The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
by Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman -
https://spindictators.com/
New Breed of Dictators Holds Power by Manipulating Information & Faking Democracy
democracies, they spin the
news to engineer support.
Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.
Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators―and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.
Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time―from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.
Table of Contents
Preface
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 - Fear and Spin
PART I: HOW IT'S DONE
CHAPTER 2 - Discipline, but Don't Punish
CHAPTER 3 - Postmodern Propaganda
CHAPTER 4 - Sensible Censorship
CHAPTER 5 - Democracy for Dictators
CHAPTER 6 - Global Pillage
PART II: WHY IT'S HAPPENING AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
CHAPTER 7 - The Modernization Cocktail
CHAPTER 8 - The Future of Spin
https://www.amazon.com/Spin-Dictators-Changing-Tyranny-Century/dp/0691211418
Reviewed by G. John Ikenberry
Guriev and Treisman offer a deeply researched tour d’horizon of the evolving dark arts of authoritarian politics.
The old model of dictatorship was embodied in the violence and brutality of Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, regimes built on coercion, fear, and the gulag.
Authoritarianism today manifests in the “low-intensity coercion” of regimes on both the left and the right, exemplified by the governments of Hungary, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, and Venezuela.
- The goal of dictatorship remains the same: dominance and control over society.
- But the method of the new breed of autocrats is not to be feared but to become popular through the control and manipulation of information.
- They wrap their regimes in the symbols and rhetoric of democracy, while using the powers of the state to incrementally weaken and silence opposition.
The new dictatorships are harder to combat because -
https://foreignaffairs.com/.../spin-dictators-changing-face-tyranny-21st-century
For Modern Autocrats, Lying is More Useful than Killing
“Spin Dictators” examines the phoney democrat’s arsenal of deceit
Russia did not invade Ukraine. Ukrainians are shelling their own cities. A Jewish president is actually a Nazi. Dictators have always told lies, so the Kremlin’s recent whoppers have precedent. Dictators have often used terror, too, so what Vladimir Putin is doing to civilians in Ukraine is nothing new, either. But the balance between lying and killing has changed, argues a fascinating new book. For most modern autocrats, lying matters more.
In “Spin Dictators”, Sergei Guriev, a Russian economist living in exile, and Daniel Treisman, a political scientist, describe how this shift has occurred. For much of the 20th century, despots were ostentatiously violent. Hitler, Stalin and Mao slew millions. Lesser monsters such as Mobutu Sese Seko, a Congolese tyrant, hanged cabinet ministers in public. The aim was to terrify people into submission.
The authors contrast such “fear dictators” with “spin dictators”, who kill fewer people, and deny it when they do. The latter are now more common. Among autocrats who took power in the 1960s, roughly a quarter killed more than 100 dissidents a year; among those who took power in the 2000s, less than a tenth did.
Spin dictators pretend to be democrats. They hold multiparty elections and seldom claim to have won more than 90% of the vote, as was the norm for non-democracies in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They rig less and gerrymander more. In 2018 Viktor Orban, Hungary’s spinner-in-chief, turned less than half the vote for his party into a two-thirds supermajority in parliament. He will be hard to dislodge at the election on April 3rd.
Fear dictators’ propaganda was crude and relentless. Busts of Stalin were placed on 38 mountain peaks in Central Asia. So many Mao badges were produced that China’s aircraft industry ran short of aluminium. It was often absurd, too. Mussolini and Kim Jong Il could supposedly conjure up rain and teleport from place to place, respectively. This absurdity was itself a weapon, demonstrating the regime’s “capacity to force people to repeat nonsense”.
Spin dictators like to project an image of competence. Nursultan Nazarbayev used to address Kazakhs from behind a stack of papers, reading out lists of bread-and-butter policies and chiding his ministers for not serving the public better. Spin dictators seldom have a coherent ideology, but use humour to paint themselves as noble and their opponents as vile. They even weaponise light entertainment. In Peru under Alberto Fujimori, a Jerry Springer-style show featured screaming guests, allegations of infidelity and calm words from the host praising the president.
