Stories you cannot defeat! political myths as cultural integration and legitimation strategies of autocratic regimes

Given the worldwide stagnation or even regression of democratization processes, autocratic regimes continue to pose a challenge for political science. In this regard, the merit of an original research on autocracies primarily results from the fact that it has drawn attention to the core elements, modes, and logics of operation, as well as the manifold types of regimes. In explaining autocratic regime persistence and legitimation, however, the dominance of institutionalist and economic approaches has led to a shortening of a complex phenomenon. Especially the lack of cultural variables still represents an open flank, which can be partly attributed to systematic limits of knowledge and implementation problems of quantitative approaches in non-democratic contexts. To address this issue, the article proposes the analysis of political myths as an integration and legitimation strategy of autocratic regimes, which will be formulated conceptually as a qualitative approach to political culture research. As transcultural phenomena, political myths narratively articulate the otherwise abstract ideological foundations of the political community, the regime, and the authorities. Thus, in addition to examining myth as a political science phenomenon, a post-behaviorist reading of David Easton’s concept of political support is offered to relate the ideological aspects of narration to different regime types, power structures, and cultural contexts.


Introduction
"What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories! There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story.
Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it." Tyrion Lannister In contrast to a widespread normative-teleological conviction regarding the inevitability of democratization (Bank 2009, p. 11;Pickel 2009), one of the central merits of recent research on authoritarianism is to have shown the principal persistence of autocratic regimes. The increased and, due to illiberal tendencies, continuing interest in the diversity of authoritarian regime types (Kailitz and Stockemer 2017;Lührmann et al. 2018) has, in any case, ensured that a former residual category of democracy and transformation research developed into a main category of investigation within the comparative study of political regimes (Lane 1992). Central to this research strand is the assumption that autocracies 1 not only depend on repression and cooptation to secure their rule but are able to reliably address a pillar of legitimation (Backes and Kailitz 2014;Gerschewski 2013). Political support in autocracies is not just bought and coerced but requires a normative justification that generates voluntary allegiance among the population. Away from specific performance, diffuse support for the political objects is then based on a moral conviction in ideologically "articulated sets of ideals, ends, and purposes, which help the members of the system to interpret the past, explain the present and offer a vision for the future" (Easton 1965, p. 390).
Since the goal of an original research on authoritarianism is to understand the persistence and legitimation of autocratic regimes from their specific core elements and the associated modes and logics of their operation (Albrecht and Frankenberger 2010;Brownlee 2007), too strong a focus on institutionalist and economic patterns of explanation inadmissibly diminishes the manifold factors involved (Brooker 2014). In search for complementary variables to address autocratic regime legitimacy, cultural approaches in particular still represent a research deficit (Bank 2009;Köllner 2008). This is partly the case because classical approaches to the study of political culture face empirical implementation problems when dealing with non-democratic contexts. Based on a democracy bias and the desire to think of autocracies in terms of democracy (Pickel 2013, p. 198), it is still assumed that genuine legitimacy can only derive from democratic legitimation (Holbig 2010, p. 38).
In this problem area, this article aims to shed light on the political myth as an integration and legitimation strategy of autocratic regimes. With its analysis, a cultural variable for the understanding and explanation of political support and legitimacy in autocracies will be offered and formulated within a qualitative, interpretive approach to political culture. As narrative forms of politics, political myths are directed at the fundamental problem of social organization: "it is a story of a political society [... that] offers an account of the past and the future in the light of which the presence can be understood" (Tudor 1972, p. 138). By means of storytelling, they communicate certain images about the political world that narratively articulate otherwise abstract principles, values, and ideals of a political ideology.
To illustrate the benefits of an analysis of political myths for the comparative study of political regimes, I will first take a closer look at the phenomenon, its characteristics, and functions as well as its epistemological status. In contrast to an understanding of ideology as a feature of totalitarian regimes, an analytical concept is advocated as a basis for comparison (2). With regard to political culture and in opposition to quantitative approaches, I then offer a post-behaviorist reading of David Easton's concept of political support to provide a framework for examining the communal and legitimizing aspects of ideology conveyed within the strategic narration of political myth (3). The article concludes with an exploratory systematization attempt of political myths in relation to Kailitz's typology of political regimes, their communicative power structures, and political cultures (4).

