Policy Studies
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A comparative study of legitimation strategies in
hybrid regimes
Honorata Mazepus, Wouter Veenendaal, Anthea McCarthy-Jones & Juan
Manuel Trak Vásquez
To cite this article: Honorata Mazepus, Wouter Veenendaal, Anthea McCarthy-Jones & Juan
Manuel Trak Vásquez (2016) A comparative study of legitimation strategies in hybrid regimes,
Policy Studies, 37:4, 350-369, DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2016.1157855
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2016.1157855
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POLICY STUDIES, 2016
VOL. 37, NO. 4, 350–369
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2016.1157855
A comparative study of legitimation strategies in hybrid
regimes
Honorata Mazepusa, Wouter Veenendaalb, Anthea McCarthy-Jonesc and Juan
Manuel Trak Vásquezd
a
Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands; bRoyal Netherlands Institute of
Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands; cDepartment of Government and Policy,
University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia; dPolitical Studies Centre, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello,
Caracas, Venezuela
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
Despite the growing body of research on ‘hybrid regimes’,
few studies address the issue of their domestic legitimacy.
Targeting this gap in the literature, this article explores the
legitimation strategies of three hybrid regimes around the
globe: Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles. Although these countries
differ markedly in almost every aspect that can be thought of,
the political systems of all three cases combine formally
democratic institutions with authoritarian political dynamics. The
qualitative, comparative analysis presented in this article uncovers
a number of remarkable similarities between the regimes’
respective legitimization strategies. However, while the strategies
for engendering legitimacy are similar across the cases, the content
of these strategies is different: the Russian leadership mainly relies
on preserving order and nationalism, the Venezuelan regime
employs a more populist strategy, and the Seychellois regime uses
a more personal and particularistic approach. Our findings not only
provide insights into the mechanisms hybrid regimes use to
consolidate their authority, but also highlight important differences
and similarities between hybrid regimes around the world.
Received 4 August 2015
Accepted 15 February 2016
KEYWORDS
Legitimation strategies;
hybrid regimes; Russia;
Seychelles; Venezuela;
comparative politics
Introduction
No political regime or authority wishes to appear illegitimate. As noted by Dogan (1992,
116), ‘Even the most tyrannic rulers try to justify their reign’. Nevertheless, Dogan believed
that legitimacy is especially important for democracies, whereas dictatorships secure their
existence mainly with force. As the expected democratic transition of many third wavecountries around the world did not materialize, these countries remained trapped in
what Carothers referred to as the ‘grey zone’ between democracy and authoritarianism
(O’Donnell 1996; Carothers 2002; Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010). While academic
research on these ‘hybrid regimes’ has been growing over the last decade, few studies
address the important yet often neglected issue of domestic legitimacy of these regimes.
CONTACT Honorata Mazepus
h.mazepus@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
POLICY STUDIES
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This article analyzes the legitimation strategies of three hybrid regimes in different regions
of the world, namely Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles.
The aim of our article is to highlight the similarities and differences between the legitimation strategies of the three cases, and in this sense contribute to the existing literature
on the consolidation of authority in contemporary hybrid regimes. Because hybrid
regimes operate in the grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism, by analyzing
their legitimation strategies we can discern how they combine democratic and authoritarian claims to legitimacy in practice. On the basis of these observations, this article seeks to
address the question: how have strongly dissimilar hybrid regimes sought to engender domestic legitimacy? Our ‘most different’ case selection enables us not only to zoom in on the
considerations, motivations, and strategies on the basis of which hybrid regimes develop
their legitimation strategies, but also to highlight variation in the legitimation strategies
that hybrid regimes around the world have employed.
The three cases were selected to ensure maximum variance along relevant dimensions
of analysis, in order to examine the differences between hybrid regimes when it comes to
legitimation strategies. Our key criterion for this case selection is ideology; we have
selected one post-communist country that has made the transition to a capitalist system
(Russia), one country that moved from a neoliberal system to a socialist-populist
regime (Venezuela), and a country that transformed from a socialist single-party state
to a social-democratic republic in which the same party is however still in power (Seychelles). As a microstate, Seychelles is excluded from most aggregate indices of democracy,
but the Freedom House data set classifies it as a ‘partly free’ electoral democracy (2014). A
similar classification is made for Venezuela; the Russian Federation, however, is categorized as ‘not free’. In most other classifications, Venezuela and Russia are categorized as
hybrid regimes (Ekman 2009; Gilbert and Mohseni 2011; Marshall and Jaggers 2011).
Despite their common hybrid status, the political systems of the cases are vastly different. While the rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia (since 2000), Hugo Chávez in Venezuela
(1999–2013), and France-Albert René in Seychelles (1977–2004) could be considered personalistic, these leaders emphasize(d) different issues in their legitimation rhetoric. The
Seychellois and Venezuelan regimes are at least rhetorically and symbolically socialist
or left-wing in orientation, whereas no clear ideological foundation can be discerned in
the Russian case. In terms of their origins and historical development, a noteworthy difference between the cases is that the Seychellois regime came to power by means of a coup
d’état and subsequently established a single-party Marxist state, whereas both Chávez
and Putin gained power through relatively competitive elections. While Venezuela and
Russia gradually became less democratic as Putin and Chávez consolidated their domestic
powers, in 1993 the Seychellois regime transformed from a Marxist single-party government into a multiparty system, in which the ruling party has stayed in power by winning
all subsequent elections.