Censorship under fear dictators was total. When an impure snippet found its way into an agricultural paper in the Soviet Union, “censors raced to track down every copy sold, including 50 already pasted into ersatz wallpaper and 12 used as toilet paper.” Spin dictators, by contrast, let a few highbrow, low-circulation dissident papers survive, to show they respect freedom of speech. Meanwhile, independent broadcasters are crippled with spurious tax demands and then bought by the president’s cronies. Critics are harassed with libel suits or fined for spreading “fake news”. Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, forced documentaries off the web by suing for unauthorised use of his picture. Authoritarian leaders who manipulate, rather than censor, the media are typically more popular than democratic ones who face a genuinely free press.
The goal of a spin dictator is to appear to allow political competition while making it nearly impossible in practice. Rather than criminalising dissent, he imprisons his opponents for non-political crimes, such as fraud or rape, of which they are innocent. Sometimes he locks them up for short periods, so they do not become martyrs, and often, so their work is constantly disrupted. Rather than banning opposition parties, he tangles them in red tape or bankrupts them with fines and lawsuits. For extra deniability, the task of making dissidents’ lives hell can be outsourced to a youth militia or army of online trolls, who may rough them up, publish their addresses or leak embarrassing photos.
In some respects, the authors’ argument is optimistic. Political killing has declined because it has grown more taboo. As people become more educated, they expect better from their governments. As Singapore’s former leader, Lee Kuan Yew, put it: “One simply cannot ask a highly educated workforce to stop thinking when it leaves the factory.” That is why spin dictators try so hard to pretend to be democrats.
Mr Guriev and Mr Treisman suggest a policy of “adversarial engagement”. The free world should watch more closely for signs that leaders—including its own—are grabbing unwarranted powers or undermining institutions. It should welcome modernisation even in dictatorships, since economic and social development may ultimately create more demands for liberty. It should stop helping dictators by laundering their money and reputations—anonymous shell companies should be banned, and mischievous lawsuits against exiled dissidents should be curbed.
Unfortunately, the arsenal of deceit is highly effective at keeping malign leaders in power, which is perhaps why global democracy has been in retreat for the past decade. And if those leaders remain in power for a long time, they often grow more repressive. Mr Putin may be less brutal than Stalin, but in his third decade in office he has shifted firmly from “spin” to “fear”. Xi Jinping, who also shows no sign of retiring, has turned China into a surveillance state. That is an aspect of 21st-century repression that this otherwise admirable book fails adequately to explore. In many countries people can neither trust their rulers, nor hide from them.
https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/04/02/for-modern-autocrats-lying-is-more-useful-than-killing
What’s New About the New Authoritarianism?
Spin dictators focus on keeping people docile or distracted, often through sophisticated public relations, but they do not demand constant loyalty. Election victories with 99 percent of the vote provoke anger; spin dictators ensure the triumph is overwhelming but not obviously proof of fraud while still demoralizing the opposition. Guriev and Treisman write that the pioneer of this new form of authoritarianism was Singapore, where Lee Kuan Yew, who served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, kept up a facade of democracy through regular elections. Rather than arresting opposition figures for dissenting, he would have them sued for libel—bankrupting them—and then benefit from a law barring bankrupt citizens from seeking office.
If traditional autocrats relied on the illusion of consent, today’s autocrats wish to create consent to the construction of illusions—whether about the persistence of real democracy, the leader’s infinite competence, or making the country great again. Guriev and Treisman write that many of these leaders start from a position of genuine popularity—Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example—and then slowly transform institutions such that they cannot lose power if circumstances change. This new autocratic playbook is easily copied across borders, the authors argue, not least because there is no unifying ideology. (Lee Kuan Yew, for instance, called himself a pragmatist.)
Guriev and Treisman marshal a wealth of empirical evidence to back up their argument, with each chapter detailing different mechanisms for how 21st-century dictators preserve power without obviously looking like tyrants. The authors show that today’s authoritarians are less violent than their 20th-century predecessors, including a significantly decreased propensity to start wars. There is one exception. Guriev and Treisman observe that Putin initiated far more military disputes than any other spin dictator: 21 at the time of the book’s writing and now 22 with his invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s conduct during the war in Ukraine complicates other aspects of Guriev and Treisman’s account of the new authoritarianism. This spring, the Russian leader shuttered the last remaining—though already marginalized—independent news outlets in Russia and is working to make society conform to his ideological outlook. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan undertook a similar descent from simulated democracy toward outright repression in Turkey after the 2016 coup attempt against his government. It seems that when circumstances change and when the international context permits, today’s autocrats are ready to fall back on fear.
