THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN COMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIAN LEGITIMATION STRATEGIES: AN ANALYSIS OF VENEZUELA AND BOLIVIA Ashley P. Reaves A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Political Science. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved by: Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo Graeme Robertson Ashley Anderson 2018 Ashley P. Reaves ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Ashley P. Reaves: The Role of Civil Society in Competitive Authoritarian Legitimation Strategies: An Analysis of Venezuela and Bolivia (Under the direction of Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo) An increasing amount of research analyzes the ways that various forms of hybrid regimes maintain stability in the face of regular elections and other domestic and international pressures. Within this literature, scholars emphasize three primary pillars of stability: repression, co-optation, and legitimation. While a significant amount of recent work has examined the role of repression and co-optation, legitimation has been largely put aside. Yet, scholars recognize the importance of legitimacy for regime stability. My research aims to contribute to our understanding of this third pillar through a qualitative analysis of the role of civil society in competitive authoritarian legitimation strategies. I focus on two recent cases in Latin America: Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Bolivia under Evo Morales. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………………… vi CHAPTER 1: STABILITY IN NONDEMOCRATIC REGIMES…………………………… 1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Hybrid Regimes...………………………………………………………...………...….. 3 Three Pillars of Regime Stability………………………………………………...……. 5 Civil Society and Legitimacy in Nondemocratic Regimes…….………...………..…... 7 CHAPTER 2: CIVIL SOCIETY IN LEGITIMATION STRATEGIES………...………..… 11 Civil Society as a Façade of Democracy…………………………….…...…………... 11 Venezuela……………………………………………………...….………….. 11 Bolivia………………………………………………………...……….……... 12 Using Civil Society to Reproduce Regime Discourse……………………………..… 13 Venezuela…………………………………………………...……………..…. 14 Bolivia……………………………………………………...………….……... 16 Civil Society as a Strategy to Increase Output Legitimation….…..…………………. 17 Venezuela………………………………………………...………………..…. 17 Bolivia…………………………………………………...………………….... 17 Civil Society for Limited Participation and Feedback………...……………………... 18 Venezuela…………………………………………………………….………. 19 iv Bolivia……………………………………………………………..………….. 19 Making Civil Society Play by the Rules………………………………......………….. 20 Venezuela……………………………………………………….……...…..…. 20 Bolivia…………………………………………………………….…...……… 22 Civil Society in State-Mobilized Contention……………………….…….…...…...…. 22 Venezuela………………………………………………………….………….. 23 Bolivia……………………………………………………………....…....…… 24 CHAPTER 3: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION…………………………..….…...…… 25 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………...……....……. 29 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Overview of conditions and observed patterns in the four cases……………… 26 vi CHAPTER 1: STABILITY IN NONDEMOCRATIC REGIMES Introduction Scholarship on the nature of hybrid regimes expanded drastically with their proliferation following the end of the Cold War. With a combination of democratic and authoritarian elements, it was often assumed that these regimes were simply in a transition phase, on their way to democratizing fully. Yet, as it became clear that hybrid regimes were indeed quite stable, how leaders in these regimes were able to maintain stability in the presence of various domestic and international pressures became a central question in the growing literature on the politics of hybrid regimes (Howard and Roessler 2006; Brownlee 2007; Levitsky and Way 2010). In analyses of hybrid regime stability, scholars have focused on three main pillars of rulers’ strategies: repression, co-optation, and legitimation. A significant amount of recent scholarly work has examined the pillar of co-optation, providing insight into the ways institutions such as elections, legislatures, and parties serve as mechanisms for elite management and cohesion (Blaydes 2011; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Magaloni 2008; Pop-Eleches and Robertson 2015; Reuter and Robertson 2012). Scholars have also emphasized the usefulness of strategic and “optimal” degrees of repression (Acemoglu and Robinson 2005). In contrast, although legitimacy—particularly performance-based—was a key component of earlier research on stability when authoritarianism rose as a distinct regime type (Collier 1979; O’Donnell 1979), it has largely been brushed aside in the recent wave of scholarly work on nondemocratic regimes. However, scholars have very recently begun making