{"title":"Going Public","authors":"Bryn Rosenfeld","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter investigates the political orientations and career aspirations of students who intend to join the state sector in Russia, using original survey data from three elite Russian universities. The analysis focuses on whether and how Russia’s future public servants differ from others in their views of the importance of political freedom, order, national security, and strong economic performance. It finds that Russian youth aspire to work for an autocratic state not because they favor autocratic values nor because they hope to build more democratic institutions. Rather, their preference is based on access to recruitment channels: universities with strong alumni networks in the state apparatus or a parent working in the public sector. These findings suggest that public sector workers’ attitudes are similar to those of others at the start of their careers. Over time, however, public servants’ political attitudes diverge, suggesting that Russia’s large public sector also plays a vital role in securing regime support.","PeriodicalId":120497,"journal":{"name":"Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130939601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The New Normal","authors":"Jeremy Wallace","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2012, politics in the People’s Republic of China has been remade. Both institutional and rhetorical changes characterize this neopolitical “new normal,” which coincides with Xi Jinping’s rise to the top of the party-state hierarchy. But these changes extend well beyond Xi himself. Political authority has been centralized and folded back into the Chinese Communist Party, while complaints, self-criticisms, and confessions have begun to air publicly. Repression and humiliation have been used against critics as wide-ranging as Hong Kong booksellers, feminist activists, and rights lawyers, among others. Most ominously, the government has embarked on a massive detention and reeducation scheme in Xinjiang, with the number of those interned estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands or even surpassing a million. This chapter investigates China’s neopolitical turn—its limits, sources, and implications.","PeriodicalId":120497,"journal":{"name":"Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes","volume":"123 36","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141210314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Tale of Two Laws","authors":"Elizabeth Plantan","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter compares recent restrictions on foreign funding or the operation of foreign NGOs in Russia and China, including the 2012 law on “foreign agents” and the 2015 law on “undesirable” organizations in Russia and the 2017 law on the management of overseas NGOs in China. Using open sources and interview data, this chapter compares the development of these laws and their impact on domestic and international civil society groups in both countries. The chapter finds similarities in their timing and motivations for national security, their intentions to shape civil society, and their use of uncertainty as a strategic tool. They differ, however, in how quickly they were created, their choice of public versus private record, and their approach to implementation and punishment. Ultimately, the findings highlight how Russia and China use these laws to repress some groups while allowing others, striking a balance between liberalization and repression.","PeriodicalId":120497,"journal":{"name":"Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133438218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diffusion-Proofing","authors":"Karrie J. Koesel, Valerie J. Bunce","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190093488.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Do authoritarian leaders take preemptive actions to deter their citizens from joining cross-national waves of popular mobilizations against authoritarian rulers? Are they more likely to engage in such behavior when these uprisings appear to be more threatening—in particular, when they take place in neighboring countries and in regimes that resemble their own? This chapter provides answers to these questions by comparing the responses of the Russian and Chinese leaderships to two such waves: the color revolutions and the Arab uprisings. It concludes that despite differences in the ostensible threats posed by these two waves, they nonetheless prompted the leaders of both of these countries to introduce similar preemptive measures in order to “diffusion-proof” their rule against the color revolutions and the Arab upheavals. These findings have some important implications for an understanding of authoritarian politics and diffusion processes. One is to reinforce the emphasis in many recent studies on the strategic foundations of authoritarian resilience. That recognized, however, this chapter adds that the authoritarian tool kit needs to be expanded to include policies that preempt international threats as well as domestic ones. The other is to provide further confirmation, in this case derived from the behavior of authoritarian rulers, of how scholars have understood the drivers of cross-national diffusion. At the same time, however, students of diffusion should pay more attention to the role of resisters, as well as to adopters. In this sense, the geographical reach of diffusion is much broader than many analysts have recognized","PeriodicalId":120497,"journal":{"name":"Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128740671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}