True myths, false consciousness, and the ideologization of ideology 2.1 Myth as a political science phenomenon
The unbroken popularity of the term 'myth' is ultimately due to the fact that practices of intellectualization, technologization, and rationalization have only contributed to a limited extent to the disappearance of mysterious and magical powers of mythical thinking. Contrary to the enlightened assumption of a disenchantment of the world (Weber [1919(Weber [ ] 1992, the dichotomy between rational logos and irrational myth is rather an ideal-typical claim that cannot be met in a world that is becoming more and more complex. However, adherence to the classical formula 'from myth to logos' that has manifested itself historically and is unwilling to acknowledge myth itself as a performative form of logos (Blumenberg 2006, p. 23), proves to be not only a theoretical problem. For empirical arguments and due to the ambivalence of myth, there is no logical end in the juxtaposition of 'true' and 'false'. One only gets the idea of claiming a speech to be false if and because others consider it to be true; and who would claim for oneself to believe in myths (Pouillon 1984, p. 70)? Compared to other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, this is precisely the reason for the long-lasting reticence of political science. On the one hand, it is assumed that political myths are just stories, fictions, and illusions that have no basis in existing facts (Edelman 1976, p. 14). And on the other hand, from experience with totalitarian regimes and their misuse as instruments of mass manipulation, mythical deformation is declared an impossible fact in liberal democracies (Bizeul 2000, p. 27). Nevertheless, the pejorative devaluation of myth as falsehood or deception does not allow us to avoid the circumstance that political myths are told and believed all over the world-regardless of geographic location, form of political rule, or economic development. It is precisely from this observation that the potential of the phenomenon for comparative regime research emerges. Since a comparative perspective on political myths has been lacking so far, I will first identify central characteristics that will later be used to derive patterns of political myths in different types of political regimes (see Table 1 in the Appendix).

Definition and characteristics of political myths
In a first approximation, political myths are narrative and symbolic forms of politics that have developed a constitutive link to the existence of a political system. In contrast to religious myths that give an account of the origin of all being and that are recognized as sacred within their religious community, political myths merely testify to the origin of a specific political era and a limited political space (Bizeul 2000;Rudolf 2020). As stories about the emergence of political communities, they do so without metaphysical or ahistorical origins (Cassirer [1949(Cassirer [ ] 2002. As they deal with persons, events, and facts that have demonstrably lived or taken place, they are based on a historical core (Flood 1996, p. 46). Thus, political myths are told to highlight incisive events which, due to their significance, have a potential symbolic value for a political community and prove to be outstanding foundational acts that can be narrated and handed down. Essential to this is the claim that a political myth needs to be accepted and believed within a particular group as simple facticity (Münkler and Hacke 2009, p. 18): "the telling of a given narrative in any particular instance needs to be perceived as being adequately faithful to the most important facts and the correct interpretation of a story which a social group already accepts" (Flood 2002, p. 180). Accordingly, it successfully unfolds its performative effect when it explains the experiences of those to whom it is addressed and justifies the practical purposes they have in mind (Tudor 1972, p. 138).
Regarding subjects and motives, one may distinguish between either myths about persons, events, space, and time, or myths of foundation, origin, catharsis, affirmation, loss, or success. Yet, the respective types can hardly be kept separate, but merge within the framework of a larger political mythology. Away from a political founding myth on the basis of which the self-understanding of a political association unfolds and that is enriched over time by new mythemes or freed from old outdated ones, analysis indeed seems to benefit more from concrete usage than from attempts at categorization (Dörner 1995, p. 83).
Through narrativity 2 as a central structural principle, some basic characteristics are preset: "a myth is always a story, a narrative of events in dramatic form" (Tudor 1972, p. 137). Not only from a narrative approach to politics that emphasizes the constitutive role of storytelling, the accusation that political myths are 'just stories' must be rejected. Instead, a different side of politics must be assumed here, which refers to the cultural construction of social as well as political reality-together with its symbolic, affective, and emotional processes (Hofmann and Martinsen 2016). In this respect, political myths do not represent historically accurate reconstructions but are expressions of a mythical reading of reality. As a historical-cultural interpretation that dissects, concatenates, and (re)interprets certain facts, political myths neither reflect positive reality nor pure fiction, but a lived reality (Malinowski 1973, p. 89). To shape contemporary political communities, their telling serves as a practical argument in political discourse, supporting a primarily rational, argumentative logic via the development of a distinct emotional world (Flood 1996, p. 42). For organizing social and political action, narration operates as the main surface, but to achieve broadly effective mediation within society, iconic condensations as well as ritual stagings emerge.
Concerning different forms of expression, a threefold hierarchical structure can be assumed. While the process of (re-)telling political myths in spoken language and script can rather promote changes and variations, much stronger fixations follow from iconic condensation and ritual staging (Münkler and Hacke 2009, p. 14). In iconic condensations, the narrative moment recedes in favor of compressed images and symbols (pictures, flags, posters, statues, monuments, etc.). Drawing on a familiar narration, they evoke the entire associated political structure of meaning (Dörner 1995, p. 82;Speth 2000, p. 122). Furthermore, rituals create contexts of interaction wherein the political community can be experienced. The staging of social events (ceremonies, holidays, memory sites, etc.), their adherence and repetition, creates orientation by assigning everyone their binding rights, duties, and fixed places within society (Bizeul 2000, p. 28;Flood 2002, p. 179). In the ongoing mediation, all three expressions inevitably blur together. But regardless of the surface that is first perceived by the recipient, narration-as the actual act of storytelling (Neitzel 2000, p. 110)-remains the central access to the comprehensive political mythology of a community.