The Erdogan government’s current attempt to prevent the popular mayor of Istanbul from running in next year’s presidential election on a laughable legal pretext is closer to the Guriev-Treisman model, showing that repressive tactics can coexist with seemingly softer ones. And no matter the character of their regimes, today’s autocrats rely on an underrated factor for political survival: Whereas in the 20th century many borders were closed, discontents can now simply leave. It will presumably help Putin that hundreds of thousands of highly educated Russians left the country after the invasion.
That spin can give way to fear is not a decisive argument against Guriev and Treisman’s thesis. Drawing on a large range of cases, they capture something important about early 21st-century politics: Contrary to a view popular among liberal democrats since the fall of the Soviet Union, autocracies are not automatically self-undermining; autocrats can innovate and learn new governing techniques. Yet that some dictators revert to fear casts some doubt on the authors’ claim that a “modernization cocktail” of advances in the economy and especially in education will ultimately be a deadly mix for autocracy. Such leaders are clearly not invincible, but Spin Dictators makes us wonder if authoritarians will not just keep innovating in order to neutralize the apparent political consequences of modernization.
Reverse Evolution of a Spin Dictatorship - Putin Goes to War
Vladimir Putin’s political regime has been evolving since 2000. He inherited a flawed democracy, with a tycoon-dominated media, messy elections, and a demoralized and polarized public. His first 12 years in power — including the four years of Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency — were spent gradually transforming this into a spin dictatorship.
Spin dictatorships, unlike the more familiar violently repressive ones, work by manipulation rather than terror. Examples are Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Hungary under Viktor Orbán. In such systems, the regime does not kill or imprison thousands of its political opponents. Instead, it controls the mass media, while permitting critics to publish in small-audience outlets. It holds elections, but covertly manages them to ensure victory. The political opposition is harassed and marginalized — but not banned. The leader projects an image of competence and public service, and seeks to secure high approval, while avoiding violent rhetoric or visible repression that could undercut the image. Internationally, spin dictators exploit corruption in the West and in international institutions to coopt allies and accumulate leverage.
Putin’s team did this extremely well. From late 1999, his ratings stayed above 60 percent for more than 20 years. He became so genuinely popular that he did not need to rig elections, although the ones he held were far from clean. State TV presented a version of the world that was entertaining and appealing to most viewers, flattering their national pride. Putin cultivated friends among Western elites, while his diplomats and spies built extensive networks abroad. Russia got to stage the 2006 G8 summit and the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Yet, over time, Putin lost faith in the professionals who had helped construct this sophisticated autocracy...
https://re-russia.net/en/analytics/026/
Review by The Forum Network
https://www.oecd-forum.org/
In a recent book, “Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century,” we show that a new model of governance – which we call the “spin dictatorship” – has spread widely through the nondemocratic world. In fact, the majority of nondemocratic leaders who came to power recently are spin dictators, while old-style “fear dictatorships” are a shrinking minority.
The common repertoire of tricks of spin dictators includes allowing but manipulating elections, permitting independent media but co-opting their owners and limiting their audience, crafting modern propaganda to project an image of the ruler’s economic competence, and exploiting cross-border trade and investment rather than shutting their countries off from globalization. The main idea is to pretend to be democratic, internationally responsible leaders. Whenever they use censorship and repression, they do it in a limited, covert, and deniable way.
Why this change in the nature of nondemocratic regimes? We argue that it is a response to globalization and technological progress and to the rise of cross-border media, the international human rights movement, and the liberal world order. Today, old-style mass repression is too visible and costly, while pretending to be a democrat (albeit an imperfect one) allows the leader to benefit from participation in the global economy and to import modern technology, thus increasing income growth and the leader’s popularity.
While this new species, spin dictatorship, fits better with modern realities, it also faces a major challenge. In today’s postindustrial economies, economic growth is based on the creative class of “knowledge workers” with higher education. 21st century’s economies need creativity and innovation which, in turn, are produced by university-educated citizens. By definition, such individuals can think critically and question authority. Hence the spin dictator’s dilemma: a large educated class is hard to silence (either through cooptation or via targeted censorship/repression), but suppressing its growth or nudging it to emigrate results in economic stagnation and the loss of popularity among the general public.
How should the West react to the emergence of this new breed of dictators?