In our qualitative analysis, for the cases of Russia and Venezuela secondary literature,
existing reports and documents, and public opinion surveys are examined. Since such
information is mostly not available for the case of Seychelles, the analysis of this regime
is chiefly based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with Seychellois respondents
that were conducted during field research by one of the authors in February–March
2011. Several interviews with civil society actors were conducted also in Russia in February–March 2012. Our analysis will focus simultaneously on two elements of legitimacy
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that are related but also distinct from each other. First, we examine the strategy (i.e. tactics)
of legitimation that the three regimes employ, which we conceptualize as the type of
actions they utilize to foster their political legitimacy. Second, we look at the content of
this legitimation strategy, which we understand as narratives by means of which this strategy is justified and sustained. Since we have selected our cases in order to ensure
maximum variation in political ideology among hybrid regimes, our expectation is that
the legitimation strategy of the cases we analyze is more or less similar, while the
content of this strategy is expected to diverge, based on the different ideological foundations of the regimes.
In the following section, we first define the concepts of political legitimacy and political
legitimation strategy, after which we discuss the significance of popular legitimacy in
hybrid regimes. Subsequently, we analyze the political legitimation in contemporary
Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles. Each case study follows the same logic: firstly, we
discuss the initial legitimation strategy of the regime; secondly, we focus on the narrative
used by the authorities to legitimize their right to rule, thirdly, we elaborate on what
groups the authorities rely on in building their support base, that is, who is considered
a friend and who an enemy of the state. The comparison of the three cases constitutes
the concluding section.
Understanding regime legitimation in hybrid regimes
Machiavelli emphasized the need for political legitimacy of a government because of the
‘impotence of pure power’ (in Zelditch 2001, 36–37, 42–43). While scholars continue to
disagree about the usefulness of the concept of legitimacy (Hyde 1983; Huntington
1991, 46; Przeworski 1991), it has a strong (implicit and explicit) presence in both theoretical and empirical debates in political science. Legitimacy is often associated with regime
survival because it functions as an alternative resource of support for authorities in times
of crisis (Tyler 2006, 377). According to Huntington (1991, 46–58), the survival and legitimacy of authoritarian regimes depends heavily on their economic performance, that is,
their output. The legitimacy of democracies, by contrast, is based mainly on input:
shared ideas about what the political system represents and relatively durable electoral
procedures that assure the representation of citizens’ interests (Easton 1975, 447).
Hybrid regimes aspire to achieve a balance between output and input elements of legitimacy, but ‘the coexistence of democratic rules and autocratic methods aimed at keeping
incumbents in power creates an inherent source of instability’ (Levitsky and Way 2002,
59).
The term hybrid regime refers to diverse political regimes that ‘combine some democratic
and some autocratic elements in significant measure’ (Hale 2011, 34). In the last two
decades, hybrid regimes became the subject of many studies in comparative politics
(e.g. Diamond 2002; Wigell 2008; Bogaards 2009; Morlino 2009; Levitsky and Way
2010; Gilbert and Mohseni 2011). The categorization of regimes as hybrids, however,
remains problematic and the extent to which these ‘in-between’ cases actually maintain
similar regimes remains unclear. Unlike classic authoritarian regimes, hybrids do not legitimate their rule through the will of gods or dynastic roots, and they do not use coercion to
retain power to the same extent as classical authoritarian regimes. Instead, hybrids seek
confirmation of their right to rule through the institution of elections, which are usually
POLICY STUDIES
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seen as the defining attribute of democratic systems (Gerschewski 2013), but these elections are characterized by controlled competition and manipulation. Moreover, rulers
in hybrid regimes often adjust to external circumstances and adapt their legitimation patterns to various democratization pressures, for example, popular demands or external
events (Finkel and Brudny 2012). For some hybrid regimes, this dynamic strategy and
adaptability to external conditions causes discrepancies in regime scores and frequently
leads to the assignment of one case to different categories (compare, e.g. The Economist
Intelligence Unit 2011; Marshall and Jaggers 2011; Bertelsmann Stiftung 2014). Hale
(2011, 35) illustrated this debate about categorization with a ‘demonstratively awkward
acronym’ to refer to all types of hybrid regimes collectively: SCEAOMIDD (semi-/competitive/electoral authoritarianism or managed/illiberal/delegative democracy).
In this article, we specifically address legitimacy of these ambiguous regimes. We follow
a descriptive approach to legitimacy based on Weber’s ideas about the belief in authorities
right to rule (1964, 382). In line with this approach, Gilley (2006, 502) wrote that legitimacy is achieved when citizens transfer power to authorities not because of fear or personal stakes, but because of the moral qualities of authorities who secure some kind of
common good: they ‘govern for the people’. Citizens grant the right to rule to authorities
on the basis of a sense of normative appropriateness of these authorities, and/or because of
their performance. Hence, citizens’ perceptions and evaluations of the authorities and political system form the basis of subjective legitimacy.
Treated as a type of social perception, legitimacy represents a ‘manipulable resource’
(Suchman 1995, 574). Therefore, within this understanding of legitimacy, any political
authority (democratic or not) has the possibility to influence and engender legitimacy
beliefs. Political authorities, institutions, and organizations can use diverse legitimation
strategies to gain, maintain, and repair domestic legitimacy. We explicitly emphasize
the validity of the micro level perspective in analyzing hybrid regimes (Weatherford
1992), and accordingly we treat legitimacy as a ‘manipulable resource’.
The legitimacy of hybrids is not only achieved by means of elections. In fact, some argue
that the role of elections in supplying legitimacy might be less important for domestic
legitimacy than other factors – elections might be used merely to signal ‘that alternatives
are unlikely’ (Marquez 2015). According to Kailitz (2013, 46) the diminished quality of
elections distinguishes hybrid regimes (electoral autocracies) from liberal democracies.
Although this article exclusively aims to compare hybrid regimes, it seeks to establish
empirically to what extent a coherent pattern of legitimation, different from elections
(used by democracies) and hard repression (used more frequently by authoritarian
regimes; see Grauvogel and von Soest 2014, 637–639) is present in different hybrid
regimes.