In the course of corresponding manifestations, it can be seen that the telling of political myths is not limited to a one-time interpretive effort of certain myth-makers (Tudor 1972, p. 46). Rather, narrations unfold over the long term through both intentionally controlled and unconscious processes (Flood 1996, p. 64). As products of public discourse, they are yet never the result of free production of significance (Speth 2000, p. 118), but part of a narrative strategy. Authorities compete to channel their narration and interpretation of the political world. However, a focus on the interpretive power of elite discourse neither implies that political myths can be designed on the drawing board and imposed in a top-down fashion, nor that mythmakers, as observers in the crow's nest (Barthes 1964, p. 110), exclude themselves from consuming or believing in myths. As a strategy, the telling of political myths indeed assumes a necessary selectivity of political elites, but every mythopoesis needs to prove itself in the public sphere and amongst the recipient's politicalcultural predispositions (Münkler and Hacke 2009, p. 22).
For myth as a transcultural phenomenon, this can best be illustrated by three central functions that these stories fulfill with the organization of political associations (Dörner 1995, p. 76). Since neither social nor political orders are exempt from the contingent course of time, foundations always require justification to establish their validity beyond the time of their inception (Vorländer 2013, p. 3). But late modernity, in particular, has led to an increasing distance from the complexity of the world, making it more difficult to understand the conditions we live by (Bottici 2007, p. 132). In the telling of political myth, a shared meaning emerges through a perspectivization of the political world. A present or future order can only appear plausible and evident if it establishes a connection to the past and provides answers to the eternal question of 'Why'. The scandal of contingency and its horror, to which political orders are exposed precisely because they are never self-evident, is erased within political myth. Narration banishes the contingency of the world and eliminates alternative possibilities of meaning. Reasons are given why things are the way they are and it is assured that things are good that way (Dörner 1995, p. 87).
As a direct consequence of the perspectivization of meaning between era (before/after) and space (inside/outside), a further identity-forming function arises. To shape an operational and historically signified entity (Dörner 1995, p. 93), it has to carry out processes of inclusion and exclusion for the political community. Political myths must depict alterity (good/evil, us/them, friend/foe) to contribute towards the community's cohesion based on shared sentiments, spaces of experience, and horizons of expectation (Münkler and Hacke 2009, p. 8). As a frame of reference and meaning that stems out of shared codes, but is constantly changing (Hall 1994, p. 27), cultural or collective identity sets in images about the nature of the political community. Not only do these ensure that conceptions of a particular community remain stable over time and among its members, but, more importantly, they give rise to the negation of their principal contingency (Delitz 2018, p. 24). As a binding interpretation, the telling of political myths transcends a political founding act, provides historical continuity, and offers a projection surface for common identification within political culture.
Finally, this results in a legitimizing function. Through the perspectivization of time and space as well as the construction of collective identity, political myth inevitably obtains a normative dimension. What is articulated in the narration requires ethical and moral justification within the group to ensure a purposeful legitimation of real-existing political power structures, means, and purposes (Bizeul 2000, p. 25). And in this respect, it is ideology that provides a substrate of ideas, ideals, beliefs, doctrines, and symbols upon which stories can grow and flourish (Bizeul 2006, p. 10). As ideology in its narrative form (Lincoln 1999, p. 147), political myths bring drama to the stage (Bottici 2007, p. 196). Stories identify central actors and problems and convey worldviews, principles, values, norms, and structures that are considered essential to the survival of society over generations. As vehicles of ideological belief, they serve the political myth-makers to demand implicit assent to their interpretations, assumptions, and goals. In this way, they shape people's understanding of politics, define the framework for legitimate political debate, and set the scope and terms of political conflict (Flood 1996, p. 82).

Ideology as a substrate of political myth and its functions
Corresponding attempts at persuasion and/or manipulation, have-often rightfully-aroused negative associations and led to the fact that myth and ideology are often referred to as complete or partial synonyms even in scientific usage (Flood 1996, p. 17). Especially for the analysis of political myths and their functions, a clarification of the relationship to one of the most elusive concepts in all of the social sciences is necessary. Similarly, as previously stated for myth, it is also true "that the term 'ideology' itself has been thoroughly ideologized" (Geertz 1967, p. 47;McLellan 1995, p. 49). Today, ideological thought and action are usually associated with the accusation of a deficient form of cognition or an irrational belief system that is inconsistent with the interest of its bearer and therefore needs to be deconstructed. In the Marxist or neo-Marxist tradition, such a pejorative understanding conceives ideologies as dogmatic and closed complexes of thought. They are characterized by instrumentalized interests and goals (Marx andEngels [1932] 1971, p. 26) and, as tools of concealment of everyday life, obscure the power structures within society (Mannheim [1929(Mannheim [ ] 1995. But while ideology and power-critical analyses are indispensable for research, they should neither be understood as an essentialist approach nor simply assumed as the common use of the term. For one thing, this would result in a loss of the analytical and comparative potential of the concept. And for another, because in doing so we merely immunize our own position. Therefore, not only recent research 3 has endeavored to bestow a 'neutral' connotation on ideology as a set of ideas, beliefs, opinions, and values that are held by significant groups, who compete over the social and political arrangements and processes of a political community. As a ubiquitous form of political thinking and an everyday phenomenon, we simply cannot do without ideologies. They give meaning to the world and are produced, disseminated, and consumed throughout our lives (Freeden 2013, p. 115 f.;Stråth 2013, p. 17). From an analytical standpoint, it is then problematic to judge the rightness or wrongness, the superiority or inferiority of any ideology a priori in either absolute or relative terms (Flood 1996, p. 15). Although an analytical approach may not be confused with relativism, especially in the discussion of autocratic systems, Henry M. Drucker has formulated quite succinctly, that while ideology is a key feature of the political world, it is a fact that "we disagree with each other about the central political and moral issues" (1974, p. 142). Ideologies are central to conflicts of dominant groups, not only between but also within political regimes; for example, when it comes to the control over political narrations and symbols (Freeden 2013, p. 117). For comparing political myths, ideology is then best understood from a corresponding approach as "an emotion-laden, myth-saturated, action-related system of beliefs and values about people and society, legitimacy and authority, that is acquired to a large extent as a matter of faith and habit" (Rejai 1995, p. 11). On this basis, political myths serve "to communicate and socialize the more comprehensive and abstract propositions of its related ideology" (Egerton 1983, p. 501).