We argue that full containment is neither realistic nor optimal. Instead, we should pursue a more sophisticated “adversarial engagement” strategy. The West should recognize spin dictators for what they are: dictators rather than (imperfect) democrats. It should fight against their violations of human rights and their attempts to undermine Western democratic institutions and international organizations, while monitoring and combatting their agents and enablers. A whole infrastructure of lawyers, lobbyists, bankers, and coopted politicians has emerged in Europe and the US to help dictators hide their wealth, influence Western policies, and weaken democratic cohesion. While respecting political and market freedoms, Western states can do more to roll up such networks. At the same time, the West should reach out to civil society in the countries that dictators have captured. Indeed, the educated class is the Achilles heel of spin dictatorships. Student exchanges, support of NGOs, independent journalists and academics, and cooperation with legitimate private businesses will eventually make even this sophisticated 21st century model of nondemocratic rule much weaker.
https://www.oecd-forum.org/posts/spin-dictators-the-changing-face-of-tyranny-in-the-21st-century
Sergei Guriev Shares 5 Key Insights from the New Book
1. 21st-century dictatorships are based on a different model.
In the 20th century, dictators would terrorize their subjects into submission. They would openly use mass repression and ideology. They would use comprehensive censorship, and they would not pretend to be similar to their democratic counterparts.
But in the 21st century, dictators are different—they’re “spin” dictatorships, and they use manipulation of information. They pretend to be democrats; they run elections. They allow some independent media and some opposition, and on paper, they declare themselves to be no different from their Western counterparts. Today, the majority of non-democratic regimes are no longer fear dictatorships, but these new spin dictatorships.
2. Spin dictatorships work in surprising ways.
Whenever spin leaders need to suppress opposition activists, they do it in a concealed way. They deny killing opposition leaders, and do not openly use political repression. When they put opposition leaders in jail, they do so on non-political charges, like tax fraud or fake documentation, but never political charges.
They also use censorship in a concealed way. People who live in these countries do not fully absorb the fact that their media is not free, because censorship is no longer official. It works through the captation of editors and the harassing of journalists, for example. And in that sense, again, spin dictators pretend to be no different from democrats.
Spin dictators use propaganda, but their propaganda is not ideological. They are no longer relying on outlandish ideologies of the 20th century, and their rhetoric is similar to that of democratic leaders. Spin dictators talk about themselves as elected, competent leaders whose goal is to support economic development and the prosperity of their citizens. Sometimes they fail to do that, and then the goal of propaganda is to convince the citizens that spin dictators are still better than the alternatives.
Spin dictators also allow elections, and these elections often include opposition candidates to create an impression that spin dictatorship is a democracy. However, these elections are not democratic elections; opposition candidates are allowed to run, but are harassed. They don’t have access to media. They don’t have a level playing field, and therefore, their chances to win are lower—or zero.
In that sense, spin dictatorships are, by definition, not democracy. Democracy is an institution in which leaders and policies are chosen in free and fair elections. That is not what spin dictatorships are, where elections are manipulated and unfair. We should remember that whatever spin dictators tell us, they remain dictators.
3. How and why non-democratic regimes transform.
We argue that the spin dictatorship is a new breed of non-democracy that emerged as a response to global modernization. The spin dictatorship model is a better fit for today’s global economy—with cross-border trade and investment, technological progress, breakthroughs in global information and communication technology, and the installation of a liberal, international world order after the Cold War. Today’s spin dictators are better-suited for this modern global economic and technological environment than the old-style fear dictators. In that sense, we complement the modernization theory, which suggests that as society becomes more modern, as the educated class expands, dictatorship becomes unsustainable.
But there are two caveats that we make here. First, we show that in the modern world, modernization does not have to result in democratization. Instead of falling apart, dictatorships morph into new ones, into spin dictatorships, which continue to coexist with the forces of modernization. Second, we show that what matters is not just modernization within the country, but modernization in the world overall. Because while many spin dictatorships don’t invent new technology, they use it. Many spin dictatorships are not sources of capital investment and trade, but they are beneficiaries of the globalized economy, where capital goods and services cross borders. In that sense, modernization theory should be updated to a world where spin dictators are better suited to survive and, in some cases, prosper.