The relation between legitimation and repression is not clear-cut, especially if we deal
with subjective legitimacy. For example, the limitations on pluralism can be seen as a protection of certain traditional values or a safe-guard against extremism by certain groups
and would be classified as a legitimacy-engendering strategy. However, the groups upon
which the limitations are imposed would see this strategy as repression. This issue is discussed by Gerschewski (2013, 23), who shows that legitimation refers to the relation
between the regime elite and population, whereas repression refers mainly to the relation
between the regime elite and potential opposition.
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H. MAZEPUS ET AL.
In this article, legitimation strategies are understood as authorities’ attempts to promote
their vision of what is right for the country and, in principle, are aimed at producing voluntary
transfer of power to the authorities. The justifications of their rule are framed either in the
form of rhetorical claims (e.g. propaganda, and justificatory narratives) or specific actions
(e.g. mobilization, institutional reform, or distribution of goods and services). It is important
to distinguish between the strategies that pertain to subjective legitimacy and the strategies
that simply produce support, which can result from many different motives such as fear of
coercion or personal gain. Clientelism is a good example of the latter strategy as it can
unquestionably mobilize support (Rose, Mishler, and Munro 2011), but it is based on the
provision of ‘material resources as quid pro quo for political support’ (Stokes 2007)
accompanied by threats of defection. By this logic, following Gilley (2006, 502), a citizen
who supports the regimes ‘because it is doing well in creating jobs’ is expressing views of
legitimacy. A citizen who supports the regimes ‘because I have a job’ is not’.
Russia: order, Putin, and ‘the special path’
Initial legitimation
Legitimation strategies in Putin’s Russia evolved throughout the years of his rule. They can
only be understood, however, in the context of two previous regimes that legitimized their
rule in opposing ways, namely the regime of the Soviet Union and the transition regime
after its dissolution. The initial legitimation of the Soviet regime was grounded in communist ideology, but in its post-totalitarian form (after the death of Stalin), the Communist
Party legitimized itself on the basis of performance through self-proclaimed ‘economic
superiority’ over the West, prosperity, and improving living standards (Saxonberg 2013,
59–60).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the evaporation of ideology as a source of
legitimacy constituted a great challenge for the new regime of the Russian Federation.
Initially, Western style multi-party elections were supposed to legitimize the system.
Although the elections had a larger degree of competition in the 1990s than in the
2000s, they did not seem to provide a sufficient basis for legitimacy because of unsatisfactory economic outputs of the system and lack of coherent ideology. The reforms of the first
half of the 1990s caused a massive decline of the GDP and living standards of Russians
(Gerber and Hout 1998; Hanson 1999).
The experience of this turbulent period helped Putin to gain power and mobilize
support among Russians. Putin took an intransigent position on the conflict in Chechnya
in the name of national unity at the time of high public support for this action (Knight
2000). Most importantly, the recovery of the GDP caused by the increase of oil prices
improved popular perceptions of the direction in which the country was moving
(Levada Center 2014a). The increase in oil-based revenues led to the rise in living
standards and the subordination of oligarchs to the Kremlin signaled Putin’s commitment
to re-distribution of wealth. In practice, a group of oligarchs and Putin’s protégés
from various networks (KGB/FSB, military, United Russia (UR) and friends from
St. Petersburg) formed clans with control over resources and legislation, making them
the main beneficiaries of the regime (e.g. Kryshtanovskaya and White 2005; Remington
2008).
POLICY STUDIES
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Nevertheless, Putin was able to use the discourse of order (poryadok) and stability (stabil’nost’) as legitimation, which for the majority of Russians became the appreciated
synonym of Putin’s rule (Anderson 2013, 133), despite the widespread high-level corruption (Dawisha 2014) and the construction of a patronage-based ‘single-pyramid system’
with Putin as the chief patron (Hale 2010).
Legitimation narrative
In addition to the rhetoric of order supported by the growth of the GDP, a personalistic
legitimation strategy, which included both charismatic and technocratic aspects, became
more prominent in Russia. Putin was depicted by the media as a strong and competent
leader, who understood and represented the needs of ordinary Russians. Initially, Russians
valued Putin because he appeared to be completely different from Yeltsin: disciplined,
energetic, sober, and a former spy and holder of a judo black belt (Treisman 2011,
593). Subsequently, the mass media created an image of an ideal man, whom every
Russian woman dreams of and every Russian man should emulate. This strategy of glorification has been possible because of the lack of a specific political orientation of Putin.
Putin became a catch-all national leader – the president of everybody – and, as Levada
observed, ‘his policies combine liberal changes, great-power logic with its rhetoric,
appeals for social justice, and the robust defense of national interests’ (in White and Mcallister 2008, 615). Similar things could be said about UR, which became a party to realize
‘Putin’s programme’ and at the same time a ‘patronage machine’ to control federal and
regional politics and weaken opposition (Remington 2008).
Since 2000, Putin’s popularity rose to reach a peak at 89%, and never, until the wave of
protests in 2011, fell below 60% (Treisman 2011, 590). According to most Russia scholars
(White and Mcallister 2008; Rose, Mishler, and Munro 2011), economic performance is
the most important factor contributing to the regime support. Nevertheless, the image
created by the media and the personal appeal of Putin played a big role in people’s decisions
at the ballot box (Colton and Hale 2009; Rose, Mishler, and Munro 2011). In 2014, Putin in a
way initiated a test of loyalty of Russians by imposing counter-sanctions banning the import
of goods from countries that disapproved of the violation of the Budapest memorandum,
the annexation of Crimea, and Russian intervention in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Although a majority of Russians declared that they agree with Putin’s response to the
Western sanctions, at the same time they admit that the prices have increased and the standards of living of the Russian population will decrease (Levada Center 2014b).
