How Do Inclusionary and Exclusionary Autocracies Affect Ordinary People?

• Author: Anja Neundorf,Roman-Gabriel Olar,Johannes Gerschewski
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414019858958
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019858958

Comparative Political Studies

2020, Vol. 53(12) 1890 –1925

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414019858958

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Article

How Do Inclusionary and

Exclusionary Autocracies

Affect Ordinary People?

Anja Neundorf1, Johannes Gerschewski2,

and Roman-Gabriel Olar3

Abstract

We propose a distinction between inclusionary and exclusionary

autocratic ruling strategies and develop novel theoretical propositions

on the legacy that these strategies leave on citizens’ political attitudes

once the autocratic regime broke down. Using data of 1.3 million survey

respondents from 71 countries and hierarchical age–period–cohort

models, we estimate between and within cohort differences in citizens’

democratic support. We find that inclusionary regimes—with wider

redistribution of socioeconomic and political benefits—leave a stronger

antidemocratic legacy than exclusionary regimes on the political attitudes

of their citizens. Similarly, citizens who were part of the winning group

in an autocracy are more critical with democracy compared with citizens

who were part of discriminated groups. This article contributes to our

understanding about how autocracies affect the hearts and minds of

ordinary citizens.

Keywords

authoritarianism, public goods, micro-foundation, inclusion, exclusion,

cohort analysis, political socialization

1University of Nottingham, UK

2Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

3Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Corresponding Author:

Anja Neundorf, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.

Email: anja.neundorf@gmail.com

858958CPSXXX10.1177/0010414019858958Comparative Political StudiesNeundorf et al.

research-article2019

Neundorf et al. 1891

Introduction

February 5, 2018, marked the day on which the Berlin Wall stood as long as

it is gone—28 years and 3 months. Yet, the legacy of the former German

Democratic Republic (GDR) is still tangible. The autocratic rule of the GDR

has left an imprint on the political attitudes of its citizens that did not cease to

exist with the fall of the Berlin Wall, making many nostalgic about the auto-

cratic past. Some have connected this so-called “Ostalgie” to antidemocratic

resentment, which is widespread in East Germany. The former GDR is not an

exception. Antidemocratic political attitudes last usually longer than the

autocratic regime in which they developed. Yet, the GDR represents a par-

ticular type of autocracy that placed heavy emphasis on equal education, a

comprehensive health system, and a wide distribution of socioeconomic ben-

efits among the working class. Other regimes are less generous—in economic

and political terms—toward their citizens.

Against this backdrop, our article is motivated by the question, to what

extent ruling strategies of autocratic regimes influence the political attitudes

of their citizens, even after these authoritarian regimes broke down. In par-

ticular, our research sheds light on the mechanism of authoritarian nostalgia

and antidemocratic sentiments that are a product of authoritarian socializa-

tion. To achieve this, we bring two strands of research into a dialogue.

Although the comparative authoritarianism literature has focused mainly on

the inner workings of nondemocratic rule (Gandhi, 2008; Svolik, 2012), it

paid less attention to the role of ordinary citizens. However, this is the start-

ing point of the second strand of literature, the legacy literature, which is

mainly interested in the effect that previous nondemocratic rule has on politi-

cal beliefs and attitudes—once democracy is installed (Bernhard & Karakoç,

2007; Neundorf, 2010; Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2017). Yet, it is surprising that

the legacy literature remains rather mute toward addressing the effect of vari-

ation in autocratic ruling strategies on political attitudes.

Theoretically, we rely on political socialization theory and argue that the

political environment and the ruling strategy that someone experiences dur-

ing the so-called “formative years” not only affect a citizen’s contemporary

political attitudes but also leave a lasting imprint on her political attitudes in

later life (Krosnick & Alwin, 1989; Mannheim, 1928; Sears & Funk, 1999).

In other words, the sociopolitical experience as a young adult coins how one

assesses politics later in life. More concretely, we are interested in the legacy

effect that different authoritarian ruling strategies have on the political atti-

tudes of citizens, in particular toward democracy. Focusing on the legacy

here further allows us to infer about the public support created by these vari-

ous ruling strategies during the dictatorship.

1892 Comparative Political Studies 53(12)

We propose a typological distinction between inclusionary and exclusion-

ary strategies. Building upon Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and

Morrow’s (2003) work, we distinguish between political and economic

dimensions of inclusion and exclusion in autocracies. We argue that inclu-

sionary autocracies tend to redistribute more of their political and economic

resources toward their citizens to create a broad public support base. In con-

trast, exclusionary autocracies follow the opposite route and channel political

influence and economic benefits to a small group of privileged (and, there-

fore, loyal) individuals who help the leader survive in power.1

We show that these two different regime strategies of inclusion and exclu-

sion affect the long-term political attitudes of ordinary citizens. To demon-

strate the heterogeneity of the legacy effect and to arrive at a nuanced

empirical picture, we test our theoretical argument with two complementary

empirical strategies. First, we examine differences in political attitudes of

citizens who were socialized under different autocratic ruling strategies on

one hand, and who were brought up under democracy on the other hand

(between-regime comparison). Second, we further examine differences in

political attitudes between individuals who were socialized under the same

autocratic regime, yet had different sociopolitical statuses, that is, belonging

to an included group that profits from the regime or being particularly dis-

criminated against and excluded from power (within-regime comparison).

The empirical analysis is based on a newly created, harmonized public

opinion data set that combines 1,070 (country × wave × study)2 existing

surveys for 70 countries from around the world and data on authoritarian

regimes’ ruling strategies from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data

set (Coppedge et al., 2018). We use hierarchical age–period–cohort (HAPC)

models to estimate the effect of these strategies on citizens’ attitudes toward

democracy today.

We find that people who were socialized in exclusionary regimes are more

supportive of democracy compared with citizens from more inclusionary

regimes, and even democracies. As the policies of autocratic regimes become

more inclusionary, this finding is reversed. Citizens from inclusionary

regimes are less satisfied with democracy compared with citizens from exclu-

sionary regimes and democracies. We also find a mutual reinforcement effect

between political and economic inclusion. This means that if an authoritarian

regime is economically inclusive by providing public goods to its citizens,

being politically inclusive and incorporating a broad variety of societal

groups into political power, significantly decreases later democratic support.

The within-regime analysis further supports our theoretical expectation that

authoritarian ruling strategies matter for the formation of citizens’ political

attitudes.