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The international dimension of authoritarian regime legitimation: insights from the Cuban case

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Abstract

In order to sustain their rule, authoritarian regimes not only rely on mechanisms of repression and co-optation, but also develop strategies of legitimation. Even when aimed at the domestic audience, these include seeking ‘legitimation from abroad’ — that is, validation through activities on, or by way of reference to, the international stage. This article analyses these strategies in an empirical case study of Cuba. Bringing back in Max Weber’s classic ‘pure types of legitimate authority’, which distinguish between regimes precisely on the basis of their claims to legitimacy, the study highlights the change from charismatic rule under Fidel Castro to an authoritarian brand of rational-legal authority under his brother Raúl. The analysis then shows how the expansive international legitimation strategy that once characterised Fidel’s charismatic tenure has given way to a merely defensive form of international legitimation under the present bureaucratic socialist regime.

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Notes

  1. Cf. also the special issue ‘Legitimacy and Governance’ of the Journal of Chinese Political Science 16(2), June 2011.

  2. Max Weber’s essay on ‘The Pure Types of Legitimate Authority’ was originally published in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in 1922 (published in English as Theory of Social and Economic Organisation); all subsequent citations are taken from Weber and Eisenstadt (1968). For a discussion of the Weberian term Herrschaft, and its English translation as ‘authority’, see Adair-Toteff (2005: 191–92) as well as Rigby (1982: 7).

  3. In hindsight, once regimes have been toppled, it seems much easier to diagnose a lack of legitimacy than to disentangle the diverse reasons for the compliant behaviour that exists when they still seem robust. As Sedgwick (2010: 252) notes, while there had been a dearth of research on legitimacy issues in communist regimes prior to 1989, after the downfall of the state socialist regimes it became conventional wisdom to point to a lack of legitimacy as a key reason for their eventual collapse.

  4. For further refinement, particularly in those cases that are neither clearly democratic nor clearly non-democratic, see also the concepts of ‘hybrid regimes’ (Diamond 2002), ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (Schedler 2006) and ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky and Way 2010).

  5. Haggard (2011) highlights the distinctly different role that personalist leadership plays in the regimes that have remained communist until today. Contrasting the personalist cases of North Korea and Cuba on the one side, and the institution-based regimes of Vietnam and China on the other, he questions the usefulness of putting them together into the ‘single-party regime’ variable in large-n empirical models. He resumes: ‘We still understand surprisingly little about personalism and the functioning of authoritarian institutions’ (ibid.: 2).

  6. The list of authors who have based the claims about Fidel’s charisma on these and similar traits is long. A classic exponent of this is, for example, González (1976).

  7. Underscoring this relational understanding, Madsen and Snow (1996) speak of ‘the charismatic bond’; Eisenstadt (1968: xxviii) points to the importance of ‘communicative situations’ for the emergence of charismatic authority; and Beyer (1999: 309) even defines charisma as a ‘social structure’.

  8. Friedrich and Brzezinski (1956) reject the use of charisma due to the leader’s possibilities for media manipulation; similarly, Easton (1957: 304) argues that charismatic leaders ‘are able to manipulate large numbers of followers precisely so that they can appear to be what in fact they are not’.

  9. These large-scale redistributive measures became possible, first, through the expropriation of the wealth of the former elites, and later on, through the massive economic aid received from the Soviet Union. While the redistributive policies materially backed up the leader’s charismatic appeal, it is analytically impossible to untangle both from each other; there is no adequate way to measure the impact of personal charisma independently of the economic hand-outs and patronage spoils made possible through the Soviet Union’s aid. However, if the charismatic qualities of the leader had only been a function of generous Soviet subsidies, then we should have seen a much more dramatic loss of the leader’s charismatic authority after 1989, when Soviet aid came to an abrupt end.

  10. Eckstein is particularly explicit in making the point that Fidel Castro, while being ‘in many respects a textbook case of a Weberian ideal-typical charismatic leader’, also ‘turned to traditional and especially to rational-legal bureaucratic forms of legitimation and authority as well’ (1994: 20).

  11. Cook (1993: 1), building on works by Bialer, Breslauer, Hauslohner and Lapidus, among others.

  12. The full name of the ALBA integration scheme is the Alianza Bolivariana para los pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America).

  13. What was declared as provisional actually proved to be permanent, as over time Raúl took over all delegated functions for good. Initially, there had been widespread speculation about whether Fidel, while stripped of his formal offices, continued to be the authority behind the scenes. However, more than five years after the delegation of functions, it is now beyond doubt that Raúl Castro has become the centre of power in Cuba, and that Fidel Castro is in a position of dignified retirement.

  14. Raúl Castro (2006b). Original: ‘Siempre he sido discreto, esa es mi forma de ser, y de paso aclaro que pienso seguir así’.

  15. Speech held at the Congress of the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria, 20 December, 2006.

  16. For example, on 24 December, 2007, Raúl Castro proclaimed that ‘[in Cuba] we have only one Party, but we have to transform ourselves into the most democratic Party that ever existed’ (‘tenemos un solo Partido, pero tenemos que convertirnos en el Partido más democrático que exista’), available at http://www.cubaencuentro.com/cuba/noticias/raul-castro-dice-que-el-pcc-debe-convertirse-en-el-partido-mas-democratico-existente-60536 (accessed 24 July, 2007).

  17. The lead voice of anti-imperialist discourse from Latin America certainly passed from Cuba to Venezuela: no Cuban appearance in international fora has come close in animosity to Hugo Chávez’s Bush-bashing at the UN General Assembly in 2006 or his encounter with Spain’s monarch at the Ibero-American Summit in 2007. While the Cuban government firmly maintains state solidarity with Chávez’s ‘revolutionary’ projects, it has itself opted for the adoption of a much more moderate tone.

  18. The estimated 50,000 Cuban medical staff and other experts operating in 77 countries worldwide have become one of the most important sources of foreign-earned revenue for the Cuban state.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous reviewers and the JIRD editors for their thoughtful comments and support.

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  1. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, Hamburg, D-20354, Germany

    Bert Hoffmann

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Hoffmann, B. The international dimension of authoritarian regime legitimation: insights from the Cuban case. J Int Relat Dev 18, 556–574 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2014.9

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