To introduce a cultural variable into the debate of autocratic regime persistence and legitimation, the following chapter will elaborate on key advantages of analyzing and comparing political myths. For this purpose, I will show how the constitutive and performative aspects of political myth and its functions can be integrated conceptually into empirical political culture research. If communal as well as legitimizing aspects of ideology serve as a special political response "for initiating and bolstering the input of diffuse support" (Easton 1965, p. 334), their mediation through the telling of political myths proves capable of carrying a belief in its legitimacy (Weber [1922(Weber [ ] 1976. In this way, an explanatory factor can be introduced that maps the claims to legitimacy of those in power according to the type of political regime, its communicative power structures, and cultural contexts. While quantitative approaches attempt to capture the belief in legitimacy of the entire population as measurable individual political attitudes toward political objects, a focus on storytelling as a strategy for integration and legitimation can contribute to a more specific understanding of political communities, regimes (principles, values, norms, structures) and authorities in non-democratic regimes.

A post-behaviorist reading of David Easton's concept of political support.
Of course, if the telling of political myths is conceived as a cultural strategy, the associated approach to political culture needs to be clarified. As "the particular distribution of patterns of orientation toward political objects among the members of the nation" (Almond and Verba 1963, p. 14), political culture results from the aggregated orientations (attitudes and conceptions) of a collective that has formed as a result of historical processes, individual socialization, and contemporary experience. The question of whether there is a royal road to its analysis remains controversial. Mutual misconceptions and insinuations of different but potentially complementary approaches continue to fuel conceptual and methodological trench warfare to this day. Hence, for the following critique, it should first be emphasized that the point is not to question the benefits of research on political attitudes at all, but to critically examine systematic limits of knowledge that are in need of complementation; especially in non-democratic systems. 4 As indicated at the outset, a possible reason for the lack of quantitatively robust cultural variables seems to stem from a democracy bias and empirical implementation problems within autocracies. In the spirit of democratization teleology, classical approaches on the cultural anchoring of autocracies still assume a quasi-evolutionary democratization process (Pickel 2013). They do not pursue the renunciation of a long-standing transition paradigm (Carothers 2002), but rather claim that relationships between structure and culture can only be meaningfully determined for democratic or partially democratic systems (Pickel 2010, p. 620). Linked to this is the implicit desire to continue to think of autocracies in terms of democracy (Pickel 2013, p. 198). The tendency is surprising, because-even from a democratic perspective-it seems implausible to grasp the essence or core of a phenomenon in terms of something that exists outside of it (Fuchs 2004, p. 97). But with it, inevitable problems arise regarding the reliability and validity of the measurements, if even in autocratic contexts corresponding surveys are based on a democratic framework (Pickel 2013, p. 186).
I argue that with the individual-psychological adoption of survey research as a classical instrument of behaviorism and the implementation of David Easton's concept of political support as a strict behaviorist program (Pickel and Pickel 2006, p. 60), classical approaches omit central aspects of A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965). For one thing, Easton has therein precisely aimed at a general theory of politics, that "helps us to prevent research from remaining exclusively and narrowly preoccupied, at least implicitly, with one type of system, namely, democracy as it has developed in the West" (1965, p. 15). For another thing, he has drawn attention to the necessity of a post-behavioral revolution "directed against a developing behavioral orthodoxy" (1969, p. 1051). Over fifty years later, Easton's claims remain relevant and call for a constructive debate within political culture research (Greiffenhagen 2009, p. 24;Voinea 2020, p. 372).
To appropriately frame the strategy of telling political myths, a post-behaviorist reading of David Easton's concept of support, which tries to link a functional approach towards system support with a cultural approach of world construction, seems justified and productive from three perspectives. Firstly, Easton conceptualizes the political system as open and adaptive to the intra-societal environment and exchanges with the cultural system may prove functional or dysfunctional to its persistence (1965, p. 18). Secondly, if principles, values, and norms are culturally defined (1965, p. 100, 194) this is associated with key consequences "especially with regard to its general cohesion and stability" (1965, p. 107). And finally, Easton himself adopts a neutral concept of ideology, upon which the integration of the political community, as well as the legitimation of the political regime and its authorities, takes place (1965, p. 335).
