russian majority came to a head resulting in unsurprisingly, increased nationalism and anti-Soviet, anti-communist sentiment, these policies ended under Stalin with the re-introduction of Russian centric nationalism, helped greatly by the rally around the flag effect during the Great Patriotic War (Shcherbak, p.11). Soviet nationality policy changed once more after Stalin’s death, being composed of three major elements: Anti-Stalinism, nativization, and gradual Russification. The first component was introduced immediately by Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, who condemned the great purges, attacking Stalin for abuses of power. Khrushchev returned to a position of praising the great contributions of the non-Russian nationalities to the war effort, and in 1957 allowed all the deported ethnicities to return to their national republics, the policy of peaceful coexistence was both foreign and domestic policy. Under Brezhnev, policy shifted to a more corporatist approach, with the party demanding absolute loyalty in exchange for social and political benefits. Brezhnev pushed a nativization approach to nationality policy of trusting the local elites. Power within the party in exchange for political loyalty (Shcherbak, p.14).
This policy too, led to increased local nationalism, as it quickly became apparent that there was little room for advancement beyond the confines of the ethnic republics at the all-Union level, the Union Republics increasingly took the semblance of sovereign state, complete with internal political institutions (Shcherbk, p.16).
Analysis
Deudney doesn’t really elaborate on what the “powerful logic” that binds modernization with liberal democracy is, as such his position seems more ideological than methodological. In our case study, which is chosen mainly because Deudney hinges his argument on it “Two decades ago, the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union and the international communist bloc seemed to resolve this debate in favour of the liberal side once and for all.” (Deudney, p.80). The Soviet Union in the late ‘80s did not really have an emerging middle class, and Gorbachev’s attempts to liberalize via Perestroika and Glasnost while not directly the cause for dissolution, were the catalyst for the ultimate cause of dissolution, it was able to modernize, however, especially relative to the feudal Tsarist system it replaced. In the particular case of the Soviet Union, it is perhaps forgotten that it was undergoing its industrialization period, similar to the industrial revolution in the west. The west didn’t skip that step, and it’s an unrealistic expectation for other regime types to do so.
He also doesn’t expand on what is meant by corruption or why it’s uniquely a problem in autocracies, or rather he does, but not convincingly, rule of law and restrictions on power he says limit corruption, but doesn’t address that corruption is a problem regardless of regime type. This is a common failing as corruption is often poorly defined. As mentioned in the case study, most defined the Soviet period as the most prosperous of their lives, clearly the autocratic state apparatus was able to meet the needs of the working classes, even during the period of stagnation. The closed information space and lack of policy debate is questionable as it was done in the soviet system just in a different way. Factionalism within the party takes the role of separate political parties.
It can also be argued the Soviet Union was not as stratified as either the empire before it, or the federation that succeeded it. The loss of legitimacy was a real factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but Gorbachev didn’t begin to lose legitimacy until after pushing through his reforms, and his loss of legitimacy to Boris Yeltsin was ultimately a direct consequence of allowing the nationalities problem to re-emerge. The other republics had no means to enforce their declarations of independence, but Russia’s declaration of independence was too much to recover from.
The curious part is that the Soviet Union did have institutions able to constrain the power of the head of state, but the head of state could easily bypass or eliminate those restraints on power, as Stalin did via the purges, and as Gorbachev did with his “soft purges”. This is perhaps the key differentiation, authoritarian leaders have the ability to bypass constraints on their executive power, which enables bad policymaking, but can also otherwise have the means to pass policy that handles problems that emerge. Seeing as the nationalities problem was solved under the successive leaderships of Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, and Brezhnev we can tentatively score one for the constructivists as leadership clearly did matter. Likewise, that it was solved under certain leaders, but erupted due to the bad policies of leaders with unchecked power, we can argue that the inability to deal with such problems isn’t inherent to authoritarian systems.
Ultimately none of the conventional wisdom’s catalysts for liberalization/regime failure played into Gorbachev’s decision to liberalize the system, and ultimately his hand was forced in terms of dissolution as it was Russia that declared independence.
Authoritarian resilience does not function as a good counter argument however, as it deals less with why autocracies persist and more with the resilience of the idea of authoritarianism as an alternative to liberal democracy. This isn’t particularly useful in determining why regimes fall.
We have a problem with scope and definitions, the “inevitability” of anything occurs on the timescale of eternity and isn’t useful. As well, Authoritarian systems, and more broadly regime types in general are too diverse to form a coherent model around, we need a taxonomy of regime types that is more granular than “Authoritarian or democratic” with common structural features in order to better answer why certain regime types fail more than others. For instance, “democratic or not” is not very useful when we can argue that America’s resilience comes from being a constitutional republic more than from its electoral system. For autocracies, once more, the proposed hypothesis doesn’t explain the emergence of sub nationalism in the USSR, or even really account for it as the primary cause for regime failure.
