“Politics and the rule of authoritarian systems” for Svoulic … an approach to understanding the mechanisms of survival and conflict culture

The book “Politics and Governance in authoritarian systems” by Milan W. Svoulic is one of the prominent academic works that contributed to the development of the field of authoritarian studies, by presenting a theoretical, analytical framework comprehensive to understand the nature of authoritarian rule and its internal and external mechanisms, and the book was published in 2012 in English, and it was transferred to Arabic Professor Omaria Sultani with a recent scientific translation issued recently on the Arabic Network for Research And publishing.

Spholik is based on its basic thesis that politics in authoritarian regimes revolves around two parallel conflicts: the first between the ruler and the ruled, which is what he calls “the problem of authoritarian control”, and the second between the ruler and the elites that the authority shares, and called it “the problem of authoritarian sharing of power.” The author believes that these two conflicts constitute the essence of authoritarian policy, and that understanding the mechanisms of their solution leads to the interpretation of the structure, stability and transformations of the system.

It was issued by the “Arab Network for Research and Publishing” by translating the book “Politics and Governance in the authoritarian systems” by Milan W. Svoulic, in 320 pages, and was translated by Professor Omaria Sultani. It is available in the Arab Network libraries in Beirut and Istanbul. pic.twitter.com/UNNvmp2mYN

– The Arab Network (@NETWORKAB) April 27, 2025

Conflicts of authoritarian systems

The “problem of authoritarian control” relates to the way the system imposes its authority on society and the arrest of the masses, while the problem of “authoritarian sharing of the authorities” relates to the balance of power within the ruling elite, and the way to manage the conflicts inherent between them.

With regard to the problem of authoritarian control, Svulk believes that the authoritarian ruler resorted to two basic tools to confront the threats emitted from the popular base, namely: repression and grooming, where the repression represents the direct use of violence, or the threat of it, to silence the opposition and neutralize societal threats, and this repression includes a wide range of practices, starting with control and ending with the physical qualifiers, while they rise Connecting to integrate elites and social segments in the structure of the system, whether it is through material privileges or political positions or the creation of formal representative institutions, and this tool is used to dismantle opposition movements and anticipate the outbreak of tensions, but its economic and political cost may be exorbitant, and it may lead to weakening the regime’s grip in the long run.

With regard to the second problem, “the problem of authoritarianization is power”, Svulk focuses on the fact that authoritarian systems not only face threats from society, but also from within it, especially from the elites with which the ruler shares power, and in the absence of a neutral authority that guarantees adherence to internal agreements, the coups and violence become two ruling ways to resolve conflicts within the elite. To control this dilemma, authoritarian systems follow 3 main strategies:

• Firstly: The accumulation of personal authority, which is the attempt of the central leader to reduce the influence of his partners gradually, and to monopolize the tools of repression and political decision, and this formula enhances the stability of the system in the short term, but it makes it fragile and excessive dependence on the personality of the ruler, and among the most prominent examples of this strategy: Hafez al -Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
• secondly: Establishing a formal or partial ruling institutions that allow degrees of institutional representation of the elite without a threat to the ruler’s hegemony, a strategy that provides a limited distribution of power that protects against the explosion of conflicts, as well as in the experience of the Chinese Communist Party or the Establishment of the Institutional Party in Mexico.
• Third: Managing the relationship with elites through a mutual threat, that is, by a careful balance between the leader’s ability to suppress elites and the elites’ ability to topple him, and this imposes a state of mutual deterrence that preserves the stability of the regime.

What distinguishes the writer’s vision of authoritarian regimes is his rejection of the prevailing classifications that depend on ideal models of authoritarian regimes, such as the military system, the one -party system, or the Personal system, where Safolik sees that such simple classifications ignore the complex interrelated nature of authoritarian systems, as one system may mostly combine between multiple features, for example, the Syrian regime in the era of Hafez al -Assad and his son Bashar, is a system Military, one party system, and a personal system at the same time.

What are the motives of politics in dictatorships? Milan Wow Spholik needs that most authoritative systems have to solve two basic conflicts
The first is that the dictators face threats from the masses who rule and that is the problem of authoritarian control. The second is separate from the first and arises from the elites that the dictatorship rules#Sadr_The recent pic.twitter.com/luh3PlF5vt

– The Arab Network (@NETWORKAB) May 5, 2025

Analytical approach

In an effort to overcome the limited stereotypes, it suggests an analytical approach based on 4 quantitative criteria:

• The degree of army interference in politics.
• The nature of the restrictions imposed on political parties.
• How to choose the legislative authority.
• How to choose the executive authority.

