Authoritarian Regimes in Times of Political Crises. Strategies of  Post-Soviet Authoritarian Leaders to Create Stability and Legitimacy

PhD project of Tatia Chikhladze (2015-2019)
Supervisors: Prof. Heiko Pleines, Prof. Klaus Schlichte, Prof. Mark Beissinger

This project has been conducted within the Innovative Training Network ”Caspian“ which was funded by an MSCA grant of the European Union in the context of Horizon 2020 (Grant agreement no: 642709).

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Many post-Soviet authoritarian regimes show surprising resilience in the face of domestic political challenges stemming from inner elite circles and wider public and manage to preserve power for a long period of time. The aim of this research project is to study how post-Soviet authoritarian leaders manage to preserve power in times of political crises and how their power preservation strategies re-adapt in response to these crises.

The existing literature is quite rich in terms of different typologies of non-democratic regimes and on how they normally function, but not much research has been done on the issue of how these regimes cope with domestic challenges and how their normal functioning modes change in times of crises. This research project will attempt to fill that gap in literature.

The project is focused on two types of political crises: succession/power transfer crisis and mass public demonstrations. These are internal crises not related to armed conflicts. During each of these crises non-democratic leaders are facing threats to the stability of their regimes.

A comparative case study method will be used to contrast systematically the reactions of post-Soviet authoritarian leaders to political crises. The research project will be looking at different strategies for power preservation and coping with crises – repression, co-optation, legitimation – and observe how these strategies change (if at all) over time in response to crises. In terms of methodology, the research will rely on the comparative case study method and the main units of analysis will be political crises.