Friends and enemies
In addition to personalistic strategies, Putin’s regime legitimizes itself by stressing its cultural coherence with the Russian national identity. This nationalist strategy became more
pronounced after the wave of color revolutions, upon which various counter-revolutionary
strategies were implemented in Russia to ‘insulate it from the orange virus’ (Ambrosio
2007). The notion of sovereign democracy (Surkov 2008; March 2012, 408–410) – democracy designed to fit Russia’s distinct civilization – and statements like ‘true sovereignty for
Russia is absolutely necessary for survival’ (Putin 2014), as well as the emphasis on resistance to Western democracy and values took a more central place in Putin’s policies and
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rhetoric over time. Pro-regime nationalist groups were favored and rewarded, while critics
were targeted and besmirched as foes of the state. With time, the right-oriented supporters’ base of Putin (Colton and Hale 2009) was placed more explicitly in the center of his
legitimation.
The Russian regime aims to gain input legitimacy, convincing citizens about the cohesion of the values represented by authorities with the values represented by society, by
assuming the role of the guardian of the tradition, history and the common values of
Russian society with a mission to ‘save the people’ (in De Lazari 2014; Torbakov 2014).
Moreover, recently intensified rhetoric of ‘the enemy at the gate’ seems to be effective
in mobilizing the support for Putin. According to survey data from January 2011, 67%
of Russians believed that internal and external enemies surround Russia. In March
2014, these numbers increased to 76% (Gudkov 2014a). In particular, the media campaign
accompanying the annexation of Crimea, which presented the West as supposedly supporting neo-Nazis and fascists in Ukraine (De Waal 2014), has led to an increase in
anti-American and anti-European sentiments. The approval ratings of Putin reached
83% at the end of May 2014, approaching the zenith of 88% that was reached during
the 2008 Georgian War (Asmolov, Levinson, and Prokhorova 2014). The wish to
recover Russia’s lost great power glory seems to unite Russians in their support for interventions like those in Ukraine in 2014 and in Georgia in 2008 (Gudkov 2014b).
In line with the Kremlin’s rhetoric, the foes of Russia are not only abroad. The strengthening of anti-Western and anti-liberal rhetoric had serious consequences for Russian
opposition parties and organizations (Henderson 2011). After the Orange Revolution,
the State Duma took legal measures against opposition parties and restricted international
funding for NGOs. According to Putin, these measures were necessary to protect society
against organizations that do not serve the Russian people, but the interests of other states
(Putin 2004) – organizations and individuals often referred to as the ‘fifth column’.
In Russia, a distinction exists between human rights defenders known as pravozashchitniki and other organizations that cohabitate the civic space with the authorities and act in
the sphere of social security (Petrone 2011, 178; Mazepus 2012a; Volkov 2011). At the
beginning of Putin’s third presidential term, many of the pravozashchitniki received the
label of ‘foreign agent’, which has a strong pejorative association among the Russian
public. A vague definition of who qualifies as a ‘foreign agent’ allowed the Ministry of
Justice to declare grass-root organizations like Golos (elections monitoring), Memorial
(human rights) and even the Levada-Center (a public opinion center) as foreign agents,
and courts fined them for refusing to register as such.
Moreover, the media launched a campaign to sully the reputation of these NGOs. For
example, Golos was attacked in 2011/2012 with a series of pseudo-documentaries aired on
NTV portraying the organization as an enemy of the state. Mazepus (2012b; own interview), the head of Golos, commented a day after the broadcast of one of these films,
that this strategy was reminiscent of Belarus and methods of manipulation used by
Stalin to eliminate opponents in 1937. A new law on ‘undesirable organizations’ signed
by Putin in May 2015 is another tool to control Russian civil society and its contacts
with international organizations.
The Russian authorities often justify the functioning of the political system on the basis
of Russia’s exceptionality and special path, which also calls for a special kind of democracy
as opposed to Western democracy. What they mean by this is not clear, but it resonates
POLICY STUDIES
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well with the majority of population. In their quest to make Russia a great power, the
Russian authorities strive towards a convergence of people’s views and beliefs about the
world with the vision offered by the state. This vision involves a rejection of the
Western ‘rotten’ values (and anybody who supports them) and an emphasis on Russia’s
exceptionalism and morality of its political system. The distinction between the justificatory rhetoric (protection of loyal Russians against the enemies) and actions (legal restrictions on opposition, public discrediting of liberal NGOs, and rewards for loyalty) reflects
how legitimation in terms of values and national identity is accompanied by the application of repressive and co-opting strategies (Gerschewski 2013, 21).
Venezuela: a populist legitimation strategy
Initial legitimation
Venezuela’s transition to democracy began in 1958 with the creation of the Punto Fijo
Pact, a power-sharing agreement between the main political parties (Myers 2004).
Despite Venezuela’s accomplishments including the creation of a framework of democratic structures and processes, democracy in Venezuela did not progress towards a
more inclusive mode involving a fuller range of democratic rights and practices (Ellner
2008). Power remained under elite control and essentially excluded sectors of the population from the general decision-making process. Political parties operated through a
strong network of patronage stretching down and outwards from elite sections of Venezuelan society in the military, business and land sectors (Crisp and Levine 1998, 31).
So, while the input legitimacy through institutional representation was largely limited,
the regime sought to employ other methods to enhance its legitimacy. Prevailing societal
interests translated into the formulation of a distributive resource policy model, based on
oil revenues, aimed at appeasing specific needs of dominant societal groups (Ortiz 2004).
