SSU Forum “Authoritarian Regional Organizations”

On 6 April, the Security Studies Unit of The University of Tokyo Institute for Future Initiatives welcomed Prof. Stephan Haggard from the University of California, San Diego to present his research on the rise of authoritarian regional organizations and their effect on democracy. Prof. Shino Watanabe from the Faculty of Global Studies at Sophia University joined the discussion after Professor Haggard’s presentation, and questions were then invited from the floor. The forum was moderated by Associate Prof. Ryo Sahashi (Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at The University of Tokyo), and the opening remarks were given by Prof. Akio Takahara (Graduate Schools for Law and Politics & Head of SSU Unit at the University of Tokyo).

Keynote Speech

Prof. Haggard’s research project explores the role that authoritarian regimes are playing in international organizations. These include multilateral organizations, but also regional ones. Does membership in more authoritarian organizations impede democracy? And more broadly, does it undermine the norms of the liberal international order?

Quantitative analysis was first introduced to estimate the effect of authoritarian regional organizations on democratic backsliding. The data used for analysis is country-year panel data that records 103 authoritarian states from 1951 to 2010. The model contains a difference between a country’s current and a subsequent year’s V-Dem Polyarchy score as a dependent variable, and the average Polyarchy score of all organizations of which the country is a member as an independent variable. The estimation result shows that the more authoritarian the regional organizations of which a country is a member, the weaker its prospects for democracy.

Prof. Haggard presented three mechanisms to explain the causal effect of participation in authoritarian regional organizations on a country’s democracy level. First, regional organizations can consolidate the political power of the country’s autocratic leader or preclude the emergence of a democratic leader through financial support, mutual defense agreements, joint military exercises, and military interventions. Second, regional organizations can weaken the power of democrats by labeling them as “terrorists” through coordinating anti-terrorism policies, police cooperation, and information sharing among member states. Third, regional organizations can provide legitimation to the status quo of the authoritarian country by promoting values like “non-interference” or “stability” as well as conducting election validation that favors the incumbent autocratic leader. Prof. Haggard concluded his speech by emphasizing the need for academics and policymakers to closely track the behavior of authoritarian regional organizations from these perspectives.

Discussion and Q&A

In response to the above-mentioned presentation, Prof. Watanabe made comments and questions. First, she discussed the definition of authoritarian regional organizations. Prof. Haggard defines them based on the number of autocratic members; however, Prof. Watanabe contends that the decision-making process of a particular organization is also essential. Her second comment was about the propriety of using an aggregate of all regional organizations in the quantitative analysis. Prof. Watanabe suggested that it would be interesting to conduct the analysis separately for each region, such as Asia, Africa, or Latin America, which might present different results. She asked a few other questions, including why Prof. Haggard set the data cut-off point in 2010 despite interesting developments since 2010 such as the rise of China, India, and Russia, what unique characteristics the recent challenge by authoritarian countries to the international order has compared to those in the past, and how democratic countries should respond to this sort of challenge by authoritarian countries.

To these questions, Prof. Haggard responded that their collective work has built a more complete dataset that now is current up through 2020. He acknowledged Prof. Watanabe’s suggestion that not only the number of autocratic countries in a regional organization but also its decision-making process should be taken into account. As for the characteristics of recent autocracy, Prof. Haggard said that collaboration among authoritarian regimes through regional organizations is an unfortunate global  trend. To the final question, Prof. Haggard stated that democratic countries should think about how they can constructively engage with authoritarian regional organizations.

Prof. Sahashi then raised a question regarding the presence of a great power that supports the foundation of a regional organization, and Prof. Takahara pointed out that we need to take into account who took the initiative to establish the organization, the original purpose of the organization, and whether other members understood that purpose and joined the organization. In addition, there were questions from the audience about the connection between an authoritarian regional organization and a domestic political system, whether Western countries that have formed regional organizations at the early stage have a first-mover advantage over authoritarian countries, and how we should view authoritarian countries’ attempts to learn from Western countries’ strategy like the “war on terrorism” and use it to legitimize their own policies. The forum was then successfully concluded with active conversations and discussions among the speakers and the participants.

＊This event was organized with subsidies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.

=SSU Forum= Part1

=SSU Forum= Part2