Given the insufficiency of specific support for the explanation of system persistence (1965, p. 269), diffuse support constitutes a more general and enduring form of attachment to political objects: "The briefest way of describing the primary meaning of diffuse support is to say that it refers to evaluations of what an object is or represents-to the general meaning it has for a person-not of what it does" (1975, p. 444). Whereas attitude-centered approaches focus on the individuals' evaluations, questions concerning the general meaning of the objects or the ideas associated with them often remain sub-complex. 5 That way, the abstract, complicated, and contested objects remain withdrawn from the actual analysis as the respondents' ideas of what is desirable or as the evaluator's subjective definition (Westle 1989, p. 191, 241). For interpretation, both the political system and the attitudes of individuals will ultimately be measured against the researchers' concrete reference criteria (Pickel and Pickel 2006, p. 155). However, the implicitly universalistic assumption that democracy can be understood as largely the same in all countries of the world is not only problematic for intra-democratic comparison (Frankenberger and Buhr 2020; Osterberg-Kaufmann et al. 2020) but, from an intercultural perspective, ignores the fundamental context-bound nature of political concepts and values (Schubert 2016, p. 285;Tilly and Goodin 2006;Weiß 2020). Yet, not just for democracies Easton emphasizes that "it does seem to make sense to say that different systems orient themselves favorably to different kinds of political values and principles" (1965, p. 198). Since no two political systems are alike, he stresses the importance of a partial theory of ideology that is intensely concerned with describing and accounting for varieties of ideological content and communal as well as legitimating aspects in all kinds of regimes (1965, p. 336).

Ideological aspects of diffuse support and its historical-cultural anchoring
For Easton, "the idea of persistence and change of a political system will make sense only if the context indicates whether or not the reference is to the political community" (1965, p. 188). Its collapse reflects the ultimate consequence of the failure of political-structural integration (Parsons 1964). In addition to instrumental aspects, Easton identifies a sense of political community, which emerges as an affective bond between members and their political project and indicates the "political cohesion of a group of persons, regardless of the kind of regime they have or may develop" (1965, p. 185). The associated beliefs and feelings of communal identification arise from present experiences as well as from a shared history, traditions, and expectations. To have a lasting impact, these linkages must be "interpreted and codified in a form that makes them readily visible, accessible, and transmissible across the generations" (1965, p. 333). Depending on the political system, common ties are found in shared citizenship, a certain class consciousness, beliefs in ethnic unity, kinship ties, tribal traditions, and so on. Thus, aspects of a communal ideology refer to those beliefs "that express, as well as reinforce, the sense of political unity among the members as a group of persons sharing a common set of structures, norms, and values for political purposes" (Easton 1965, p. 336). Since each political system must, in its unique way, provide notions of shared history and connect them to collective experiences in the present, the content handed down and used for common political identification will differ because of historical-cultural particularities. 6 And as the existence of a political sense of community is not a state that comes about by itself, it requires concrete efforts on part of the elites. They play an important role in selecting and accentuating contents that may "serve either as symbols to capture the minds of men or as expressions of the hopes, aspirations, and adaptive interpretations cherished by members of the system" (Easton 1965, p. 333).
Concerning objects of the political regime and authorities, the most effective way to provide diffuse support is to address the belief in the legitimacy among the population (Easton 1975, p. 447). While it does not matter in the short run whether the authoritative allocation of values results from legitimacy or fear of repression, in the long run, any political system needs a mode of legitimacy to ensure that the allocated values are recognized as binding (Easton 1965, p. 285). In addition to certain operational values, there is a requirement for articulated values that appeal to the moral convictions of individual members "that it is right and proper [...] to accept and obey the authorities and to abide by the requirements of the regime" (1965, p. 278). Accordingly, aspects of a legitimating ideology aim to support the political regime and authorities: "They consist of those principles and values validating a structure, its norms, and occupants in terms of images of the future, interpretations of the present, and conceptions of the past" (Easton 1965, p. 336;own ed.). To make sense of the components of the political regime (principles, values, norms, structures), the communication of an articulated set of ideals must not only provide a cognitive mapping but also create affective bonds: "the extent to which an ideology offers a means for promoting diffuse support will depend upon its success in capturing the imagination of most of the members in the system and in thereby fostering in them sentiments of legitimacy toward the authorities and regime" (Easton 1965, p. 294;own ed.).
