1 - Introduction

Summary

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.