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Throughout the Arab world, Islamist political movements are joining the electoral process. This change alarms some observers and excites other. In recent years, electoral opportunities have opened, and Islamist movements have seized them. But those opportunities, while real, have also been sharply circumscribed. Elections may be freer, but they are not fair. The opposition can run but it generally cannot win. Semiauthoritarian conditions prevail in much of the Arab world, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. How do Islamist movements change when they plunge into freer but unfair elections? How do their organizations (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and structures evolve? What happens to their core ideological principles? And how might their increased involvement affect the political system? InWhen Victory Is Not an Option, Nathan J. Brown addresses these questions by focusing on Islamist movements in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine. He shows that uncertain benefits lead to uncertain changes. Islamists do adapt their organizations and their ideologies do bend-some. But leaders almost always preserve a line of retreat in case the political opening fizzles or fails to deliver what they wish. The result is a cat-and-mouse game between dominant regimes and wily movements. There are possibilities for more significant changes, but to date they remain only possibilities.

How do domestic institutions affect autocratic leaders’ decisions to initiate military conflicts? Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that institutions in some kinds of dictatorships allow regime insiders to hold leaders accountable for their foreign policy decisions. However, the preferences and perceptions of these autocratic domestic audiences vary, with domestic audiences in civilian regimes being more skeptical of using military force than the military officers who form the core constituency in military juntas. In personalist regimes in which there is no effective domestic audience, no predictable mechanism exists for restraining or removing overly belligerent leaders, and leaders tend to be selected for personal characteristics that make them more likely to use military force. I combine these arguments to generate a series of hypotheses about the conflict behavior of autocracies and test the hypotheses using new measures of authoritarian regime type. The findings indicate that, despite the conventional focus on differences between democracies and nondemocracies, substantial variation in conflict initiation occurs among authoritarian regimes. Moreover, civilian regimes with powerful elite audiences are no more belligerent overall than democracies. The result is a deeper understanding of the conflict behavior of autocracies, with important implications for scholars as well as policy makers.

The heavy smog suffocating China's cities is increasingly being perceived as a threat by both the population and the authorities. Consequently, political action aiming at regulating ambient air pollution has become increasingly comprehensive and rigid in recent years. Even measures limiting consumption and production seem to become acceptable as China is facing an airpocalypse. Does this suggest a genesis of real “authoritarian environmentalism” (AE) in China? Taking this as a heuristic point of departure, we present findings from research on the implementation of air pollution control measures in Hangzhou city. We offer a critical examination of the concept of AE and, in particular, of local policy implementation strategies vis-à-vis the general public. Two measures in Hangzhou's air policy portfolio are analysed that reveal considerable variation: restrictions on the use of private cars and the (re)location of industrial facilities. Describing the conditions that have helped to produce different implementation strategies, we argue for different emphases in a potential Chinese model of AE. In a context where outcomes are sought at any cost, we observe more complexity and nuances than are usually captured by the AE concept. 近年来,中国政府采取了有史以来力度最大、措施最综合、考核最严格的大气污染治理行动来应对严重的城市雾霾。这种自上而下限制产能、关停污染企业等政策措施是否印证了威权式环境主义在中国的兴盛？通过考察杭州市大气污染治理的两种政策措施：机动车限牌限行与工业污染企业关停搬迁,我们探讨了中国地方政府在环境治理中所采取的不同执行策略及遵循的执行逻辑。与既有“威权式环境主义”理论强调政策执行的“产出”有所不同,我们发现,中国“威权式环境主义”更注重政策执行的“结果”。这在一定程度上解释了为何中国地方政府在环境政策执行时表现出如此大的差异性与灵活度。

Faced with an unprecedented increase in the amount of solid waste, China aims to tighten its waste management regulation. Corresponding local policy experiments are encouraged. This study explores China’s authoritarian environmentalism through an examination of local legislations on Household Solid Waste (HSW) sorting. We present a full picture of relevant local legislation from five key dimensions: local legislative outputs, local standards of HSW classifications, reward and penalty provisions, the use of the social credit system and duties imposed on local governments. We then compare policy-making models based on the experience of Shanghai and Guangzhou. We find China’s HSW sorting policy has been dominated by the central state. The local lawmaking process is generally non-transparent and non-participative. When attempting to mobilize the public, local policymakers emphasize educating the public about “how to” instead of “why to sort wastes”. Also, while the central waste management policies are generally undermined locally, some sub-national governments do demonstrate a strong commitment to push the national policy through. Multiple factors account for this pattern. Though civic engagement did emerge in certain localities where civil society was relatively active, authoritarian environmentalism will continue to prevail in China in the near future.

