This edited volume explores the nature of authoritarian policing, its transformation and resilience, and its rule of law implications. The discussion of the evolution of policing takes place in the context of the overall development of the police, their professionalization, institutional autonomy and neutrality, legality, and their credibility within the communities they manage and serve. What makes policing “democratic” is a contested concept and the definition varies depending on the level of abstraction and the particular focus of the inquiry. While regime type, which is itself a contested concept, the close nexus between the coercive power of the police and the state, it is never dispositive. Thus, the dichotomous categorization of authoritarian policing (AP) and democratic policing (DP), while useful as a starting point for comparative analysis, misses a large amount of nuance and often overlooks the plurality of either system, neglecting the fact that a police system can be authoritarian or democratic in multiple ways and in different aspects of policing. This volume rejects this simple binary view. It aims to untie and unpack the nexus between the police and the political system and to explore the plurality of both AP and DP.

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework of state-building as lawfare. The chapter starts by outlining the building blocks of peripheral state-building: legal pluralism, nested sovereignty, gender cleavage, and armed conflict. Legal pluralism is an issue of fragmented social control. State–society struggles for social control are complicated because both the state and society are internally divided. The concept of nested sovereignty captures how the state is divided in imperial and federal settings. The central societal cleavage of state-building lawfare is gender. Both political and societal cleavages that drive state-building lawfare in the periphery are actualized and intensified by armed conflict. Building on this foundation, the chapter then theorizes state-building lawfare from above. In particular, it outlines when and why central and peripheral authorities promote non-state legal systems, as well as how conflict changes the political rationale of promoting legal pluralism. After that, the chapter interrogates state-building lawfare from below – focusing on individual choices between state and non-state legal systems. It also speculates about how conflict transforms the driving forces behind these choices – in identities and social norms – as well as resources, interests, and hierarchies, with a special focus on gender relations.

This chapter investigates the instrumental use of non-state legal systems in postwar Chechnya by the Kremlin-imposed ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. It argues that Kadyrov has been promoting legal pluralism in order to win legitimacy among segments of the population, increase his autonomy from the federal center, and better accommodate former rebels, who became state bureaucrats in the postwar period. This chapter casts doubt on alternative explanations. The evidence that Ramzan Kadyrov’s policy towards non-state legal systems is radically different from the policy of his father, who was a cleric and traditionalist, yet strengthened Russian state law and abstained from promoting Sharia and custom, is troubling for the path-dependence argument. Meanwhile, the narrative of how Ramzan Kadyrov was able to effectively “cancel” the customs of bride kidnapping and blood revenge – the most notorious Chechen customs – indicates that the state capacity explanation is also limited. The second part of the chapter compares lawfare in Kadyrov’s Chechnya with legal politics in the neighboring regions of Ingushetia and Dagestan. These comparisons further support the idea that local leaders in the North Caucasus promote non-state legal systems not because of ideological commitments, but as a way to ensure their political survival.

Institutional weaknesses can be attributed to limited human and/or financial capacity, limited accountability, limited commitment and limited fiscal capacity. Ignoring institutional limitations increases the odds of inefficient regulation, undesirable social side effects and excessive fiscal burdens. To address some of the limitations, most countries have created specialized separate regulatory agencies (SRA). The SRA model has been less popular for water and transport regulation, which continues to be largely managed by units within ministries or agencies directly controlled by the ministries, than for telecoms and electricity. Countries with overlapping and interconnected network facilities are increasingly considering moving part of the regulatory responsibilities to supranational agencies. In contrast to the theoretical predictions, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of SRAs in terms of efficiency, equity, financial/fiscal viability and accountability is mixed. There is no single perfect institutional solution that applies to all sectors and all countries. The existence of an agency is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for performance improvements of a public utility. Hybrid models that combine traditional visions with more modern approaches, which include a role for civil society and for expert panels, can be better to match the local country context.

Chapter 5 explores the politically appointed staffs working in ministers’ and prime ministers’ offices. Comparative analysis showcases the flexibility of policy advisory systems (PAS) and the several interpretations of the Westminster tradition. Advisers were added to PAS to extend ministers’ control, address deficiencies in public service advice and increase ministers’ capacity to address the politics of policy work. Their effects have attracted debates about politicisation. At best, advisers identify political risks and help ministers avoid the derailment of policy agendas.They serve as ports of call for officials, interested stakeholders and other ministers, as well as facilitate the circulation of policy advice within government. At worst they have corrosive effects, overstepping boundaries by throwing their weight around and directing public servants without appropriate authority. They act as gatekeepers on the professional advice of the public service before it reaches ministers. There is widespread agreement that partisan advisers have become more prominent and influential. Central political offices have become adept at using them as systemic instruments to secure political alignment and coordination throughout government. Their growing numbers and the specialisation of policy functions have become important for how ministers exert political control and seek contestable policy.

Many autocratic states cultivate networks of informants and operatives who have responsibility over small local cells. This chapter shows how the Chinese state has constructed a modern system of infiltration organized around sub-village cells. This decentralized system of informal control enables local officials to closely monitor local society. Case study and quantitative evidence show how village cell leaders help local officials implement policies including land confiscation and family planning quotas. Hiring more informants and putting them in charge of smaller cells, while costly, increases compliance with state policies. This strategy of infiltration is largely a substitute for cultivating and co-opting civil society.

In this concluding chapter, I briefly recap the main findings and then examine their broader implications. The case of Wukan Village shows how the strategy of informal control can be effective in the short run but backfire in the long run. The most effective check on autocratic state power is unlikely to come from the state itself, but from an adversarial relationship between local civil society and the state. Independent community leaders and activists who can mobilize their groups and threaten officials with broad-based political mobilization can even the balance of power between the state and society, and create meaningful incentives for responsiveness.

