Legitimationsstrategien autoritärer Rentierstaaten in Zeiten der Krise

Schlipphak Bernd, Freise Matthias, Förster, Jan

Zusammenfassung

The article analyses whether - and if yes, how - the governments of authoritarian rentierstates pursue strategies of input legitimation in face of declining external rents. The starting point is the assumption that in face of such (expectable) declines of resourcerents - which results in a decline of the regime´s output legitimacy - the elites in thesecountries should refrain from only using strategies of repression and cooptation, asthese strategies seem too costly. Instead, the article assumes authoritarian rentier statesto aim to increase their input legitimacy in the medium run. On the one side, thismight happen by the authoritarian elites inducing a narrative of an existing externalthreat which can only be prevented by the elites themselves. On the other side, autocraticregimes might purse the strategy of (seemingly) liberalizing the political system.Furthermore, the article expects that at least one of these strategies should have becomemore salient throughout the years and discusses the plausibility of this argumentby using examples of oil rentier states of divergent size and divergent regional origin(Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Russian Federation and Venezuela).