The Editor in Chief spoke in London that Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a dictat asking people not to read the Haaretz in a bid to muzzle press freedom in Israel. This has shocked many Israelis as they were prone to believe that Haaretz reflected mainly government views. Many believe that Netanyahu’s peculiar attempt relating to Haaretz was prompted by its publication of the news of ICC’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu and his cohorts in response to the application made by South Africa to the ICC.
HISTORY OF ICC WARRANTS BEEN EFFECTIVE
Whether the arrest warrants will come to pass remains to be seen as very examples are available that in the past people were apprehended and convicted by the ICC. This leads us to the question as to why dictators fall and have the pay the price of crimes committed when they were in power. An article in Sage Journal elucidates the condition in the world today and reflects that about half of the world’s population lives in either closed or electoral authoritarian regimes. Another forty percent live in countries, which experienced autocratic periods in the last eighty years. Taken together, nine out of ten people in the world today had direct or indirect exposure to authoritarian regimes. Crucially, there is widespread agreement and much anecdotal evidence that this experience has shaped—often in dramatic and lasting ways—the attitudes and behavior of individuals living under such regimes, often for long after the regime has been overthrown.
THE WORLD LACKS KNOWLEDGE OF PERSISTENCE OF AUTHORITARIAN GRASP OF POPLE
Yet, the world has surprisingly limited knowledge of the mechanisms through which authoritarian attitudinal and behavioral legacies emerge and persist. This special issue proposes a new framework and research agenda for a more systematic study of authoritarian attitudinal legacies and brings together four papers that contribute to several key dimensions of this emerging research agenda.
Although in the last two decades there has been a significant revival in the study of authoritarian legacies, the bulk of this literature has focused on aggregate outcomes, such as institutions and elite actors, especially political parties. These issues are undoubtedly very important for understanding post-authoritarian politics, including the prospects for successful democratization and democratic survival, as well as many other aspects of policy making in former authoritarian countries. However, we know from the democratization literature that public support, a democratic political culture, and an active citizenry are also fundamental for the survival of democracy.
Similarly, the political attitudes of citizens matter greatly for the types of economic and social policies that we can expect to emerge from the democratic process. If citizens’ political preferences and behavior are crucial for understanding the resilience and functioning of democracy, it is important to investigate how these are formed. Although this question has received considerable attention in established democracies in a post-authoritarian context an important part of the answer hinges on understanding how political attitudes and behavior are shaped by the authoritarian past.
ARTICLES IN THE SPECIAL ISSUE OF SAGE JOIUNAL
The articles in this special issue contribute to a small (but growing) set of studies focused more squarely on the impact of authoritarian regimes on individual political attitudes and behavior. At the most basic level, we can think of authoritarian attitudinal legacies as consisting of two necessary steps. The first step is for authoritarian regimes to shape the attitudes and behavior of their citizens. The second step is for these effects to persist across a regime divide, that is, after the end of the regime that inculcated those initial effects.
The first step can be studied directly by focusing on public opinion in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Such an approach, which is exemplified by one of the contributions to this special issue and by a growing literature on the contemporaneous attitudinal effects of authoritarian regimes, has the obvious advantage of allowing for a direct test of authoritarian attitudinal effects.
However, in addition to their analytical challenges, such studies are limited in the extent to which they can address the durability of these effects, and—by definition—they cannot establish the nature of post-authoritarian attitudinal legacies. The second approach is to analyze the effects of these regimes on their citizens’ political attitudes and behavior after the regime breaks down. This approach, which is the primary focus of three of the four articles in this special issue, as well as of a small but rapidly growing literature on authoritarian attitudinal legacies, has the advantage of being able to address the crucial question of legacy durability.
Several existing studies have established the existence and the durable impact of authoritarian regimes on a variety of attitudes including lower support for and satisfaction with democracy demand for democracy), support for the previous regime the emergence of political trust), attitudes toward markets and welfare states; as well as behavior, including lower civic and political participation. Despite producing some promising and valuable insights, the existing research has produced contradictory results, is still limited in its scope, and faces a number of important theoretical and analytical challenges. This introductory essay draws on the contributions to this special issue to lay out a new framework and research agenda that can help us overcome at least some of these limitations of previous studies.
