Legitimacy and Legitimation Strategies in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Abstract All authoritarian regimes seek to substantiate their right to rule. In this chapter, we differentiate legitimation—understood as the process of claiming popular support—from legitimacy itself, which refers to the extent to which a regime is perceived as legitimate by its citizens. Given autocracies’ opaque and repressive nature, their legitimacy is notoriously difficult to measure with public opinion surveys. In response, research has focused on nondemocratic regimes’ claims to legitimacy, which have fundamental repercussions for how authoritarian leaders relate to other elite members and to society. Regimes’ characteristics render certain legitimation strategies more likely and effective. Accordingly, electoral autocracies regularly focus on procedural claims, thereby emulating democracies, while closed autocracies tend to stress their (illiberal) ideology. As legitimation is crucial for autocratic stability, regimes adjust their claims to withstand domestic and international crises, for example by shifting from performance-based to personalistic claims amid economic crisis.