Authoritarian and democratic diffusion in post-communist regions

Lankina, Tomila V. ORCID: 0000-0002-8303-1747, Libman, Alexander and Obydenkova, Anastassia (2016) Authoritarian and democratic diffusion in post-communist regions. Comparative Political Studies, 49 (12). pp. 1599-1629. ISSN 0010-4140

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Abstract

There is a rich body of theorizing on the diffusion of democracy across space and time. There is also an emerging scholarship on authoritarian diffusion. The dynamics of the interaction between external democratic and autocratic diffusion processes and their effects on national and sub-national political regime outcomes have received scant attention in the literature. Do democratic diffusion processes help counter external authoritarian influences? And, in contexts where external diffusion of democratic influences is weak, do we observe greater susceptibility to diffusion from regional autocracies that might in turn reinforce authoritarian practices and institutions in “recipient” states? To address these questions, we perform analysis of data from two original under-utilized data sets—a data set on the European Union (EU) aid to Russia’s regions and a data set with statistics on trade among post-Soviet states. We find that EU aid has the effect of countering external authoritarian influences that work through Soviet-era inter-regional economic ties.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://cps.sagepub.com/
Additional Information:	© 2016 The Authors
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Date Deposited:	29 Feb 2016 14:41
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 01:09
Funders:	London School of Economics and Political Science, Suntory and Toyota International Centers for Economics and Related Disciplines, The British Academy
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/65559

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