First, existing research in this area lacks a unified theoretical framework, which conceptualizes key concepts related to attitudinal legacies. Furthermore, though several of these studies have started to investigate the mechanisms underlying the production and reproduction of these legacies a lot more work remains to be done to theorize and test these mechanisms. This introductory essay tries to fill this gap. Second, because much of this work has focused on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the existing studies have largely failed to take advantage of the analytical advances in the literature on varieties of authoritarianism. Third, with a few exceptions, existing studies have not sufficiently addressed the important individual heterogeneities in authoritarian attitudinal legacies. This applies both with respect to differential effects on different subgroups of authoritarian subjects and with respect to different types of attitudes and behavior. We discuss each of these issues in greater detail in the next sections and then touch upon a few additional analytical challenges in our discussion of future research directions in the conclusion.
AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES GRIP ON GLOBAL POLITICS.
Today, about half of the world’s population lives in either closed or electoral authoritarian regimes. Another 40% live in countries, which experienced autocratic periods in the last 80 years. Taken together, nine out of 10 people in the world today had direct or indirect exposure to authoritarian regimes.2 Crucially, there is widespread agreement and much anecdotal evidence that this experience has shaped—often in dramatic and lasting ways—the attitudes and behavior of individuals living under such regimes, often for long after the regime has been overthrown. Yet, we have surprisingly limited knowledge of the mechanisms through which authoritarian attitudinal and behavioral legacies emerge and persist. This special issue proposes a new framework and research agenda for a more systematic study of authoritarian attitudinal legacies and brings together four papers that contribute to several key dimensions of this emerging research agenda.
HAS THE WORLD TAKEN COGNIZANCE OF AUTORITARIANISM?
Although in the last two decades there has been a significant revival in the study of authoritarian legacies, the bulk of this literature has focused on aggregate outcomes, such as institutions and elite actors, especially political parties. These issues are undoubtedly very important for understanding post-authoritarian politics, including the prospects for successful democratization and democratic survival, as well as many other aspects of policy making in former authoritarian countries.
However, we know from the democratization literature that public support, a democratic political culture, and an active citizenry are also fundamental for the survival of democracy. Similarly, the political attitudes of citizens matter greatly for the types of economic and social policies that we can expect to emerge from the democratic process. If citizens’ political preferences and behavior are crucial for understanding the resilience and functioning of democracy, it is important to investigate how these are formed.
Although this question has received considerable attention in established democracies. In a post-authoritarian context, an important part of the answer hinges on understanding how political attitudes and behavior are shaped by the authoritarian past. The articles in this special issue contribute to a small (but growing) set of studies focused more squarely on the impact of authoritarian regimes on individual political attitudes and behavior.
HOW AUTHORIANISM WORKS
At the most basic level, one can think of authoritarian attitudinal legacies as consisting of two necessary steps. The first step is for authoritarian regimes to shape the attitudes and behavior of their citizens. The second step is for these effects to persist across a regime divide, that is, after the end of the regime that inculcated those initial effects. The first step can be studied directly by focusing on public opinion in contemporary authoritarian regimes. Such an approach, which is exemplified by one of the contributions to this special issue and by a growing literature on the contemporaneous attitudinal effects of authoritarian regimes has the obvious advantage of allowing for a direct test of authoritarian attitudinal effects.
However, in addition to their analytical challenges,5 such studies are limited in the extent to which they can address the durability of these effects, and—by definition—they cannot establish the nature of post-authoritarian attitudinal legacies. The second approach is to analyze the effects of these regimes on their citizens’ political attitudes and behavior after the regime breaks down. This approach, which is the primary focus of three of the four articles in this special issue, as well as of a small but rapidly growing literature on authoritarian attitudinal legacies, has the advantage of being able to address the crucial question of legacy durability. Several existing studies have established the existence and the durable impact of authoritarian regimes on a variety of attitudes including lower support for and satisfaction with democracy.