4. Eventually, modernization makes new forms of dictatorships unsustainable.
The reason is that spin dictators need some way to silence the educated classes. For example, they could use targeted repression and censorship, but in a concealed way. There are people who understand what’s going on and want to communicate to the general public that the regime has to be replaced, and silencing these people is essential for the survival of spin dictators. Sometimes the silencing works through captation, where educated people are paid for supporting the regime. But whether the silencing is done through targeted censorship and repression or through capitation, it is expensive. And the bigger the educated class, the more expensive the silencing is.
On the other hand, spin dictators need an educated class, because in the modern economy, it is the educated, creative class that is crucial for economic performance. In the 21st century, economic development happens in knowledge-intensive services. Most spin dictatorships are middle-income economies, which need post-industrial economic development. In that sense, there is a trade-off that every spin dictatorship faces: expanding the educated class is costly, but not expanding the educated class means the economy would stagnate, and their sources of popularity would be exhausted.
In this case, while some spin dictatorships fall apart and become democracies, some of them actually turn back and return to the 20th-century model when, instead of relying on spin, they go back to mass repression. That is economically costly—one example is in Venezuela, where the spin dictatorship of Chávez was replaced with a fear dictatorship by Maduro, with disastrous economic implications.
5. How to respond to the challenge of spin dictatorship.
We believe that spin dictatorships are not as existentially dangerous for the West as the previous dictatorships of fear. However, the West should be more aware and more watchful of this model—and we’ve come up with;
The Five Principles of Adversarial Engagement:
- A spin dictatorship is a dictatorship. The West should take the spin dictators for what they are: not imperfect democratic leaders, but a new breed of dictators.
- Welcome modernization. If our argument is correct, modernization will eventually destroy the ability of spin dictatorships to function. In that sense, engaging with students, civil society, activists, journalists, and scholars adds pressure on spin dictators. This is not easy to do, and it is sometimes not very popular—but we believe that engagement with anti-dictatorial elements in those countries helps to eventually break those systems.
- Put our own houses in order. Spin dictators prosper on, well, spin. For them, the narrative that the West is not successful, that the West is no better, that the West is as corrupt as spin dictatorships themselves—this idea is a powerful argument in convincing their own citizens that the spin dictator is outperforming any potential alternative. In that sense, the West should fix its social and economic models and fight political corruption, especially regarding those who enable corruption to be exported from spin dictatorships themselves. All these efforts may help to undermine the spin dictators’ narrative that they use at home and abroad, that their models are not worse than the Western model.
- Fix the liberal international order - and make sure that spin dictators cannot abuse or interfere with it. It’s crucial that this rule-based system of international organizations and treaties continues to function in the interest of the global population, rather than of non-democratic leaders.
- Support democracy in a democratic way. Spin dictators love whataboutism, love pushing the narrative that the West is no better. In that sense, the West promoting democracy by force gives spin dictators the opportunity to convince their own citizens that the West is hypocritical. So the adversarial engagement should not go all the way to installing democracy by force. Democracy should be owned by the citizens themselves, and supporting pro-democratic activists is a much more promising way of standing up to spin dictatorships than promoting democracy by military means.
https://nextbigideaclub.com/...spin-dictators-changing-face-tyranny-21st-century
Book Review by Dr Ilker Kalin
In Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman argue that today’s authoritarian rulers have shifted from hard-line repression to subtler tactics. The book’s key concepts will find a home in future scholarship on authoritarianism and will inspire scholars to delve more into the changing character of today’s strongmen, writes Ilker Kalin.
In Spin Dictators, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman offer a comprehensive and timely account of not only how the new strongmen of the world accumulate power while presenting a façade of democracy, freedom and modernity, but also why we witness a shift in the dictator’s playbook from hard-line repression tactics to subtler ones. The authors coin the term ‘spin dictators’ to make their point and to distinguish today’s authoritarian rulers from those of the twentieth century. The main difference appears to be that while most twentieth-century dictators, such as Stalin, Hitler and Mao, ruled by intimidation, today’s strongmen, such as Victor Orbán in Hungary, Lee Hsien Loong in Singapore and Erdoğan in Turkey, rule by popularity.
Guriev and Treisman divide dictators into two categories: fear and spin. The former attempts to maintain power by violently repressing and punishing opposition, controlling all communication tools, denouncing the notion of pluralist democracy and blocking cross-border flows of information and people (10). The latter manipulates information to shape public opinion and to create popular support, all while pretending to be democrats, evading violent and direct repression and opening up their countries to the outside world (18). Thus, spin dictators are more focused on shaping public opinion than directly repressing people, which appears to be a more efficient and less costly alternative.