As for answering the question of whether the dissolution of the Soviet Union was inevitable, well in some sense it was, as sub nationalism was baked into the foundations of its creation via the Russian SFSR self-balkanizing into Union Republics created in some cases on entirely arbitrary premises. It however, didn’t need to be, as a series of leaders were able to mitigate and solve the problems posed by it, but these efforts were undone by subsequent reforms. While other economic and social problems would have been overcome by better policy, as suggested by the 1991 All-Union Referendum’s results overwhelmingly favouring retaining the Soviet Union indicating that the people largely supported such efforts to retain the system, the power of nationalism and elimination of systems meant to constrain it ultimately proved fatal, but one could argue not insurmountable, as other policies enables its re-emergence.
Ultimately the early Bolsheviks at the onset set themselves up with an arguably unnecessary uphill battle and problem for later generations to handle. The existence of a broadly inclusive multi-ethnic, multi-national pan-Soviet identity could have supplanted subnational movements as we see in the present day Russian Federation’s inherent multi-ethnic and multinational Russian identity, which is often lost in translation due to limits of language: Rossiyanin (the Russian nationality) as opposed to Ruskiy (the Russian ethnicity). As early Soviet nationality policy shows us, once the fires of nationalism are lit, they can quickly erupt into an inferno as in the Khakass case.
Policy Recommendations and conclusions
While this first point is not directly a policy recommendation we need a more granular taxonomical model for regime types than “Authoritarian or democratic” to better understand and observe regime longevity, resilience, and what causes regimes to falter. We cannot rely on ideologically motivated suppositions such as authoritarian regimes being inherently structurally unstable counting on our rivals to inevitably collapse themselves. Bad policy will harm any regime type, and such an approach catches us off guard when regimes are able to recover. Certain regime types may be less long-lasting than others, but why that is the case is more important than it being the case. This is especially crucial in the present age where hybrid regimes are increasingly commonplace.
where do authoritarian democracies for instance, in Hungary, Turkey, Slovakia or India fall? Do they inherit the caveats of autocracy, or do they benefit from democratic institutions and constraint on power? This must be studied further, and out extant models are inadequate.
the electoral system alone isn’t a safeguard a democracy against failure, strong institutions are. However, the lack of strong institutions and constraining structures of more autocratic systems can of course be exploited to destabilize adversaries by forcing them to overstep their institutions to deal with policy issues.
Moreover, a robust, inclusive civic national identity can ward against exploitation of societal divisions, sub nationalism, and ethnic nationalism. Here in Canada we now have a second separatist movement, and with land back gaining steam potentially a third on the horizon. The united states has arguably not been so divided and polarized in the modern area with white nationalism and Christian nationalism on the rise, and the Euroscepticism within the European union has in recent years gained a new lease on life. We are potentially just as vulnerable as our authoritarian counterparts.
Conversely, given the Soviet example, national ethos can be created on a whim and evolve into full on nationalist movements in short order, this is a potential weakness, in the absence of inclusive civic national identities that can be exploited to destabilize our adversaries, but we do need a better taxonomic model to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our rivals in order to better do so, as it can backfire and create a rally around the flag effect where a strong unifying identity exists and the populace feels that it is being attacked from outside forces.
Addendum
This paper was written in mid-2024, quite a bit has changed, or at least accelerated since. In Canada, the Albertan separatist movement has become a vocal but fringe minority, but amplified in the online information spaces. The transatlantic partnership has never been so fragile, either. Recently Palantir’s “Technological Republic” manifesto hit the internet, and it plays into a lot of this. It clearly plays into in-group-vs-outgroup rhetoric, but doesn’t define the in-group, treating it as self-evident, and without naming any, brands some cultures produce vital advances, while others are dysfunctional and regressive. The fundamental trap is that culture is learned, not inherent, they can, as we see in the Khakas example be created on whim, and can, in the case of the Homo Sovieticus be nurtured into a unifying civic identity if the state transmits and nurtures it. We can see a contemporary example in the case of Quebec in the decades since the quiet revolution, the emergence of a distinct Quebecois identity and per recent censuses, ethnogenesis occurring in real time. In the inverse, Armenians were considered, in Palantir’s words, dysfunctional and regressive under Persian and Ottoman rule, but headed important advances during the Soviet period, upon being given the opportunity to do so. To reiterate, just as we seek to exploit societal divisions in foreign adversaries, we have similar vulnerabilities, identities can be constructed on a whim, and a unifying civil identity helps to lessen the vulnerability.
On the theory front, It is more widely acknowledged that hybrid regimes are increasingly the norm, but we still lack a comprehensive granular model for them. Liberalism remains largely tried to modernity, though China’s rise increasingly challenges this view. Nevertheless, post Cold War End of History triumphalism risks blinding us to our own vulnerabilities, as well as risking misperception spirals when it comes to our rivals. Those who have strong, unifying civic identities may rally behind the flag under perception of foreign meddling.
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