However, the elites’ overbearing role eventually contributed to the demise of the Punto
Fijo model of democracy. During the 1980s, the culmination of devaluing the currency,
declining wages and the introduction of a punitive austerity package that triggered civil
unrest were direct causes of the end of Punto Fijo democracy (Crisp and Levine 1998).
This period of economic, political and civil unrest laid the ground for the entrance of
Hugo Chávez and the introduction of Bolivarianism to the modern Venezuelan political
scene. In essence, modern Bolivarianism refers to Chávez’s interpretation and implementation of ideas originally espoused by Simón Bolívar. During the late 1990s, in an attempt
to gain almost instantaneous political legitimacy, Chávez directly linked ‘the liberator’
with his own goals of patriotism, liberation and independence. These became the main
tenets of the ideological foundation and political platform that propelled Chávez to the
presidency in 1998. Moreover, Chávez as an individual with his Bolivarian ideals could
achieve, what Weber (1978, 215) called, charismatic legitimation understood as ‘devotion
to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person’.
Legitimation narrative
In 1999, Chávez inherited a nation beleaguered with problems of poverty, inequality, corruption and general public mistrust of the traditional mode of governance that had defined
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Venezuela’s democratic experience (Weisbrot 2008). In an attempt to build a legitimate
political brand that clearly departed from the Punto Fijo tradition, Chávez implemented
a series of institutional and policy changes designed to create a new style of politics and
governance in Venezuela based on a series of input legitimacy tactics. These included
drafting a new constitution concentrating power within the presidency, moving from a
bicameral to a unicameral parliament, the introduction and implementation of the principles of the Bolivarian revolution and its model of participatory democracy, and finally,
holding new elections for seats in the unicameral parliament as well as for the office of
President (Coppedge 2002; Lievesley 2005, 12).
The incremental introduction of a series of social policies known as ‘missions’ became
the flagship of the Bolivarian revolution’s populist approach to a variety of problems
linked to social inequality (Weisbrot 2008). These state missions delivered to the
poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population a range of services, including:
free basic health care, adult literacy programs, subsidized basic food stuffs, free public
housing and free tertiary education. Corrales and Penfold-Becerra (2012, 44) point out
that the missions helped Chávez to symbolically include the people that were excluded
at the end of the Punto Fijo regime. Moreover, the missions led to an increase in public
spending, which gave Chávez a competitive advantage over opposition parties during elections. Although the missions were used as a legitimation strategy and promoted as an
example of the government fulfilling its constitutional commitments in relation to
human security (e.g. see Article 305 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, 1999), the support for Chávez cannot be equated with legitimacy. The
support resulted from a combination of the belief in the contribution of his policies to
the common good of the nation (output legitimacy) and favorable attitudes toward the
symbolic representation of the regime (input legitimacy) (Mills 2013), as well as from
the expectation of rewards, and fear of being excluded from the list of beneficiaries (instrumental motives).
However, for several years now, the missions have not provided the same level of output
legitimacy as they once did. Since 2007 the number of Venezuelans accessing the services
of the missions has continued to decline, reaching new lows under the Maduro government and reducing its capacity to draw upon the traditional centerpiece of its legitimation
narrative.
Friends and enemies
The regime’s narrative became embedded and inextricably linked to the populist policies
that appealed to the majority of the population. However, other sectors of society, mainly
in private business, began to voice concerns over Chávez’s leadership and management of
the nation. These concerns translated into a series of challenges that included an
attempted coup d’état, a national strike in the oil industry and a referendum to recall
him from the office of president. Ironically, these events proved to be critical to
Chávez’s capacity to further consolidate his power and legitimacy among a broad spectrum of the population. After almost 10 years in power, Chávez’s performance was
rated as good or very good by 50% of population (The Americas Barometer).
During his tenure as president Chávez successfully instilled a divisive political discourse
that played on the simplistic dichotomy of ‘us versus them’. Moreover, due to Chávez’s
POLICY STUDIES
359
increasing domestic consolidation of power it was no longer necessary to solely draw on
the legacy of Bolívar to legitimate his government’s policies. Chávez had become a legitimate political brand in his own right under the new ideological banner of Chavismo and
enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings in Venezuela’s political history. According to
Datanalisis, Chávez reached the peak of his popularity in 2007 with more than 70%
approval rating, and he was never supported by less than 47% of Venezuelans (in Martínez
2011).
The loyal Chavistas have been relentlessly promoted as the champions of the poor and
disenfranchised, who have been engaged in a bitter battle against a malignant opposition
with nefarious motives. Anybody who expressed criticism of Chávez’s government could
be considered a part of this opposition and pronounced a traitor. One famous example is
the case of General Raúl Baduel – former Defense Minister under Chávez and the commander that saved Chávez during the coup d’état in 2002. When Baduel became too critical of Chávez’s increasingly authoritarian policies, Chávez accused him of treason and in
2009 Baduel was sentenced to seven years in a military prison on corruption charges. The
use of discursive tactics (Angosto-Ferrandez 2013) that placed Chávez and his supporters
squarely on the side of ‘good’ in matters of domestic or foreign politics, proved to be a
largely successful strategy for domestic legitimation during his time in power (Chaplin
2014, 36).
However, these tactics could only work so long as Chávez remained a vibrant and
visible leader. In mid-2011, Chávez revealed that he had undergone surgery to remove
a cancerous tumour. From this point on, the Venezuelan government went to great
lengths to conceal the exact nature of Chávez’s health issues in the lead up to the 2012
presidential elections, and on several occasions in 2011 and 2012 Chávez publically
declared himself free of cancer (BBC 2012). In July 2012, Chávez launched his final campaign for re-election. During his speech, and although visibly ill, Chávez regaled the
sprawling crowds with a mixture of amusing anecdotes, songs and political statements
about the future of a socialist Venezuela. During these hours, Chávez’s intermittent references to Simón Bolívar appeared to be superficial at best. Towards the end of his speech,
Chávez declared to the crowd ‘I am Chávez, you are Chávez, we are all Chávez’ (Chávez
2012). When Chávez died on 5 March 2013, his supporters took to the streets and social
media proclaiming ‘Todos somos Chávez’ (‘we are all Chávez’).