Authoritarian environmentalism has come under the spotlight. It has often been criticized as accompanying social oppression. However, as some studies have reported an ambiguity in its governance on the ground, which is neither democratic nor authoritarian, its governance process needs further analysis. In particular, little is known about how the authoritarian state compromises with society. Therefore, by unraveling the historical background behind the development of shrimp farming in the mangroves of southern Vietnam, this paper examines the process of establishment of authoritarian environmentalism and considers how the authoritarian state exerts its power in interactions with society. To distinguish features of governance and understand various aspects of interactions among actors, we developed the concept of “ostensible” and “actual” authoritarianism. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with provincial government officials, forest officers, and shrimp farmers in Ca Mau Province and also used secondary materials. The results revealed that mangroves that were previously the frontier until the 1970s had been enclosed by the state, applying modern governing technologies. However, the state failed to optimally utilize its governing power due to an accidental confluence of interests with society and to avoid political instability. Locals also tenaciously coped with top-down governance by adopting unique strategies. These interactions created an informal social order, which ironically created temporal social stability. We conclude that more research is needed to address how the political equilibrium is disturbed or maintained under authoritarian environmentalism.

How does increased integration to the global economy affect patterns of social provision at the local level? This study investigates the impact of economic openness on the subnational variation of welfare provision in China. Examining welfare expansion as a political response to provincial economic integration, I analyze how the effect of globalization on welfare expansion is conditioned by the threat of social unrest. Using a panel dataset on 31 provinces in China from 2001 to 2015, I find that provinces with open economies and higher threat of social unrest provide broader social insurance coverage. On the other hand, provinces with similar levels of economic openness but with lower levels of social unrest are associated with lower levels of coverage. These findings suggest that provincial governments may be more likely to utilize social policy instruments to compensate for the social costs of globalization, particularly in cases where exposure to the international market leads to increased social instability and discontent.

The cost of Myanmar’s civil war has yet to be analysed and discussed thoroughly in academic literature. There is no sign of a resolution to Myanmar’s 1 February 2021 military coup d’état, which is currently devolving into a full-scale civil war. Consequently, the country has become a hotbed of absurdity, conflict, and extreme economic hardship. This article attempts to examine the economic cost of Myanmar’s civil war from 2021 until mid-2023, employing the analytical framework for assessing the American Civil War. This study shows that civil wars, such as the one in Myanmar, have a longer-lasting impact than interstate conflicts. The opportunity costs and long-term economic effects of war have been grossly underestimated in certain studies. The main argument of this article is that the civilian population, rather than combatants or military personnel, bears the brunt of the devastating effects of such a civil war. Moreover, many of these ramifications may continue to have an impact after hostilities have ended.

In China, rapid urbanization and industrialization, combined with a rural-urban dual structure, have resulted in serious rural solid waste challenges. By issuing a list of regulations and guidelines and putting in huge amounts of special funds, the Chinese-style top-down linear and authoritarian waste governance has gained great achievements, seeing the national village-level coverage rate of the rural waste management system grown from zero to over 90% in less than 20 years. This paper provides qualitative insights into the factors that influence villagers’ responses (attitudes and behaviors) to the authoritarian environmental policy measures. With primary data from Meizhou County in Guangdong Province (the poorest county in China’s richest province), the study finds out that villagers’ attitudes are significantly affected by their satisfaction with the government’s rural solid waste management (RSWM) and their environmental concern, while villagers’ behaviors are significantly affected by their approval level to the local environment, the availability of solid waste collection facilities, and their environmental concern. Thus, villagers’ solid waste collection behaviors are influenced mainly by practical convenience and internal motivation. Government-relevant factors do not directly impact villagers’ solid waste collection behaviors, but significantly moderate villagers’ behaviors. Surprisingly, the variable of villagers’ education level is a significantly negative factor in affecting both RSWM attitudes and behaviors, which implies that future RSWM policy measures should take more democracy into consideration and value villagers’ participation.

This article explores the socio-political impact of the internet and new social media in East Asia. In particular it explores whether the new tools and platforms associated with the latter are having a democratising effect on the region's authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes by opening up a permissive online public sphere in which traditional hierarchies of power are challenged.

The purpose of this study was to examine multiple predictors of maternal authoritarian parenting including (a) cluttered homes, (b) child characteristics (i.e., emotional temperament), and (c) maternal characteristics (i.e., tense/nervousness). Data were gathered from 177 mothers of young children between ages 3 and 5 (95 male, 82 female children) attending two early childhood programs in a midsized community in the western United States. Structural equation modeling (AMOS 19.0) was used to examine the strength of the relationships within the model. Results showed that authoritarian parenting was positively predicted by home clutter and mother tenseness/nervousness, and mediational analyses shed light on the nature of these relationships.