SAGE JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE ESSAY
This introductory essay draws on the contributions to this special issue to lay out a new framework and research agenda that can help us overcome at least some of these limitations of previous studies. First, existing research in this area lacks a unified theoretical framework, which conceptualizes key concepts related to attitudinal legacies. Furthermore, though several of these studies have started to investigate the mechanisms underlying the production and reproduction of these legacies. Second, because much of this work has focused on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the existing studies have largely failed to take advantage of the analytical advances in the literature on varieties of authoritarianism. Third, with a few exceptions, existing studies have not sufficiently addressed the important individual heterogeneities in authoritarian attitudinal legacies. This applies both with respect to differential effects on different subgroups of authoritarian subjects and with respect to different types of attitudes and behavior.
HOW DO AOTOCRATS AFFEECT THEIR CITIZENS ?
To understand the initial attitudinal impact that autocracies have on their citizens, it is important to distinguish between different possible individual reactions to regime efforts, mainly transmitted through indoctrination. Perhaps the most straightforward scenario, which the authors would like to name internalization, is that individuals will adopt political attitudes and behaviors in line with the “official line” of the regime. Several findings in this special issue—such as the greater prevalence of left-authoritarians among respondents with greater personal communist exposure as well as higher nostalgia and weaker democratic support and satisfaction among individuals who spend their formative years under authoritarianism suggest that authoritarian indoctrination can indeed produce significant and lasting attitudinal effects, which are in line with the goals of the authoritarian regime.
AUTHORITARIN INDOCTRINATION COULD BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
However, given the legitimacy deficit of many authoritarian regimes, there are also good reasons to expect that indoctrination could be ineffective or even counterproductive. In attitudinal terms, these two alternative types of resistance should translate either into a lack of correlation between authoritarian ideology and mass attitudes (in the case of disengagement) or to embrace the opposite of whatever attitudes the authoritarian regime is trying to promote.
The author’s starting point is the assumption that autocracies can influence their citizens in two ways. Their indoctrination efforts can either pay off and lead to internalization of the regime doctrine or lead to a resistance among citizens, which can either lead to an outright rejection of the regime’s doctrine or at the very least to a disengagement of citizens from the political process. To understand why authoritarian regimes sometimes produce compliant citizens and sometimes trigger resistance or even backlash, we need a better understanding of the mechanisms through which both of these effects occur.
One of the key limitations in the literature on authoritarian attitudinal legacies relates to the mechanisms underlying regime impact. Here, the authors argue that the key mechanism underlying authoritarian attitudinal legacies—regardless of whether authoritarian subjects internalize or reject the regime doctrine—is driven by political socialization and learning. Drawing on insights from research in advanced democracies on the emergence and durability of political attitudes and behavior.
As we know from research on political socialization, children and young people learn about and internalize societal norms, values, and identities through processes of imitation and repetition. These norms then translate into political preferences and behavior. New information and later-life political experiences will be processed in relation to these initial political attitudes formed early on.
AGENTS EMPLOYED BY AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES FOR REVISION OF POLITITICAL BEHAVIOUR OF SUBJECTS.
The main question then is what kind of information and which agents are key in the formative socialization and potential revision of political attitudes and behavior in later life. The authors argue that this process is best conceived as a set of competing socialization efforts. At any point in time, individuals are influenced by a range of different—and potentially competing—socialization agents: on the macro-level, the political regime; on the meso-level, political and societal organizations; and on the micro-level, family and peers.
Although any of these different agents can either reinforce or undermine each other’s socialization efforts, for the purpose of understanding authoritarian legacies, the key question is how the socialization “project” of the authoritarian regime interacts with the agendas of various meso- and micro-level actors. In the next section, we briefly outline how we expect each socialization agent to impact individuals’ political belief system. First, we expect the political regime to play a key role in shaping the political socialization of its citizens. In their efforts to ensure mass support and compliance, authoritarian regimes try to shape the political attitudes and behavior of individuals in line with official ideology. As some experts argue in their contribution to this special issue, schools are a key component in the indoctrination apparatus of any state. Many autocracies directly control the education system, which allows them significant access to young people during the crucial formative years. Moreover, autocracies often control the media and the broader information environment, which allows them to transmit the regime ideology or mentality to citizens of all ages.
In sum, we expect that citizens who are exposed to a singular worldview (that of the regime), transmitted by an education and information environment, which is strongly controlled by the political regime, to internalize these ideas in their own political belief system. However, to understand authoritarian attitudinal legacies, these macro-level regime indoctrination mechanisms need to be complemented by meso-level and individual-level institutional and social mechanisms responsible for both internalization and resistance.