the case for re-incorporating legitimacy—defined as the belief in the authorities’ right to rule—into the research on 1 nondemocratic regime stability (Gerschewski 2013; Lorch and Bunk 2017; Mazepus et al. 2016). Arguing that nondemocratic regimes cannot rely solely on abuse of power, Gerschewski (2013) places particular emphasis on re-incorporating legitimation when he presents a theoretical framework to explain regime longevity. Yet, systematic research into legitimation strategies remains scarce, and existing studies on legitimation largely neglect the role of civil society. Lorch and Bunk (2017) begin to address this gap in the literature by examining the use of civil society in regime legitimation strategies in Algeria and Mozambique, linking them to strategies found in earlier research on authoritarian legitimation more broadly. They identify five key patterns: civil society as a façade of democracy, the regime making civil society play by the rules, civil society as a mechanism of limited participation and a feedback mechanism, using civil society as a strategy to increase output legitimation, and civil society reproducing historical discourse legitimating the regime. Given the research illuminating the heterogeneity of civil society and its potentially undemocratic elements, more research is needed to better understand how regimes incorporate this space into their legitimation strategies. In this paper, I undertake a qualitative analysis to examine the role of civil society in competitive authoritarian regime legitimation strategies. I analyze two cases in Latin America: Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Bolivia under Evo Morales. In the process, I investigate whether the theoretical patterns identified by Lorch and Bunk (2017) hold in other kinds of competitive authoritarian regimes, analyze how these patterns vary, and identify conditions under which these variations occur. I find that four patterns generalize to my cases: civil society as a façade of democracy, civil society as a mechanism of limited participation and a feedback mechanism, using civil society as a strategy to increase output legitimation, and civil society reproducing regime discourse. The final pattern—making civil society play by the rules—does 2 not generalize to Venezuela and Bolivia. I explain this divergence by the reversed nature of the regime trajectories. While Algeria and Mozambique transitioned from fully-closed authoritarian to competitive authoritarian, Venezuela and Bolivia have a more democratic history that places constraints on the government’s ability to legitimately control the civil society space. Finally, I introduce a new pattern not addressed by Lorch and Bunk, the use of civil society in state-led mobilization, which I find in Venezuela but less so in Bolivia. Bolivia’s pre-existing density of civil society organizations, and the rise of the MAS on the back of these organizations, limits Morales’ ability to completely mobilize from the top. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, I review the relevant existing literature on hybrid regime stability, legitimacy, and the role of civil society in nondemocratic regimes. In the process, I reveal the lack of sufficient attention to questions surrounding the role of civil society in hybrid regime legitimation strategies and argue for the need to address this gap in the literature by expanding our theoretical formulations and hypothesis testing to this domain. Following my literature review, I proceed to analyze the patterns of legitimation strategies in my two cases, highlighting patterns and divergences and expanding upon the findings and theoretical contributions of Lorch and Bunk (2017). I conclude with a discussion of my findings and recommendations for future research. Hybrid Regimes I aim to further our understanding of the role of civil society in the legitimation of hybrid regimes, and indeed, both of my cases fall under this regime type.1 In hybrid regimes, where 1 Given the wide variation among hybrid regimes, scholars often disagree as to which regimes should be considered hybrid, versus democratic or authoritarian. The case of Bolivia could be contested, but it appears to have moved further away from democracy under Morales. For an extensive discussion of how the MAS has weakened democracy by concentrating power, undermining horizontal accountability, and threatening the opposition, see Madrid (2012, Chapter 6). 3 democratic and authoritarian elements are combined, political competition is officially legal but often skewed by the strength of authoritarian institutions or the weakness of independent organizations. While these regimes have existed for a long time, they have proliferated dramatically since the end of the Cold War (Robertson 2011, 2). Given their significance and diffusion, understanding the dynamics