It is clear that by the end of his life Chávez had moved well beyond his initial objectives
of gaining political legitimacy through a series of traditional input and output tactics. In
death, it seems that Chávez is being afforded an almost mythological place in Venezuelan
history similar to, and perhaps even more salient than Bolívar himself. However, President
Nicolas Maduro’s current inclination to strengthen his administration’s legitimacy
through the use of hagiographic references to Chávez appears to be creating a further dissonance between government and the populace. The results of the 2013 presidential election demonstrated that many from the traditional Chavista support base had either not
been mobilized or failed to vote in comparison to previous elections when Chávez was
the candidate. The December 2015 elections for the National Assembly further demonstrate this point, whereby the opposition coalition for the first time in 16 years won a
super majority and now control the unicameral parliament. Despite these recent events,
it is clear that Chávez left such an indelible mark on Venezuelan politics that any successor
would face similar legitimation challenges to the ones Maduro is currently facing. As the
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Venezuelan case shows, political legitimacy that is exclusively derived from an individual
can prove to be problematic and potentially damaging for the continuation of a regime
during periods of transition.
Seychelles: a personal legitimation strategy
Initial legitimation
With a population size of approximately 90.000, the Republic of Seychelles is the smallest
state of Africa, and the world’s smallest hybrid regime. Within one year after attaining
independence from the UK in 1976, the democratically elected pro-Western government
of the archipelago was overthrown in a coup d’état that installed a single-party Marxist
regime. With the aid of the Soviet Union and socialist African states like Libya and Tanzania, under the leadership of France-Albert René Seychelles transformed into a fullblown authoritarian regime in which opposition parties were banned, opposition supporters harassed, jailed, or even tortured, and in which institutions like the media and the
judiciary were curtailed or forced to toe the party line (Hatchard 1993, 601–602; Van
Nieuwkerk and Bell 2007, 148, Baker 2008, 279). Political patronage and nepotism were
the main instruments of political control, but even as corruption flourished, tourism continued to generate vast economic development, and Seychelles became one of the most
prosperous states of Africa (Campling and Rosalie 2006, 119–121; Yoon 2011, 101). Economic growth underpinned the political legitimacy of this authoritarian regime.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the 1991 Harare
Declaration proved to be watershed moments for Seychelles, and the sudden disappearance of many socialist allies forced the regime to start a process of political liberalization.
In 1993 multiparty-elections were organized, but the main opposition party (the Seychelles
Democratic Party (SDP)) failed to defeat the incumbent Seychelles Peoples Patriotic Front
(SPPF). As a result, the SPPF and President René remained in power, and managed to win
all subsequent elections, meaning that no alternation in office has occurred since the
1970s. With the same party and people remaining in power, critics assert that very little
has changed in post-1993 Seychelles except for some institutional and cosmetic changes
(Baker 2008, 280–281). At present, the available literature on Seychelles and the
Freedom House (2014) index primarily emphasize the democratic shortcomings of the
Seychellois regime, and point to excessive government influence on the media, discrimination and harassment of opposition supporters, and corruption and embezzlement by the
government. The most recent parliamentary elections were boycotted by the main opposition party because of the government’s refusal to revise existing laws on campaign
financing.
Legitimation narrative
The collapse of communism and the increase in international pressure forced the SPPF to
reform the Seychellois system, but elections – the new source of input legitimacy – remain
controlled by the incumbent regime. Despite the low competitiveness of elections, in the
international arena the mere organization of regular elections allows the regime to maintain a democratic image. Domestically, the value of legitimation through democratic
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elections is underscored as important by most interviewed respondents affiliated with the
government. In addition to these elections, the SPPF continues to emphasize the redistributive nature of its policies, and its goal of realizing greater socio-economic equality and
the emancipation of the working classes. As one minister in the government remarked:
This government still has a very strong core social policy within its manifesto and within its
governance policy, where we maintain things like free education, free healthcare, subsidized
housing, free access to specialist medical care, overseas if needed. ( … ) We are firmly
implanted as believers in the democratic system. We firmly believe in transparency and
good governance, but we maintain this social element within our policies.
While the SPPF originated as a Soviet-style socialist party, after the fall of the Berlin
Wall it managed to transform itself into a social-democratic party that subscribes to
free market policies and free and fair elections. As a result, the party made a relatively successful ideological transition, which to a large extent was facilitated by its capacity to live
up to the socio-economic expectations of its supporters. Massive tourism revenues have
allowed the SPPF to realize much of its left-wing program, and to fulfill its electoral promises and sustain its base of support. As the following quote of a ruling party politician illustrates, according to the Seychellois political elite the shift in the legitimation narrative of
the regime has already provided most of the necessary political changes, as a result of
which alternation in office has become largely obsolete:
Change for the sake of change is meaningless, unless the change comes to complement or to
be better than what is being done for the country. In Seychelles, the same party over the thirty
years has transformed itself – if I may use the term – from a caterpillar to a butterfly. We were
a caterpillar once, a caterpillar that moved slowly because the focus was to breach the wide
gap that existed between the richest elites and the poorest majority.
Whereas the political opposition of Seychelles (the SNP) continues to criticize the ruling
party’s democratic credentials and its track record of human rights violations, censorship
of the press, and intimidation of opposition supporters, these issues do not seem to be considered as important by the majority of the people, as a representative of the Seychellois
legal sector explained:
I think that the average person is more concerned with what immediate benefits they can
derive, rather than whether someone they don’t know is being treated well in prison.
