Mythmaking, Mega-Events, and Coercion: Autocratic Legitimation in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan

Who has the right to rule and from where does this right arise from in authoritarian regimes? Under what conditions can one speak of politically legitimate leadership in non-democratic regimes? Every political system, irrespective of whether it is democratic or authoritarian, desires to attain a certain level of legitimacy to ensure its persistence in the long term. Power justification enables a ruling regime to be considered credible and just for citizens and the international community, maintaining the belief that the incumbent political regime is the most appropriate one for the given society (Gilley, 2009; Gerschewski, 2013). Legitimacy could be seen as a necessary condition for establishing genuine political authority (Morris, 2008). A legitimate order comes into existence when the subordinate and dominant believe it to be so. The activity of granting and seeking legitimacy does not have a static nature but represents a complex and constantly evolving process. In the past, legitimation was often linked to notions of democratic consent and networks of norms and agreements around which a social contract could be attained (Coicaud, 2002). Legitimacy in itself may be associated with many forms of political organisation, including oppressive ones (Lipset, 1969). With this in mind, through the comparative case study of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, one of the world’s longest enduring autocracies, the aim of my work under this Fellowship is to move beyond repression argument to explain authoritarian resilience, presenting a novel framework that incorporates the dynamic processes involved in generating a legitimate order in modern autocracies. This project is based my PhD research, sixty elite interviews and document analysis collected in Baku, Astana, and Almaty. It traces the evolution of regime practices, actors, and events involved in formulating the right to rule in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan between 1991 and 2022. My analysis advanced the argument that authoritarian legitimacy is a calculated strategy employed by incumbent elites to establish their right to rule through discourse, spectacle, and media manipulation. When and how leaders apply those strategies depends on distinct political and economic circumstances. In a relatively stable environments, autocrats resort to a combination of soft power techniques, narratives and mega-events. State coercion is implemented in extreme situations when the legitimacy of political authority is in danger. Building on my PhD, the main academic outputs I will produce during the Fellowship – three articles based on my empirical chapters of dissertation – will further develop my argument by putting my findings in dialogue with broader literature on authoritarianism and regime durability in different geographical contexts. Comparative studies on Central Asia and the South Caucasus beyond petropolitics and geopolitics remains overlooked and undeveloped, my work intends to fill this empirical gap. My dissertation contributes to the theoretical understanding of legitimation as well as an empirical operationalisation of autocratic power justification in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, placing the two states and their political regimes at the centre of analysis. The war in Ukraine has heightened interest in the political landscape of post-Soviet Eurasia. I plan to engage with wider audiences outside academia, reaching out to Think Tanks, NGOs and media in the UK and beyond. Finally, this Fellowship will enable me to further my research by preparing grant proposals for funding bodies that support early career researchers.