Understanding And Interrupting Authoritarian Collaboration

Scholars and practitioners have been raising the alarm about authoritarianism "going global" for some time, in part due to the expansion and sophistication of formal and informal cooperation among authoritarian regimes outlined in this paper, and particularly authoritarian regimes' efforts to "hijack" multilateral organizations.¹⁴³ Even when authoritarian influence over important outcomes, including preventing democratization, is limited to their own neighborhood, practitioners in the democracy support community face heightened challenges.¹⁴⁴ Certainly authoritarian regimes with the capacity to project their power, and particularly Russia and China, are concerned foremost about their immediate neighborhoods. However, research reviewed herein suggests broader and more ambitious agendas to supplant certain global liberal institutions, such as the multi-stakeholder internet governance model.

One important question is whether the counter-norms and alternative orders proposed by China, Russia, and like-minded autocrats have sufficient appeal to displace long-standing status quo regimes. New statist norms that undermine human rights seem to appeal not only to long-standing authoritarian regimes, but also to governments engaged in democratic backsliding--the state-led hollowing out of democratic institutions and norms.¹⁴⁵ Scholars continue to debate the severity and depth of recent democratic backsliding episodes, but, if the trend toward backsliding continues, authoritarian powers may find larger constituencies backing their revisionist order. We might expect that illiberal international regimes are most likely to take root in fast-evolving issue areas, such as the regulation of AI technology, potentially through the creation or co-optation of organizations to regulate technology and internet governance that are friendlier to autocrats.

Another open question is whether authoritarian-led ROs that have proliferated in recent decades will have staying power, or whether they will become "zombies."¹⁴⁶ If authoritarian ROs retain buy-in from member states or even increase in prominence, they will continue to promote authoritarian legitimation, resource pooling to protect autocrats against shocks and crises, and coordination around transnational repression. However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused deep divides between members of some of the most widely studied authoritarian IOs in Central Asia, and it is unclear whether Russia will recover its status as being capable of offering meaningful support to fellow autocrats in the near-term.

While this paper argues that authoritarian collaboration is primarily pragmatic and non-ideological, the implications of authoritarian collaboration to reshape international order will differ depending on whether these efforts take on particular ideological bents. Scholars considering whether authoritarian regimes are generally motivated to promote particular authoritarian ideologies reached mixed conclusions,¹⁴⁷ but most agreed that ideology-promotion is seldom a high priority of authoritarian collaboration.¹⁴⁸ The recent resurgence of international collaboration among far-right conservative regimes might call into question earlier conclusions minimizing the ideological aspects of autocracy promotion. As far-right regimes lend experts to other countries to consult on constitutional and legal reform processes, as well as capacity-building, they are not agnostic about the brand of authoritarianism in partner states.

This paper is one step towards addressing these concerns. It provides an overview of the modern landscape of authoritarian international collaboration. It summarizes how authoritarian collaboration--whether bilateral or multilateral, and through formal or informal channels--benefits authoritarian regime stability. The paper identifies four broad (albeit, non-exhaustive) categories of threats against which autocrats collaborate: pro-democracy groups and domestic opponents; stigmatization and illegitimacy; aid or loan conditionalities; and security threats. In each domain, autocrats share resources to protect like-minded regimes and legitimate their actions. Autocrats seek to remold existing norms and institutions to be friendlier to illiberal regimes and create new authoritarian-backed institutions to represent their interests.

With this clearer understanding of authoritarian collaboration in hand, the democracy support community can formulate appropriate interventions to interrupt authoritarianism's spread. This paper offers preliminary notions of the interventions worth pursuing which could effectively disrupt authoritarian collaboration, including: targeted support for capacity-building with key non-state groups; civic education campaigns; and new regulations coupled with targeted sanctions when non-compliance persists. While some examples of successful challenges to authoritarian collaboration were highlighted herein, the threat posed by authoritarian collaboration continues to grow. Autocrats also continue adapting as the democracy support community attempts to interrupt authoritarian collaboration. The international democracy support community must keep the evolving face of authoritarian collaboration in view to design effective interventions.