In short, while the SPPF surely emphasizes democracy and human rights as part of its
legitimation narrative, the party elites seem to be aware that direct economic benefits are
more important in sustaining their legitimacy than these intangible factors. The social policies of the SPPF have primarily translated into patron-client relations, which can be seen
as performing a redistributive function of social welfare in the country. According to a
number of scholars, after over 35 years in power the state and the ruling party have
merged in the minds of many ordinary Seychellois (Yoon 2011, 101; Veenendaal 2014),
meaning that analogous to larger, continental African countries, the Seychellois system
can increasingly be regarded as neo-patrimonial (Bratton and Van de Walle 1994).
In part, the blurred boundaries between ruling party and state are buttressed by the
actions of the regime, which recurrently recognizes accomplishments of the nation as
accomplishments of the party, and vice versa. For example, the country’s first (and, so
far, only) university was established in September 2009, and this was strongly depicted
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as an achievement of the SPPF. Since the SNP has never been in power and therefore did
not have a chance to attain these kind of successes, the ruling party constantly brands itself
as a supporter of the interests of the ‘true Seychellois’, whereas the opposition are branded
as outsiders. This was for example unmistakably clear during the 2011 election campaign,
when the SPPF distributed covers for car mirrors in the colors of the flag of Seychelles,
thereby signaling that everyone who supports the ruling party in fact supports the interests
of the nation as a whole.
Friends and enemies
Contra to the received wisdom that small states are, as a rule, more democratic (Diamond
and Tsalik 1999, 119–120; Anckar 2010), the proximity between Seychellois citizens and
politicians provides the regime with a number of tools to raise support and sustain its
legitimacy, despite its authoritarian tendencies. In the first place, due to the social intimacy
that results from the smallness of the country, political affiliations are broadly known in
Seychelles, and it can be extremely difficult for individual citizens to maintain their political anonymity. This broad awareness about political affiliations allows the ruling
party to identify both its own supporters and the supporters of the opposition, which
increases incentives to treat people differently depending on their political allegiance.
As one interviewed public official explains:
If you are campaigning during a year, you visit every family at least four times in that year.
You can do that, so this gives you the possibility of knowing exactly who supports you, and
who does not support you. When the ruling party identifies you as somebody who is not supporting the government, they will exert pressure. And this is one of the weaknesses of a
small country with a constituency of 2.000–4.000 voters, compared to constituencies of
100.000 where you just got to deliver your message and sometimes hope that people understand it.
In practice, the broad awareness about individual citizens’ political affiliations means that
patronage, clientelism, and nepotism are often-employed strategies to satisfy supporters
and attract new ones, whereas opposition supporters are likely to be socially excluded,
economically deprived, and even harassed and victimized (Veenendaal 2014). In addition
to clientelism, government patronage is ubiquitous in Seychelles. According to many
sources, the ruling party distributes civil service-jobs as a means to reward supporters
and to attract new ones (Baker 2008, 289; Yoon 2011, 101). Since the government
employs more than 20% of the Seychellois workforce, and indirectly controls close to
70% of the economy, this also means that many citizens are economically and financially
dependent on their government (Van Nieuwkerk and Bell 2007, 146).
Evidently, these circumstances allow the SPPF to directly target its legitimation narrative towards its (anticipated) base of supporters, and to strategically use whatever
resources it has at its disposal to attract new ones. In general, voting behavior in Seychelles
is based on family traditions and personal connections rather than ideologies, and in this
sense the regime’s legitimation narrative is not aimed at specific socio-economic groups or
classes within society, but rather focuses on personal relations. Since political anonymity is
restricted in Seychelles, and the ruling party commonly seeks to economically marginalize
the opposition and its supporters, all Seychellois citizens have strong incentives to openly
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express their support for the SPPF. Some are motivated by a combination of rewards, belief
in the rightfulness of the rules, and the patriotic feeling of loyalty to their country, whereas
others choose to support the dominant party because of the fear of coercion. Hence,
depending on the group to which the citizens belong (friends or enemies), they perceive
the strategy of the regime as a valid legitimation or as repression.
Conclusion
The worldwide proliferation of diminished democracies and autocracies from the 1990s
onwards has resulted in the clustering of a very diverse group of cases under the label
of ‘hybrid regimes’ However, the mere construction of a singular category of ‘inbetween’ regimes obfuscates the many differences that may exist within this group, and
between regimes that may be considered ‘hybrid’. Cross-regional comparisons like
those that were made in this article can contribute to a more nuanced identification of
differences and similarities between countries belonging to this category. Domestic legitimation strategies in particular represent an under-researched element in the academic
study of hybrid regimes, and the present article has sought to address this gap in the literature. Employing both democratic and antidemocratic strategies, and necessarily focusing both on the input and the output dimensions of legitimacy, legitimation strategies of
hybrid regimes hence maintain a careful balance between various sources of legitimacy
and other tactics.
This article has primarily aimed to highlight the similarities and differences between the
three hybrid regimes under scrutiny. Table 1 shows an overview of these similarities and
differences. As the table demonstrates, the legitimation strategies of the three regimes are
rather similar. In the first place, in all cases a fusion between the leadership and the state
was observed, and in all cases state institutions and resources were used by the ruling party
to sustain its grip on power. Secondly, all three regimes make a rhetorical distinction
between the friends (in-group) and the enemies (out-group), and try to portray the opposition and its supporters as outsiders, representatives of foreign interests, or even as
enemies of the state. Finally, in all three cases clientelism and patronage were used as political strategies to engender support among potential voters. When it comes to identified
Table 1. Overview of similarities and differences in the legitimation strategies.