The authors emphatically note that the division between fear and spin dictators is not absolute. Firstly, not all authoritarians of today are spin dictators, given that the regimes in Saudi Arabia, China and Iran still rule by fear and rely heavily on overtly violent tactics to control society and maintain power. Yet, what Guriev and Treisman try to drive home is the idea that today more rulers rely on subtler forms of control and manipulation than the old violent and overtly repressive tactics. This is supported by the empirical evidence provided in the book that the share of spins among dictators soared from 13 to 53 per cent from the 1970s to the 2000s (22).
Secondly, dictators can switch tactics during the course of their stay in power. For example, when Vladimir Putin first came to power in 2000 in Russia, he claimed to accept the principles of democracy. For a time, he preserved democratic appearances while slowly undermining checks and balances and concentrating power in his hands. The booming economy was also on his side to boost his popularity and hide undemocratic practices. By the time Putin returned to the Russian Presidency in 2012, he was clearly following a different playbook that was closer to that of fear dictators, which could be due to the fear of losing power triggered by the 2011 mass demonstrations that swept across Russia over alleged fraud in the parliamentary elections of that year (5).
Moreover, the authors note that a neat categorisation of dictators as either fear or spin would run the risk of losing sight of the real world as most things vary along a spectrum. Just as ‘perfect democracy’ only exists in textbooks and regimes are often more or less democratic, authoritarian regimes ‘may be closer to the dictatorship of fear or the dictatorship of spin, but few will be entirely one or the other’ (19).
Spin Dictators is divided into two sections. The first, entitled ‘how it’s done’, consists of five chapters that break down new authoritarian strategies and tactics to control society and maintain political power. While there is admittedly a rich repertoire of new authoritarian tactics, the authors draw our attention to certain features that these have in common: they are indirect rather than direct; (often) nonviolent rather than violent; and covert rather than overt. Unlike fear dictators, spin dictators do not punish their opponents directly or violently. Instead, they try to discipline them by charging them with non-political but disreputable crimes, which vary depending on the creativity of the regime: for example, Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev used accusations of money laundering, corruption and weapon possessions to prosecute political rivals and journalists (51).
According to Guriev and Treisman, ‘postmodern propaganda’ is another important tool in the hands of spin dictators. While old-school dictators would use propaganda to spread fear and improve the effectiveness of repression, spin dictators use propaganda to show their competence and leadership skills. Almost all strongmen of the 21st century, such as Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Turkey’s Erdoğan, have liked to appear on TV and boast about the peace and prosperity they have brought to the country. When things are going well, they take credit. When not, they have the co-opted media to tell a distorted story of the facts.
Accordingly, spin dictators invest significantly in controlling the media, but not in an old-fashioned way aiming at full-scale censorship. Instead, they co-opt media bosses and journalists who can be bought off and wear down others with lawsuits, arbitrary regulations and/or pseudo-technical problems, all while still allowing them to operate. While a token of opposition media serves as proof that the regime is respecting press freedom, spin dictators build devoted pro-regime media that shapes information and thereby public opinion in favour of the dictator.
The second section of the book, entitled ‘modernisation cocktail’, elaborates on why the shift from ‘fear’ to ‘spin’ has happened in the 21st century and what the future holds for spin dictators. The authors deem a ‘modernisation cocktail’ as ‘interconnected forces related to economic and social modernization combined with globalization’ (170). Adapting the prominent ‘modernisation theory’, the authors contend that in post-industrial societies with the globalisation of economies and information, people not only start to demand more individualistic lifestyles and freedom, but also have better organisational skills and capacity to resist. Besides, the growing appeal of the international liberal order increases pressure on authoritarian regimes to respect human rights and freedom. All these raise the cost of violent repression and force authoritarian leaders to adapt a new playbook.
The authors, however, conclude with optimism by stating that spin dictators only prolong the lifespan of authoritarian regimes, but are eventually bound to lose as they offer no vision or ideology for emerging societies and world issues. On the contrary, the authors claim, the West has something to offer: the idea of liberal democracy (219). Yet, for it to work, the authors suggest that the West should (first) fix its own problems, stop fuelling authoritarian regimes, improve international institutions and promote democracy democratically.
