Authoritarian regimes use rhetoric to legitimize their power

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uok-aru113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Authoritarian regimes use rhetoric to legitimize their power
University of Kansas

Leaders of authoritarian regimes in Central Asia have been able to use rhetoric to define their power as legitimate to the public despite practices of human rights violations and clamping down on dissent, according to a new study by a University of Kansas expert on international relations.

"Those governments have been fairly effective in mobilizing public support through discourse that has shaped the public's understanding of what it means to have a legitimate government," said Mariya Omelicheva, a KU associate professor of political science. "They've persuaded the public that their ideas of legitimacy were informed by the countries' histories and traditions. These governments presented their practices as consistent with the people's primary demands and needs."

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The study is important, she said, because roughly 25 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, several relatively stable authoritarian regimes have emerged in the region. They have adopted formal trappings of democracy, but they have made no progress as states in democratic transformation.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also viewed as the two most important states in the region economically and politically.

"The leadership of these states have been determined to maintain power under the guise of democracy without exposing themselves to the political risks of competition," Omelicheva said. "They have every single formal democratic institution, but they strip them of their democratic essence."

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"Because of these obvious infractions on democratic principles in practice, these authoritarian governments generate public support by resorting to performance legitimation, meaning they would assert that they have been effective in delivering on the public's demands for order, stability, security and socioeconomic progress," Omelicheva said.

More or less they have been successful in following up on their promises relative to the terms they've defined, she said.

Omelicheva found that Nazarbayev and Karimov both used similar rhetorical tactics by comparing their countries' economies at the dawn of their independence -- the collapse of the Soviet Union -- to the present day, arguing how much progress they have made.

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"Because of these obvious infractions on democratic principles in practice, these authoritarian governments generate public support by resorting to performance legitimation, meaning they would assert that they have been effective in delivering on the public's demands for order, stability, security and socioeconomic progress," Omelicheva said.

More or less they have been successful in following up on their promises relative to the terms they've defined, she said.

Omelicheva found that Nazarbayev and Karimov both used similar rhetorical tactics by comparing their countries' economies at the dawn of their independence -- the collapse of the Soviet Union -- to the present day, arguing how much progress they have made.