In this chapter, I turn my attention to the dynamics of co-optation of local notables. One might expect that the inclusion of communal elites in local political institutions might strengthen the voice of villagers and make local governments more responsive. By contrast, I argue that when communal elites are included in formal political institutions in rural China, they help the state control their group. Drawing on evidence from case studies, an original experiment, and a national dataset, I show how the inclusion of local elites in formal political bodies allows the state to requisition land and enforce family planning policy while forestalling collective action. Case studies from Scotland and the United States suggest that this mechanism of informal control may have applicability beyond China. When the leaders of communal groups remain outside the state, however, they can help to organize resistance against it.

How do authoritarian governments control society? How, in turn, can citizens control the state? The conventional wisdom is that a strong civil society increases citizen control over their governments, even in autocracies. The central argument of this book, by contrast, is that in autocratic states, civil society groups can give officials leverage over citizens and strengthen the state’s coercive capacity. This chapter explains how autocrats from China to Hungary to Venezuela to Russia have used civil society groups to strengthen authoritarian control. These institutions allow autocrats to reduce protest and implement coercive policies by giving authoritarian leaders moral authority and by helping them monitor society. Autocrats use three key tactics of “informal control”: they cultivate civil society groups, co-opt their leaders, and create parallel institutions of infiltration.

This chapter lays out a theory of political control. How does the Chinese state control protest and implement policies such as sweeping urbanization schemes that displace millions or family planning quotas that restrict the reproductive choices of half the population? Scholars of authoritarian regimes like China have often focused on coercive institutions that strengthen state capacity. In this book, by contrast, I focus on everyday, informal methods of coercion. “Informal institutions of control” created by civil society groups encourage obedience by calling on the obligations, allegiances, and bonds that non-state groups create. Drawing on evidence from qualitative case studies, the chapter illustrates the three mechanisms through which informal control occurs: cultivating civil society groups, co-opting local notables, and infiltrating society. Informal control fosters compliance with the state but it can backfire in the long run by creating grievances and linking activists to each other. Finally, I explain how the state strategically deploys each of these strategies.

This chapter introduces the challenge of political control that faces the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in rural China. Local CCP officials face a governance dilemma. They must control protest and implement unpopular policies such as land expropriation and relocation, or family planning quotas. Yet, as an original experiment shows, CCP cadres are seen as less trustworthy than the leaders of local community groups like lineages or neighborhood associations. The remainder of the book illustrates the resourceful ways that party cadres use these social ties to their advantage.

Cultivating civil society – encouraging the establishment of non-state groups like churches, temples, or civic associations – can strengthen the state’s informal control over society. In this chapter, I show how local officials in China encourage the establishment of lineage associations, temple organizations, and social clubs as a way to infiltrate local society and increase their informal authority. I draw on case studies and a national dataset to show how the presence of these groups helps local officials requisition land and suppress protest. Governments outside China, from Asia to Latin America, have engaged in similar forms of informal control, suggesting the theory may not be limited to China. The flip-side of informal control is that if communities lack strong social organizations, activists can find creative ways to mount spontaneous, leaderless resistance.

We provide an overview of the concept of the “policyscape,” a dense network of policies that structure the current political order, and then assess its relationship with four aspects of American institutional behavior: the creation of new policies; the maintenance of existing policies and programs; policy “thickening” that may lead to additional gridlock and dysfunction during what is an already laborious lawmaking process; and the monitoring of the current policyscape through executive oversight in Congress. We address, among other questions, why new and broad-reaching policy reforms have been scarce in recent years; why Congress has failed to update extant policies in accordance with social, economic, political, and technological developments; and how partisan polarization has affected Congress’ ability to oversee policy implementation and hold the executive branch accountable for administrative failures.

How is partisan polarization affecting the modern administrative state. Research suggests that despite a polarized Congress and a (somewhat) polarized electorate, agency policy choices do not seem to be moving systematically toward the extremes.Some combination of moderating effects seem to be at work, including the effect of divided government on appointments, agency preferences driven by moderate statutory mandates and/or the norms of issue networks, and (at times) the influence of ideologically moderate presidents on the size of the gridlock interval. The Trump administration may represent a departure from these norms: conservatives in the Trump coalition may be freer to pursue policies disfavored by a majority because of populist loyalty to the administration. Regardless, polarization-induced congressional gridlock poses ongoing challenges for the administrative state. Agencies must address problems within their jurisdiction in the absence of congressional input, using statutes that may have been poorly designed for the purpose.Courts will continue to struggle, case by case, with the implications for the constitutional legitimacy of agency policymaking.

Wenshi ziliao participants at the local, regional, and national levels adapted the slogan “seeking truth from facts” to reconceive of editorial “truth seeking” in ways that reconciled objective historical inquiry with ideological imperatives. To build a nationalist United Front and balance liberal inclusivity with political control, organizers reinterpreted socialist concepts like “dialectical and historical materialism” to rationalize the reincorporation of alienated social groups and to accommodate diverse local perspectives. In the northeast borderland, this reworking of socialist ideology provided the conceptual tools for reevaluating narratives of nation, revolution, liberation, heroism, and wild frontier in ways that stretched the limits of the national Party-centered discourse. Local editors attempted to reconcile multiplicity and unity, while provincial editorial boards sought to impose more centralized control over the collection and editing process, regarding the pursuit of historical truth as contingent on “systematization and specialization.” While some local editors employed an inclusive interpretation of ""seeking truth from facts,"" others regarded informants and writers as an ideological problem of “confusing historical truth and falsity” and intervened in the oral history process with Party-approved narrative frameworks.