Overall, Guriev and Treisman offer an insightful analysis of the changing face of dictators and why this shift is happening now. The book brilliantly compares the practices of fear and spin dictators, referring to many historical and contemporary cases from around the world. While the book is built on extensive research and data, it is written in a tone that is at times sarcastic, easy to follow and accessible not only to academics but also anyone interested in the topic. For those looking to explore the research and data behind the theoretical arguments, the authors spare a section at the end of each chapter to ‘checking the evidence’, presenting data and referring readers to additional resources and evidence published elsewhere.
The term ‘spin dictator’ is likely to find a home in future scholarly work on authoritarianism and will inspire scholars to delve more into the changing character of authoritarians. Insights provided by the book could also be integrated into diverse fields, including civil resistance studies, social movements and international relations.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Book Review by Arch Puddington
Spin dictators govern more or less without killing their own citizens. They are restrained in sending political adversaries to gulags. More crucial to their success: the ability to use the instruments of democratic rule to subvert democracy itself. Most conduct elections according to schedule, tolerate opposition political parties, and allow an independent media. In superficial ways spin dictators copy the behavior of normal democratic politicians, holding town hall meetings, hiring consultants, and conducting opinion polls.
It used to be said of political movements that participated in elections despite an obvious disdain for democracy that they were motivated by the slogan, “One man; One vote; One time.” With spin dictators, the road to indefinite rule is more subtle. Once in power, modern authoritarians maintain control through two basic techniques. First, having won an initial victory at the polls, they rig the system so as to make opposition triumph impossible, or nearly so. Their methods include extreme gerrymandering, control of electoral mechanics, and the massive use of state resources to advance the strongman’s interests. They also use government contracts and patronage to build a loyal base in the private sector to support the ruling party and deny funding to the opposition. Furthermore, spin dictators vigilantly ensure that charismatic liberals are prevented from challenging the leader. In Russia, this has been accomplished variously through mysterious assassinations, the imprisonment of regime critics through spurious fraud charges (à la Alexei Navalny), or the banning of candidates on concocted fraud charges.
Second, as the name would suggest, spin dictators maintain sweeping control over the commanding heights of the media and other forms of political communications. In practically every country where spin dictators hold sway, the road to power runs through the transformation of the information landscape, from one notable for plurality of opinion and party loyalty to one controlled by the leadership through direct state ownership or indirectly, through loyal oligarchs who gain dominance over news outlets. In keeping with spin dictators’ claimed fidelity to private ownership, the transfer of media control comes not through presidential fiat but instead via buyouts secured under duress. There are, to be sure, small segments of the media that are left in the hands of regime critics. But their audience is small and their influence limited to the educated classes. The popular outlets, especially national television stations, are brought into the leader’s fold.
Spin dictators are relentless in their deployment of propaganda to shape and distort the public’s image of reality. Gleb Pavlovsky, a Putin adviser who has since broken with the leader, described elections as “special operations using media technologies.” For the modern autocrat, the demonization of enemies is a higher priority than touting the regime’s successes. For Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, enemies range from George Soros, the European Union, immigrants, advocates of “sexual radicalism,” and in the most recent election, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Orbán, Putin, and their ilk, there are no mere rivals—only traitors, conspirators, enemies of the people, Nazis, and deviants.
Spin dictators are practical and, according to the authors, non-ideological. They do not seek to solve the “riddle of human existence,” nor present themselves as the “engineer of human souls.” Hugo Chavez is the exception who proves the rule. A devoted Marxist, Chavez promulgated socialist policies that led to economic catastrophe and that left an energy-rich, formerly prosperous society impoverished and starving. No other spin dictator has copied the Chavez model.
But while today’s dictators are pragmatic on matters of economic arrangements, they share common convictions and common enemies. They hate liberalism, despise pluralism, and have disdain for intellectuals and cosmopolitans. And they regard America with a combination of abhorrence and fear. Not surprisingly, they have a particular allergy to American advocacy of democracy promotion. The absence of evidence linking Washington to their political opposition does not weaken their suspicion that the American ruling class is planning a color revolution aimed at their overthrow. The source of their apprehension is not restricted to American policies, but extends to the American idea itself, a subversive force with its dynamism, unpredictability, and celebration of individual liberties.
