Arbitrary Governance and Modern Authoritarianism

How do modern authoritarian rulers project power? Until now, scholars of authoritarianism have emphasized a balancing act between coercion and patronage while scholars of post-colonial and neopatrimonial states draw attention to elite settlements. This chapter identifies arbitrary governance as a third and as yet unexplored way that today’s authoritarian regimes project power. Regimes that employ institutionalized arbitrariness do not delegate authority; instead, they stabilize control and project power directly into the lives of ordinary citizens through unpredictable assertions of authority that undermine the political autonomy of those who might otherwise challenge it. This chapter elaborates the theoretical underpinnings of institutionalized arbitrariness, and offers a four-part analytic framework that combines inductive findings from field research with scholarship on authoritarian regimes in Africa and beyond. The framework explains how regimes institutionalize unpredictability, showing not just why unpredictability matters to maintain authoritarian rule, but also how it is manufactured and sustained.