ABSTRACT Citizens in authoritarian regimes understand the concept of democracy under the influence of the state's manipulation and individual agency. This study examines Chinese citizens’ perception of three types of government – people relationships – government (1) of the people; (2) by the people; and (3) for the people – without directly using the term ‘democracy’. Citizens’ perceptions of these three principles of democracy can predict the level of their support for democracy, identifying variations among Chinese ‘democrats’. The principle of government by the people is most popular among the Chinese public. Citizens who understand democracy based on government of the people are dissatisfied with the country's level of democracy and criticize authoritarian politics. Public understanding of democracy based on government for the people has an anti-democratic orientation, and is compatible with support for authoritarian rule. This study unveils variations in the Chinese public's understanding of democracy and its impact on politics.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explain how the international relations of authoritarian regimes shape their reaction to nonviolent popular mobilisation. We identify four main strategies of authoritarian survival and argue that – from the incumbents’ perspective – repression and democratic opening are riskier than informal and formal co-optation. Thus, we ask why some nondemocratic rulers select riskier rather than safer strategies. Although recent studies have devoted much attention to the relevance of international factors in shaping domestic politics, this proposition has not been thoroughly theorised nor scrutinised empirically. We focus on authoritarian regimes that have established patron–client relations with foreign powers and argue that patrons’ regimes influence the selection of specific survival strategies by threatened clients. We hypothesise that dictators with democratic patrons are induced to adopt riskier strategies of survival, whereas clients of autocracies are more likely to select safer strategies. We test our hypothesis on MENA countries.

ABSTRACT Scholars increasingly refer to ‘democratic resilience’ to understand the ways democracies respond to threats and challenges. Likewise, policymakers advocate democratic resilience as part of foreign and security strategies, and as an aim of internally strengthening democratic practices, amid changing threat environments. But what does ‘democratic resilience’ mean? Does it align with well-established resilience theorising across other disciplines, and does it provide anything distinct from existing means of understanding democratic perseverance? To answer these questions, we conduct a systematic review of literature discussing democratic resilience, and measure findings against a synthesis of multidisciplinary theorising on resilience. We find that democratic resilience is often under-theorised, used in a fashion that largely repackages existing democratisation concepts, or fails to incorporate advancements in broader resilience theorising. Recent contributions to both theoretical development and operationalisation of democratic resilience, however, indicate a potential turning point in the evolution of the concept.

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 crisis has once again brought the role of the state in the capitalist economy to the fore. Rather than viewing this as a ‘return of the state’, this article conceptualises the current dynamic in terms of a reconfiguration of the roles the state plays, distinguishing between a market-creating, a market-correcting, a market-intervening, and a market-directing role, with each role having both an internal and an external dimension. This conceptual mapping of the diversity of state-capital configurations is then applied to offer a novel reading of the recent capitalist state trajectories of the US and of China. We conclude that there is – notwithstanding persistent differences – a relative convergence inasmuch as the still strongly market-directing Chinese state also has at the same come to embrace a global market-creating role, while the US is now also showing signs of a stronger emphasis on market-direction.

ABSTRACT State-owned capital investment into so-called illiberal democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has risen to become a more significant feature of CEE political economies, although knowledge of the impact of such transnational flows on illiberal capitalist development remains limited. This article analyses this form of capitalist relation by contributing to and consequently fusing two strands of burgeoning academic literature: (1) the political economy of illiberalism and (2) state capitalism. The result is an expansion of the purview of each: the former by focusing on CEE illiberalism’s external (state) capitalist dimensions; the latter via an upgrading of the rigour of the term ‘state capitalism’ through analysis of ‘new territorialities’. Empirically, I use a Case Study Analysis of Chinese state-owned capital investment into Serbia with focus on two Sino-Serbian agreements and identify two issues that may come to characterise the broader relationship between CEE illiberalism and Chinese state-owned capital investment.