Regarding questions of effectiveness, Easton again assumes fundamental heterogeneity of political systems because political values "show vast differences and reflect greatly divergent ways of life among systems at any one moment of time or historically considered" (1965, p. 194). If political objects and their components are determined by the group and context-based nature of ideas, the evaluation of objects only makes sense if their meanings are grasped within a historically and culturally grown framework. 7 Thus, since it is unlikely that "every belief structure has equal probability of becoming an acceptable interpretation and justification for a regime and its authorities" (Easton 1965, p. 294), two factors contribute to the success or effectiveness of an ideology. First, there are expressive aspects that, in conjunction with cognitive knowledge, ensure an emotional rooting in space and time. In the abstract and complex field of politics, members need a simple and plausible interpretation of an otherwise opaque and incomprehensible social and political world. The appeal found in a vision of life, society, and politics lies "in the capacity of the belief system to establish a firm link with the motivational structure of the members in the system" (Easton 1965, p. 295). Second, instrumental aspects are the prerequisite for affective ties and emotional roots to sprout. On the part of the political authorities, there is a need to formulate and articulate certain ideological positions in the first place. To communicate and permanently anchor their claims to legitimacy in the context of certain political worldviews, they must attract members along with their cognitive and affective predispositions (Easton 1965, p. 296).

Telling myths in autocratic systems-Narration, power, and legitimation
Against the background of Easton's concept of political support, the telling of political myths accomplishes just that. As stories with verbalized, ethical-moral interpretations of past, present, and future, they convey both the communally integrative and the legitimizing aspects of an otherwise abstract ideology. While quantitative approaches, due to their deliberate methodological narrowing of the concept of political culture (Pickel 2010, p. 10), find it impossible to account for different positions of power, influence, and decision-making within the political system (Westle 2009, p. 51), the strategic telling of political myths allows us to address those categories of belief and conviction that are "inescapable and useful [as] a tool in power relationships to be neglected by men anywhere" (Easton 1965, p. 291). Since the "values and norms regarding politics and the political system held by those closest to the centers of political power" (Hague et al. 2016, p. 205) carry more weight for the political process, political stability, and the further development of the political system (Easton 1965, p. 167), methodological innovation and conceptual clarification is required to do justice to their roles (Pelinka 2006, p. 225;Voinea 2020, p. 273 f.;Welch 2013, p. 182). Here, a consequential difference between political elite and mass culture must do more than to describe a representative fragment of attitudes (Putnam 1971, p. 651). Referring to a constitutive dual character of political culture as a system of ideas and symbols, a comprehensive analysis of political myths goes beyond cognitive and evaluative attitudes. As part of an aesthetic expressive side-that has not only its own shape and form but its own history-their telling conveys those political worldviews that can be understood as the ideational design of a collective for its political life (Rohe 1994, p. 5). Storytelling anchors political objects and their general meaning in the respective political culture. It evokes affective feelings, creates emotional bonds, and thus sets benchmarks for the rejection or approval of political objects and their components in the first place. In different political cultures, generalizations and abstractions are only of limited use, because historical-cultural peculiarities lead to rather divergent assumptions about the political world.
From a socio-cultural understanding (Weber [1922] 1976), political legitimacy is inextricably dependent upon the beliefs and perceptions of a given community and its political culture. Nevertheless, legitimacy is the result of a normative legitimation process. Actors intentionally aim to cultivate a belief in legitimacy among individuals, by "seeking to justify their identities, interests, practices, or institutional designs" (Reus-Smit 2007, p. 159;Tallberg and Zürn 2019, p. 588). Only because strategic actors presuppose that the audience is receptive to elements of communication, they attempt to mediate their interpretation of main ideas, principles, values, norms, beliefs, or definitions (Schmidtke 2019, p. 634;Suchman 1995, p. 574). In political discourse, legitimation narratives link mythopoesis with aspects of authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization (Reyes 2011, p. 785-788;van Leeuwen 2007, p. 92). But since not only political discourse but also political culture is tied to the systematized form of rule (Pelinka 2006), corresponding legitimation processes of elite communication do not take place in a power vacuum. The capacity of certain actors to offer selective interpretations and to convey narrative patterns for justification, fundamentally depends on the "formal and informal organization of the center of political power, and of its relations with the broader society" (Fishman 1990, p. 428). Then, narrative strategies of political elites cannot solely be conceived as reality-constitutive ways of constructing and altering the world (Koschorke 2012). Rather, in the interplay of justification and contestation between interpretive and sociocultural everyday processes, a narrative perspective must likewise conceptualize politics as a contest of stories (Gadinger et al. 2014, p. 10;Nullmeier 2011). Different narrations compete for explanatory power and plausibility about the truthful representation of the political world. Political myths are not just misleading and false stories, but claim veracity regarding the nature of the political community, the moral values and appropriate structures of the political regime as well as the authorization of those in power. With the help of various narrative, scenic, and iconic mediation strategies, these claims are institutionalized or defended against counter-narratives (Franke-Schwenk 2014, p. 364). The telling of political myths in horizontal-coordinative as well as vertical-communicative discourses can therefore be understood as a transmission belt of political power: "[T]rough background ideational and foreground discursive abilities" (Schmidt 2010, p. 5) elites provide both cognitive legitimation and normative integration capacities that are institution-alized within political worldviews, policy programs, and policy solutions (Schmidt 2008, p. 306). 8 Hence, communicative power structures have an important impact on discursive strategies of political elites to integrate and legitimize the political system. For mythmakers, who control the canonization of symbolic forms with quite a high binding force (Dörner 1995, p. 85) and convey certain interpretations about the political system and its objects to the public, we can expect different preconditions in democratic, authoritarian, or even totalitarian systems. In democracies, the general liberality of myth is preserved by pluralistic competition among elites as interpretative power is dispersed and therefore limited in principle. By contrast, a specific discursive power in autocratic regimes (Lambach and Göbel 2010, p. 84) enables control over the contents of narration as well infrastructural communication and social mediation. Depending on how comprehensively the claim to power is realized, the symbolic and communicative structures in autocracies allow for a single power-mediated myth to operate with the claim of natural guiding discourse. As a result of the limitation of political pluralism in autocratic regimes, this represents a sharp but double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows for the control and canonization of political myth by the regime's elites; on the other hand, it creates danger of dogmatization. In the latter case, mythical narration loses its significance, because the selective perceptions and claims of elite myth makers do not provide any innovations or no longer truthfully reflect political reality.