Similarities:
Fusion between ruling
party and state
(interests)
Opposition branded as
enemies and outsiders
Clientelism and patronage
Dynamic legitimation
narrative
Differences:
Content of narrative
Personalistic/charismatic
Russia
Venezuela
Seychelles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Order, stability, nationalism,
conservatism, anti-Western,
Putin
Yes
Socialism, rejection of
capitalism, anti-Western,
Chávez
Yes
Social-democracy,
redistribution of welfare
No
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legitimation strategies, the content differed slightly as to who exactly is the enemy and who
is rewarded by the patronage.
Perhaps most conspicuously, the comparison between these regimes reveals that in
each case an evolution and adaptation of the legitimation strategy took place, and that
the legitimation strategies are dynamic and adaptable in this respect. This is most
clearly the case in Seychelles, where the collapse of communism and the demise of the
Soviet Union resulted in a transformation of the regime’s rhetoric from Marxist and antidemocratic to essentially social-democratic and liberal. In Russia, the regime’s initial focus
on order and stability gradually gave way to the more nationalistic and anti-Western discourse that prevails today. In Venezuela the initial focus on the ideas of Bolivarianism was
progressively replaced by the ‘new’ narrative of Chavismo, which is more populist and personalistic in nature. The adaptability of these legitimation narratives reveals that while
ideological positions of regimes can change, their legitimation strategies are often more
robust and remain relatively similar over time. The key takeaway of this article is that it
is possible to discern similarities in legitimation strategies in different hybrid regimes,
despite the differences in the content of justificatory narratives and leadership styles.
As the bottom rows of the table demonstrate, related to their different ideological foundations, the most important dissimilarity between our cases can be found in their legitimation narratives. After the experience with communism and the failed experiment
with liberal democracy under Yeltsin, the contemporary Russian regime strongly
focuses on order, stability, nationalism, and conservatism. By contrast, the populist and
socialist legitimation narrative of the current Venezuelan regime can be seen as a response
to the failure of the foregoing elitist and neoliberal Punto Fijo-regime. Emerging out of
Western colonialism, the Seychellois regime’s initial focus on Marxism, and later focus
on social-democracy and social equality can also be seen as a reaction to the preceding
political order. In this sense, while the legitimation narratives themselves are different, a
similarity between the cases is that each regime strongly expresses a break with the
recent past.
A second difference relates to the focus on the regime’s respective leaders. Whereas
both Russia and Venezuela’s regimes became more personalistic over time, this cannot
to a similar extent be said of the Seychellois regime. In Venezuela the death of Chávez
resulted in the arrival of a decidedly less charismatic leader, but the regime’s narrative
has remained focused on the person of Chávez, and it is an open question to what
extent this legitimation pattern can be successful in the future. Another difference can
be noted regarding the attitude of the regime towards economic elites; whereas Putin’s
Russia has largely successfully attempted to silence the oligarchy by making it dependent
on the regime, the Venezuelan regime strongly opposes the economic elite, arguing that it
operates against the interests of the Venezuelan people. As a very small state with a blurred
boundary between the public and private sectors, the economic and political elites of Seychelles are largely similar.
In light of our ‘most diverse’ selection of cases, the similarities of the hybrid regimes in
terms of their legitimation strategies are remarkable. As hybrid regimes, all three cases rely
on a combination of democratic and authoritarian tactics and actions to stimulate and
maintain their domestic legitimacy. Although all hybrid regimes require a legitimation
pattern to justify their right to rule, notable differences may exist between the contents
of the strategies that individual hybrids employ to achieve it. In the absence of free and
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365
fair elections, each hybrid appeals to different values and norms in its justifying narrative:
order and traditional values in Russia, the emancipation of the working class in Venezuela,
or social equality and the distribution of national income in Seychelles.
Our case selection has enabled us to observe these similarities and differences, on the
basis of which we draw the conclusion that while the strategies for engendering legitimacy
are similar across hybrid regimes, the content of these strategies is different. Whereas politicians and journalists, but also academics, tend to focus primarily on the content of legitimation narratives, the findings of this article suggest that this content is often merely a
façade beyond which a more robust and durable legitimation strategy can be discerned.
As a consequence, while some commentators assume that hybrid regimes are inherently
unstable (see Levitsky and Way 2002), this article proposes that their legitimation strategies might remain intact even in the face of ideological shifts or leadership changes,
thereby making them more stable than they appear to be.
An avenue for future research on legitimacy in hybrid regimes would be to explore if
the similarities in used strategies and differences in narratives as well as leadership style
hold in other cases. More comparative research (including comparisons with democratic
and authoritarian regimes) can lead to the discovery of further possible patterns in legitimation strategies. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, another under-researched topic is the
effectiveness of justifying narratives in convincing citizens to approve the regime vis-à-vis
the other strategies.
Notes on Contributors
Honorata Mazepus is a PhD candidate and a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science of Leiden
University, The Netherlands. In her studies, she uses vignette experiments to evaluate the effects of
various factors on perceived legitimacy of political authorities by citizens in different political
regimes. Her research interests include politics in hybrid regimes and democratization.
Dr Wouter Veenendaal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast
Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden, The Netherlands. His research focuses on politics
and democracy in small states, and he currently works as a researcher within a large project on nonsovereign territories in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
Dr Anthea McCarthy-Jones is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Government and Policy
at the University of Canberra, Australia. Her research focuses on Venezuelan politics, Latin American regionalism and policy-making.
Dr Juan Manuel Trak Vásquez is a researcher at the Political Studies Center of the Universidad
Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela. His research interests include political representation,
culture and political values, electoral process, and comparative politics.
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