ABSTRACT The interaction between kleptocracy, strategic corruption, and defence policymaking has not yet been sufficiently explored in the existing literature. Malaysia's turn towards China amidst the 1MDB scandal, despite Chinese claims to Malaysian waters and naval intrusions, provides an opportunity to study such a phenomenon. By examining the pressures exerted by the US and the strategic corruption pull by China upon Prime Minister Najib Razak's kleptocratic interests, this analysis highlighted the kleptocrat's strategies to change Malaysia's pro-Western defence policy. Through extensive interviews and secondary data, this study analyses the manipulation of Public Service Bargains as a critical variable influencing the kleptocrat's defence policymaking. It concludes that Najib's strategies transformed the established trustee-type of bargain in Malaysia's defence decision-making process to a kleptocratic type, enabling a closer relationship with China. This analysis contributes to the debate on kleptocracy's impact on smaller powers' defence relationships amidst the global expansion of China's strategic influence.

ABSTRACT This article examines the association between women’s political inclusion and incumbent party strength in authoritarian regimes. It argues that the degree of party institutionalisation is the main determinant of women’s political inclusion under authoritarian rule. Institutionalised party rule determines the incentive and capacity for authoritarian parties to introduce more gender equal political processes and political outputs. Using different measurements of women’s political inclusion and data on 108 countries between 1946 and 2010, this article estimates within- and between-country effects of party institutionalisation, regime types and political inclusion of women. Although previous research stressed the link between authoritarian regime types and gender equality, this study finds regime types to explain little gender equality variation. In contrast, regimes with higher levels of party institutionalisation provide more gender equal politics and policies than regimes in which authoritarian parties are less institutionalised.

ABSTRACT Since 2014, Sweden has pursued the world's first Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP). However, the effectiveness of its policy promotion depends on how Sweden's efforts to spread this norm-based policy are perceived and evaluated by other states. We argue that a policy promotion effort has to be perceived as legitimate, coherent and salient by target populations in order to be effective. We investigate the extent to which it is the case in national newspapers of 17 countries, representing world and regional powers. We demonstrate that most coverage of the FFP is rather modest, notably in non-Western countries. Further, we argue that the coverage of Sweden's FFP in foreign media is influenced by three challenges: (1) an absence of a universal definition of FFP; (2) a clash between ideals of FFP and Swedish “traditional” security and commercial interests; (3) an uneasy relationship between the concept of feminism and media in many countries.

ABSTRACT Chinese food policy has changed over the last two decades from a productivist focus to embracing a precautionary approach to food safety. What are the drivers of this change? And what are the implications for the Chinese political regime? While acknowledging the relevance of global dynamics, we claim that domestic dynamics have largely accounted for this change. A series of food scandals in the 2000s has caused concerns among Chinese consumers and ultimately lead to a contested governance of food safety in the nation that has challenged the legitimacy of the regime itself. The government has responded by introducing new precautionary measures, as theorists of responsive authoritarianism would predict. Contrary to such predictions, though, the Chinese government toughened provisions to repress violations. Due to these characteristics, we conclude that the Chinese approach to food safety that emerged after the food scandals can be synthesised as a form of precautionary authoritarianism.

ABSTRACT It remains contested whether Chinese public consultation practices can be called local deliberative democracy or a sort of consultative authoritarianism. Yet, these different evaluations lack an appreciation of regional variations as well as underlying drivers. This study fills this gap by developing a political economy approach and constructing panel data of 36 Chinese cities over 12 years. Our study reveals that the functional purpose of appeasing social conflicts serves a key underlying incentive that drives China’s deliberative turn, yet heavier dependence on foreign investment in a local economy hinders public consultation. Content analysis of 3082 public hearing documents further shows that adoption of public hearings varies by regions with economically and politically advantaged municipalities being more likely to adopt consultative institutions for transparency. This study brings together the scholarship of contentious politics and deliberative politics while offering a nuanced understanding of regional differences of public consultation.