Modern autocrats are intent on wholesale cultural remodeling and historical reinterpretation. Putin, Orbán, Chavez, Erdoğan—all have imposed versions of history on schools and cultural institutions, encouraged the shuttering of institutions that are regarded as “too Western,” harassed critical artists and writers, and promoted their own pet cultural figures. Nor is Putin the only spin dictator who has harbored ambitions beyond his borders. Orbán presents himself as surrogate father for ethnic Hungarians living in Romania and other neighboring countries, and he encourages populist demagogues throughout Europe. Hugo Chavez sought to export his model of “Bolivarian socialism” throughout the Americas. Erdoğan’s Turkey has promoted the ambitions of Islamist movements, notably the Muslim Brotherhood.
From the Cold War we know that no system is invincible. Yet it is somewhat surprising that having laid out the ingredients for the success of modern autocracy, Guriev and Treisman are sanguine about the ability of liberal democracy to overcome its current malaise. At the core of their optimism is the “modernization cocktail” that lies behind the remarkable global changes, including the spread of democracy, from the late 20th century onward. The modernization cocktail consists of economic globalism, the creation of a postindustrial order, and a liberal order—in other words, precisely the trends that autocrats and populists have sought to suppress. But Guriev and Treisman argue that these are indeed the qualities societies need in order to succeed in the modern world, and that withdrawing from the liberal system will eventually threaten the material security that spin dictators rely on for social peace.
And what of those democracies, the United States front and center, which are at serious risk from Putin- and Orbán-inspired illiberal forces? The authors assert that only the “active resistance of the informed” can check the ascension of the Trumps or the Le Pens, which in America sounds like the loose movement of mainstream journalists, the Democratic Party, liberal and leftist activists, and elements of the business community that coalesced to secure Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. But even in America, the struggle has been intense, the triumphs narrow, and—as recent political developments suggest—the durability of liberalism’s modest gains far from assured.
Indeed, it is worth noting the impressive degree to which the American Right has taken in the values and methods that galvanize the most successful spin dictators. Among the disturbing examples is the drive to bring the election machinery in states crucial in the Electoral College system under the control of Republican Party figures whose commitment to honest voting is, to put it mildly, open to question. Extreme gerrymandering has been a component of GOP strategy for some time. So has the application of strict ideological tests to the appointment of judges at all levels.
The Right has embraced a withdrawal from the American-established liberal order through opposition to free trade and outright hostility to our political and military alliances, a trend accentuated since Putin’s Ukraine aggression. An antagonism towards immigration—legal as well as undocumented—is expressed in racist formulas that recently include the Great Replacement theory. And the Right is steadily augmenting a propaganda empire that is as predictable and relentless as the media created under Putin.
The American Right has also embraced falsehood and fabrication as core strategic weapons. Sometimes the lies are big, such as that Trump won the presidency in 2020 and Joe Biden is an illegitimate interloper. Other lies, like the claim that immigrants are prone to criminality, are less ambitious, but no less damaging.
In Barchester Towers, a masterpiece about the internal politics of the 19th century Anglican Church, Anthony Trollope has this to say about deceit and honor in public affairs:
A man in the right relies on his rectitude and therefore goes about unarmed. His very strength is his weakness. A man in the wrong knows he must look to his weapons; his very weakness is his strength. The one is never prepared for combat, the other is always ready.
Trollope’s words are an appropriate description of the lines that have been drawn in the great political struggle between the champions of democracy and the strongmen and demagogues who would see democracy terminally buried. In Trollope’s novels, men of virtue and resolve more often than not rise to the occasion and outwit the scoundrels. Let’s hope that democracy’s partisans have the resolve to ward off the threat posed by this new set of sophisticated and determined adversaries, and the stealth tactics that have paved their road to power.
https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/spin-dictators/
More Reviews & Interviews
Interview With Sergei Guriev on Spin Dictators and Populism https://www.ceu.edu/article/2023-01-02/sergei-guriev-spin-dictators-and-populism
How to Build a Twenty-first-Century Tyrant Autocracies are resurgent, and today’s would-be strongmen are using a new set of tools. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/23/how-to-build-a-twenty-first-century-tyrant-the-revenge-of-power-spin-dictators
Yascha Mounk and Sergei Guriev discuss the rise of a new kind of dictator
and the future of Russia’s economy.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/guriev
In Conversation with Sergei Guriev: Spin Dictators and Rising ...
https://wheelerblog.london.edu/in-conversation-with-professor-sergei-guriev/