The telling of political myths represents a strategy that "involves reception as well as (re)production" (Flood 1996, p. 43). In this process, the rulers and the ruled exchange ideas about the universal relationship between culture, society, and political system, and its analysis brings in a valuable cultural factor to the study of autocratic regimes. The conceptual linkage of Easton's concept of support with a cultural approach towards world construction seems to be a promising approach for the analysis of powerful discursive strategies of integration and legitimation.

An attempt to systematize political myths for autocratic regime types
Contrary to the notion of the inevitability of democratization, autocratic regimes are currently not a dying breed but a growing challenge. However, too strong a focus on institutionalist and economic explanation patterns for the persistence and legitimation of autocratic regimes inadmissibly truncates the specific core elements and the associated modes and logics of their operation. The central argument of recent authoritarianism research, that political legitimacy in autocracies is not an oxymoron but an essential feature (Gerschewski 2018;Kailitz and Stockemer 2017), neces-sitates an expansion of explanatory approaches to include new variables, such as culturalist ones.
Within the theoretical framework of a three-pillar model (Backes and Kailitz 2014;Gerschewski 2013), autocratic regimes cannot permanently rely solely on mechanisms of repression and cooptation, nor can their legitimacy be limited to a pseudo-democratic façade (Dogan 1992). Regardless of whether complementary or hierarchical pillars are assumed, regimes and elites need to justify their claims to rule by seeking the support of the people (Barker 2001, p. 30;Dukalskis and Gerschewski 2017). For an ideational dimension, diffuse support in autocratic contexts can therefore be generated via narrations that historically differentiate from previous rule as well as create "religious, ethnic, or ideological unity" (Gerschewski 2018, p. 654). If different criteria of rule (legitimation, access, claim, monopoly, structure, and mode) must be accepted as credible and appropriate (Merkel and Croissant 2000, p. 7), both by the elites and the general population, a core idea of political culture research can also be adopted for the persistence of autocratic regimes. Consequently, autocrats must be concerned with establishing congruence between the autocratic system and its political culture-one way or another. But despite the acknowledged need for rulers to articulate and anchor their legitimacy claims in the hearts and minds of the people, there is little research regarding those political-cultural processes and contexts (Mauk 2020;Welzel 2020). To conclude, an attempt is made to systematize patterns of political myth along with different types of regimes, which follows two theses that have emerged from the previous elaboration: T 1 : Political myths contribute to the dis-/integration and de-/legitimization of political regimes. Their telling serves as an elite strategy and transmission belt of political power to establish congruence between political structure and culture. T 2 : Given different criteria of rule, communicative power structures, and political cultures, political myths differ in content, processes, and possibilities of narration between regime types.
For this purpose, I will adapt Steffen Kailitz's typology of political regimes, since it is more concerned with the intellectual basis of the claim to rule than with its material legitimation (2009, p. 226). For one thing, the criterion of legitimation offers a historically and theoretically well-founded answer to the question of what constitutes a political regime at its beginning (Geddes et al. 2014, p. 318). For another, it distinguishes those structures that are consequential for the mode of exercising authority (Kailitz 2013, p. 41). Based on legitimation (within/outside the political regime) and the procedures for selecting and controlling rulers (multiparty, multicandidate election, fairness of the election, executive constraints), Kailitz differentiates four less durable (military regimes, personalist regimes, electoral autocracies, and one-party autocracies) and three durable regime types (monarchy, ideocracy, liberal democracy): "I argue that stable patterns of legitimation further the durability of these three regime types, relative to other regime types" (2013, p. 53). Here, the analysis of political myths can be directly linked to and promises further insights into the patterns of legitimation. To illustrate the argument, the focus will be on the integrating and legitimating functions of political myths as they relate to political objects in different types of regimes.