The authors argue that there are different levels and agents that affect the development of individuals’ political socialization. Although we are here primarily interested in how autocracies shape the political attitudes and behavior of their citizens, we argue that this process cannot be properly understood if we ignore the fact that authoritarian socialization efforts can be challenged by competing socialization agents, such as societal organizations or the family. In the next section, we outline how these various competing processes lead to long-term attitudinal legacies.
FACTOR AFFECTING THE LONGEVITY OF AUTHORITARIAN LEGACIES.
Another factor, which affects the longevity of authoritarian legacies, relates to the nature of the new information environment. To the extent that the socialization approach of the new regime is not radically different (e.g., because of high elite continuity despite a nominal change in regime), then we should expect the initial attitudinal imprint of the previous authoritarian regime to be highly resilient. However, if the new regime espouses radically different political values than its predecessor—such as in the case of East European countries embracing free markets and liberal democracy after the fall of communism—then the evolution of political attitudes among individuals to these conflicting socialization projects is much more uncertain. In part, this trajectory will depend on the strength of the initial authoritarian socialization success of the former authoritarian regime (as discussed above). However, it also matters how effective the new regime is in its pursuit of its alternative socialization project, which in turn depends both on how committed the new political elite is to this new ideological project and how the economic and political performance of the new regime compares to that of its predecessor.8 Thus, we argue that the competing socialization framework can be fruitfully applied to studying how post-authoritarian developments affect the durability of authoritarian legacies.
AUTOCRACIES USE DIFFERENT METHODS TO CONTROL THEIR SUBJECTS.
Although most autocracies try to shape the political attitudes and behavior of their subjects, they differ significantly in the methods they use to achieve this goal. To understand the variation in attitudinal legacies, which results from these different approaches, it is important to discuss the different tools, which regimes use to achieve compliance by ordinary citizens. First, dictatorships use coercion to control citizens. Repression can be applied in hard form, which usually includes political killings, torture, and imprisonment. Hard repression has been shown to be counterproductive and lead to a rejection of the regime and its principles .Second, many authoritarian regimes use carrots, often in the form of private or public goods provision, to buy off the population in exchange for loyalty, as part of an authoritarian bargain, “by which citizens relinquish political rights for economic security” This “authoritarian contract” can be targeted narrowly to specific groups, or it can take the form of universal public goods provision.
THE ROLE OF PRE-AUTHORITARIAN LEGIES.
The competing socialization framework also provides a useful perspective to understand how pre-authoritarian historical legacies may shape authoritarian socialization efforts. Although several previous studies have shown how communist socialization was undermined by pre-communist education. From a competing socialization perspective, such pre-authoritarian legacies can be understood as shaping the ability of societal actors (such as churches, civil society organizations, or families) to promote resistance to regime indoctrination by offering more (or less) resilient alternative socialization projects.
CONCLUSION
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his pursuit of unchecked power, is trying to boycott Haaretz in the hope that he can silence the Palestinians. It is happening while his government is dismantling all checks and balances and crushing the gatekeepers of democracy. Netanyahu wants to rule an Israel free of an independent judiciary, turning the police and security organs into private militias – and of course without a free and critical media standing in his way.
The Israeli government’s decision to impose sanctions on Haaretz is just one more step in the prime minister’s journey of destruction. We are not deterred by the threats made by Netanyahu and his propaganda machine. We will not capitulate, and we will continue serving our readers and protecting our journalistic freedom with only the public interest in mind. Boycotting Haaretz: Part of Netanyahu’s Masterplan to Destroy Press Freedom in Israel. The Israeli government’s decision to punish Haaretz by imposing economic sanctions is one tactic in Netanyahu’s comprehensive effort to muzzle, suffocate and supplant independent critical journalism in Israel. Israel’s Fumbling Defense Minister Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving – to Netanyahu. In just a few days, Israel Katz has declared victory over Hezbollah, fumbled the presentation of his director-general and driven the army chief to distraction – all to the delight of the prime minister ■ The lid has finally been lifted from the vipers’ nest that is Netanyahu’s bureau ■
