status: Accepted

ABSTRACT This article examines how scholars use the concept of “regime” in comparative politics to provide stronger conceptual foundations for the future development of regime studies. We analyse 196 articles in five leading political science journals published between 1996 and 2023. We find that “regime” is rarely explicitly defined, but usage coalesces around three implicit definitions: a procedural approach that focuses on the rules for accessing and wielding political power; an actor-centred approach that defines regime in terms of the ruling elites and power coalition; and a sociological approach that foregrounds the character of existing relations between rulers and ruled. We demonstrate that each usage reveals essential aspects of “regime”, but definitions are often unreflectively applied and used differently for different regime types, risking biased and partial comparison. This results in fragmented debates on how regimes operate and, especially, change and in missed opportunities for advancing knowledge. To show a path forward, we highlight the (rare) scholarship that works at the intersection of multiple definitions, exploring the new avenues that this opens up. More generally, we argue that the future of regime studies must be grounded in better concept building. This article provides the needed groundwork for this to take place.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the European Union’s (EU) policy-learning processes in democracy support, focusing on its responses to authoritarian consolidation in Belarus from 2004 to 2024. Despite its commitment to democracy and human rights, the EU has struggled to achieve consistent outcomes in engaging with Belarus, a “hard case” of sustained autocracy. The study develops a novel conceptual framework to analyse policy learning, unlearning, and strategic adaptation in EU democracy support, examining how the EU learns from experience and adapts its approaches. The study finds that segmented learning, involving ad-hoc adjustments to immediate events, often shaped EU responses, while cumulative learning – drawing on past experiences to inform long-term strategies – played a more limited role. Strategic adaptation is evident in the EU’s oscillation between pragmatic engagement and sanctions, reflecting a complex interplay between normative commitments and geopolitical considerations. Institutional constraints and bureaucratic rigidity not only hampered policy learning but also led to the unlearning of valuable knowledge such as on civil society engagement. While there has been some adaptation in the face of authoritarian resilience and geopolitical competition, the Belarus case demonstrates that the EU lacks the institutional memory and learning mechanisms to systematically integrate democracy support with other foreign policy objectives.

ABSTRACT Research on the dangers of authoritarian populism for liberal democracy has almost exclusively focused on “populists in power” and those cases where dramatic changes have occurred. However, there is a notable gap in understanding the strategies and dangers of “populists before power”. We argue that authoritarian populists also pose a threat where they cannot effect constitutional change. By using “delegitimization strategies” they can significantly weaken liberal democratic institutions through a systematic erosion of public trust. Focusing on independent judiciaries as targets, we illustrate how attacks that link criticism of decisions, judges and judicial institutions with narratives of systemic failure may unfold and highlight the value of delegitimization within the larger populist tool kit. Thereby, the paper lays the conceptual foundation for an integrated research agenda on “populist before power”, including counter-reactions to delegitimization attempts, and contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between populism and democracy.

ABSTRACT Why do ethnic parties stay dominant in post-war Bosnian politics? This article addresses this question by examining the institutional effects of power-sharing introduced by the Dayton Peace Agreement. Based on the theories of patronage politics, this article presents a theoretical framework to capture the political economy effects of power-sharing in favouring ethnic parties to monopolize the public sector employment for their patronage in post-war democracy. I argue that power-sharing functions to create employment opportunities in the public sector along ethnic lines and allows ethnic parties to seize control over them, thereby consolidating ethnic party dominance in post-war politics. Applying the theoretical framework to the Bosnian case, I conduct two empirical analyses to address the question. First, combining qualitative and quantitative evidence, I present how the distribution of patronage underpins the rule of ethnic parties in post-war Bosnian politics. Second, using information drawn from several archival data, including local newspapers, I examine how power-sharing entrenches the patronage-based rule of ethnic parties by providing them with preferential access to state resources. The analyses present new theoretical and empirical insights into the effectiveness of power-sharing for conflict resolution from the political-economy perspective.

ABSTRACT Existing research primarily delves into the demand side of electoral manipulation, focusing on the conditions prompting political elites to rig the process. Recent studies have shifted focus towards the supply side, employing the principal-agent approach to investigate how agents engage in election tampering based on their principals' likelihood of success. While this perspective has highlighted the role of agents in determining manipulation intensity, gaps remain in understanding how they predict their principals' victory and strategically decide on active or passive manipulation. Our argument centres on agents using the economy as a critical indicator of their principals' electoral prospects. A strong economy boosts incumbents' chances of success and their vote share, prompting agents to be more blatant in engaging in electoral misconduct, leading to heightened manipulation. Analysing 1278 multiparty elections across 94 countries since the 1900s, our findings suggest that incumbent electoral prospects correlate with economic indicators and significantly influence the scale of electoral manipulation.

ABSTRACT Why do authoritarian regimes maintain access to open U.S.-owned social media platforms like Twitter and how do pro-government supporters use them? While the literature on consultative authoritarianism explains how limited public engagement through purpose-built input institutions can be used to gauge public grievances and boost regime legitimacy, we know less about the implications of open social media applications and why the regime maintains access to them despite their subversive potential. This article argues that open platforms allow pro-government supporters to perform public opinion and police views that do not align with official state talking points, creating an impression of a consensus about what society “thinks.” Yet, they might push the government to respond to their demands that might not align with official state interests. I label this practice of enlisting supporters and segments of society for political control collaborative authoritarianism. This practice extends to purpose-built law enforcement apps, engaging broader segments of the population. Introducing the case of Twitter use in Saudi Arabia, this article draws on around 100 interviews that I conducted with patriotic and nationalist journalists, intellectuals, and Twitter influencers across Saudi Arabia between November 2021 and May 2022. The article provides novel insights into the grassroots politics of digital authoritarianism as well as the mobilization of illiberal movements beyond Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT In a global context of democratic challenges such as dissatisfaction and social polarization, research on Western European democracies suggests that deliberative democracy instruments like deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) may provide a solution with their positive impact on participants’ attitudes towards politics and democracy. Despite the proliferation of citizens’ assemblies, especially locally, little is known about DMPs in newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, and it is uncertain whether the findings about the virtues of deliberation would hold. This study assesses the impact of a mini-public in Poland, focusing on the Citizens’ Assembly on Energy Poverty, the country's first national-level deliberative initiative. Poland has faced heightened political dissatisfaction due to eight years of right-wing populist governance and the rise of radical ideologies, raising questions about deliberation's impact on dissatisfied and radical participants. Our results confirm the positive impact of deliberation on participants, improving their percepetion of knowledge, political interest, efficacy, and support for mini-publics. However, we find no significant differences of deliberation between dissatisfied, radical participants, and other groups highlighting the universal benefits of deliberation. These inconclusive findings may be due to a common recruitment bias in DMPs, specifically enrolling politically engaged citizens, thus limiting the potential for a learning curve.