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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

opposition. Other critical voices in television and print media later faced legal suits, regulatory harassment, and withdrawal of advertising revenue until the owners agreed to sell their holdings to business interests that were on more friendly terms with the regime.7

A prominent theme that runs through authoritarian media is the imperfect nature of electoral processes in the leading democracies, especially the United States. The goal is less to portray elections in Russia, Venezuela, or Iran as paragons of democratic practice than to muddy the waters—to make the case that countries like the United States have no right to lecture others on democracy, and that perhaps all elections are equally flawed. The Kremlin’s chief propagandist described the 2016 U.S. election as “so horribly noxious that it only engenders disgust towards what is still inexplicably called a ‘democracy.’”8

A second important instrument in authoritarians’ election toolbox is the state itself. During his period as Venezuela’s president, Chávez became a master at using state money and manpower to ensure voter loyalty. In the 2012 election, the last before his death, Chávez is estimated to have invested billions of dollars in state resources, including giveaways of household goods to ordinary citizens, in a rather unsubtle vote-buying campaign.

That election vividly illustrated the powerful interplay of state media and state resources in undemocratic settings, and it is worth examining in greater detail. Superficially, it seemed reasonably consistent with democratic standards. The voting itself took place without serious violence or major complaints of irregularities. But to a substantial degree, the results were shaped by the regime’s actions well before the ballots were cast.

Chávez had by that time secured an iron grip on the media. Through the state or political allies, he controlled six of the eight national television stations and about half of the country’s radio stations. In some regions, he commanded a virtual information monopoly. The opposition was effectively shut out of the Chávez-aligned outlets, earning mention only as cartoonish villains.

The incumbent benefited especially from a practice whereby all radio and television stations are obliged to preempt normal programming to accommodate the president’s speeches to the nation. During 2012, Chávez took advantage of this tool to fill 100 hours of broadcasting, 47 of them in the 90 days prior to the election. Aurelio Concheso, an analyst with Transparency Venezuela,

placed the value of this free airtime at $1.8 billion. Another government mandate required radio and television stations to broadcast 10 state messages of 30 seconds each on a daily basis; the messages, not surprisingly, dovetailed with the arguments of the Chávez campaign. Concheso estimated the value of this free airtime at $292 million. In addition, the government spent an estimated $200 million on advertising with private radio and television stations. By contrast, the opposition had access to five minutes of airtime a day, at a cost of $102 million. The opposition was thus limited to an incredible 4 percent of the airtime enjoyed by Chávez.

Meanwhile, according to Concheso, the state oil company spent some $20 billion on gifts of home durable goods, apartments, and outright cash subsidies to purchase the allegiance of Venezuelan voters and underscore the message that without Chávez, this largesse would dry up.

Finally, a measure of fear was introduced through a campaign suggesting that although the balloting was secret, the government had ways of ascertaining a voter’s choice. The threat had a special effect given public memories of an episode in 2004, in which those who signed a petition for a referendum to remove Chávez from office were blacklisted and excluded from government jobs, benefits, and contracts.

Favored tactics
The following are among the other tactics deployed by modern authoritarians to ensure success at the polls:

1. Intimidating the opposition: Opposition leaders are only occasionally targeted for assassination. But they can face a variety of other cruel fates. Wealthy businessman and opposition supporter Mikhail Khodorkovsky was dispatched to a Russian prison for 10 years for daring to challenge Putin. In 2017, anticorruption campaigner Andrei Navalny, widely regarded as the most serious challenger to Putin, was effectively eliminated from the 2018 presidential contest after being convicted in a trumped-up embezzlement case.9 In Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has twice been convicted and jailed on sodomy charges. Prominent political figures have also been jailed in Belarus, Venezuela, Iran, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Egypt, among many others. Human rights activists and bloggers are also subject to harassment and persecution. They are frequently jailed on trumped-up charges of defamation, tax fraud, or drug trafficking, among others.

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