Among the remarkable issues discussed by Svulk in this context is the relationship between authoritarianism and democracy, as he refuses to look at them as a contradictory party on a series or one spectrum, as it confirms that the difference between the two systems is not a degree difference, but a qualitative difference, mainly represented in the absence of a neutral authority that imposes respect for the agreed rules, and devoting the principle of violence as a legitimate political tool in authoritarianism.

Spholly believes that through these four criteria – it is possible to classify authoritarian systems with greater accuracy, as each system is placed on a connected chain or an analytical spectrum ranging from a lower and higher degree in each standard of these standards. This analysis is based on a wide database that included each authoritarian system that lasted for at least one day between 1946 and 2008.

Spholly, through his use of game theory or game theory -is a branch in mathematical analysis, has applications in social sciences, political science and economics, he studies the way to make decisions in situations where a number of parties are interacting together and each of them tries to maximize their gains with the expectation of the actions of others, how political actors in authoritarian systems make their decisions based on their expectations for the behavior of others, in the absence of a neutral authority that guarantees the implementation of agreements, In this case, violence becomes the final and reference ruling on resolving conflicts, which gives authoritarian policy a fragile and violent character.

In his analysis, Svulk relies on games theory tools to understand the strategic options of the ruler, elite and opposition in an environment that is not governed by a separate law or firm institutional rules, but a permanent threat to use violence, and his analyzes show that the way the system addresses these two mutual, control and sharing, determines the form of authoritarian rule, the degree of its stability, and the possibility of its transformation or its collapse.

Authoritarian systems

Spholly shows several scenarios for the interaction of these tensions:

While the leader succeeds in accumulating his powers to the extent that the elites do not have the ability to resist, the regime turns into a personal autocracy, as happened in the case of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or Hafez al -Assad in Syria.

In the event of an institutional settlement between the leader and the elites, the regime becomes more stable, as in contemporary China or Mexico during the era of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

This theoretical framework has contributed to the interpretation of the diversity of authoritarian systems and their consequences, as well as providing analytical tools to understand the methods of collapse some and the reasons for that, and the methods and reasons for the survival of others, and Spholik stresses that building institutions within the authoritarian system does not necessarily reflect the intention of democratic transformation, but rather it may be a mechanism for managing internal conflicts and achieving stability without giving up the monopoly of power.

In the light of the revolutions that swept the Arab world in 2011, the author highlights an extremely important issue, which should be alerted to it, which is the impact of the long authoritarian past on the opportunities for democratic transformation, and explains that the institutions of authoritarian government leave a heavy legacy of practices, restrictions and structures that do not disappear with the disappearance of the ruler only, so the fall of the head of the system does not necessarily mean the collapse of the entire authoritarian system, which is embodied in experiences such as Egypt and Tunisia yet The Arab Spring, where the rooted forces in the state hindered the possibility of a smooth transition to democracy.

Svulick believes that the Arab Spring revolutions can not only be understood as an expression of a popular will seeking change, but also should be analyzed after them a decisive test of the structure of the authoritarian internal systems themselves, every authoritarian system faced these uprisings revealed the extent of its institutional ability to resist political shocks, and on this Svulk explains the variation of the results of revolutions between countries -from a rapid collapse of the systems as in Tunisia, to the steadfastness Long as in Syria – based on the consistency of authoritarian institutions within each system, not only the extent of the severity of the opposition or the demands of the masses, the transformation or stability, in this perspective, depends on the internal arrangements of the regime more than that it is a direct result of a popular anger.

On the tightening of the theoretical structure presented by Svulk in its thesis, some researchers in the field of politics refer to the limited book of its shortcomings on interaction with economic and social factors, such as the role of classes, religion, political economy, and social movements, as well as focusing on elites and power circles may overlook the dynamics of societal resistance from below.

However, the contribution of Svulk remains very important, as it has provided a precise scientific model for authoritarian analysis, supported by experimental data and historical evidence, which makes this work an indispensable reference for researchers in political science and comparative studies.