To hypothesize on this, the previously made remarks on the strategic telling of political myths and Easton's concept of support will be brought in (see Table 1). Based on an integrative communal ideology, the telling of a political myth first unfolds a meaning-creating function for the political community, because a historical (before/after) and spatial (inside/outside) demarcation line to the previous rule must be drawn through a new outstanding founding act. Furthermore, such a dichotomous distinction leads to an identity-creating function, which, given a preferred socio-political order, needs to establish social cohesion through inclusive and exclusive processes (good/evil, us/them, friend/foe). In the narration, the aspects of a legitimizing ideology follow regarding the political regime and its components, as well as the political authorities. While principles express conflicting premises to guide action and values impose constraints on the aims and purposes of the political system, norms establish the formal and informal rules of expected behavior. On this basis, the regime structure specifies the organizational concentration of power as well as procedures that dictate how abstract authority roles are occupied by political authorities. The roles themselves, as they are part of the regime structure, need to be distinguished from their occupants, not only in terms of the political system (Easton 1965, p. 193-206). The integration of prominent figures into the mythical narration usually occurs as a result of historical hindsight. Yet, legitimation for current incumbents not only results from an overflow in structural belief but from the possibility of putting themselves in line with the outstanding personages of a political mythology. 9 With respect to different communicative power structures of the regime types, it is assumed that the degree to which the respective criteria of rule are implemented has far-reaching consequences for the narration or counter-narration of political myths. In terms of an autocratic characteristic, Daniel Lambach and Christian Göbel have developed a concept that takes into account not only the infrastructural and repressive capacities but a discursive power that enables regimes to make their subjects believe what they want (2010, p. 85). Although I would agree that the institutional conditions (restriction of pluralism in politics, society, economy, education, and media as well as repression) are associated with fundamental effects on the possibilities of storytelling, an understanding that conceives the population solely as subjects of power seems abbreviated. Precisely because the collective work on myth is not a one-way street, an understanding of interpretive power is therefore applied that is not conceived as a purely asymmetrical relationship, but as a fourfold relation between actor, structure, medium, and recipient (Stoellger 2014, p. 38).
1. Even in liberal democracies there is always a credibility gap between the claims of those in power and the acceptance on the part of the population. It can only be bridged if the governed believe in certain axioms (e.g. representative democracy as gold standard for legitimacy) without any guarantees (Bizeul 2016, p. 111). Thus, in democracies as well, political myths need to unfold integrating and legitimizing functions. The constitution of a new political era is likewise the central aspect of meaning creation. Only the terrible experiences with a preceding oppressive, crisis-ridden, or calamitous period, allows for the new beginning of a democratic regime (USA: City upon a Hill; American Exceptionalism as First New Nation; GER: Confession of war guilt and crimes of extermination; Western integration).
As for liberal and plural political communities, identity formation may not be formulated and justified upon political, ethnic, religious, or other excluding characteristics and lines of conflict. The mythical-narrative construction of collective identity needs to achieve common identification and plural inclusion via the normative consensus of free and equal citizens (McNamara and Musgrave 2019). For the political regime and the authorities in liberal democracies, there is strong procedural legitimacy through free, fair, and regular elections. In a pluralistic competition of parties and candidates, sovereign citizens make their choice without coercion and pressure. However, democratic procedures for the selection and control of the authorities are more than an institutional feature, because they go beyond the legitimation of those in power (Geis et al. 2012). Aside from retrospectively highlighting outstanding former incumbents, political myths fulfill their legitimizing function by linking their ideological foundations to the promises of democracy (Buchstein 2013). Only democracy-or its structures and procedures-is able to select capable leaders and to guarantee central values such as individual freedom, political equality, security, rule of law, prosperity, and social peace in the long run (USA: Land of the Free, From Rags to Riches; GER: Miracle on the Rhine; Social Market Economy). 2. In monarchies, the meaning-giving function of a new founding act results from the assertion of a mythical progenitor of a dynasty, who claims absolute dominion over a given territory (Kailitz 2013, p. 49). Consequently, identity formation of the political community is determined by the relationship between the monarch-as protector, guarantor, symbol, or even embodiment of national unity and stability-and the entire population as subjects. For questions of the political regime and its authorities, it is essential for mythic narration that legitimacy is not derived solely from a natural law principle of divine right in the present. A historical belief of the subjects, which has grown by virtue of tradition, is presupposed to the sanctity of orders and sovereign powers that have existed from immemorial times (Weber [1922(Weber [ ] 1976. Accordingly, the claim of a ruling dynasty is carried by historical classification, the interpretation of events, and the eradication of contingency. Although the majority of Arab monarchies have existed only since the 20th century, dynasties and their monarchs appear as descendants of the prophet (Jordan), leaders of faith (Morocco), or guardians of the holy sites (Saudi Arabia). In terms of structures, a legitimizing function of political myth combines the monarchical hereditary principle with far-reaching implications for the functioning and organization of the regime and its authority roles. For example, concerning patronage networks and the arrangement of a feudal structure that remains dependent on specific tribal, religious, ethnic, or cultural aspects (Herb 1999, p. 9;Patel 2010).
3. Ideocracies, as a third type of regime with a strong and original pattern of legitimation, create meaning for the political community by propagating necessary, immediate, and radical reconstruction of a degenerated society. Depending on the particular manifestation, either communist (PR China, PR North Korea, Soviet Union), fascist (Third Reich) or theological (Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic State) ideologies are taken up to offer visions for the reshaping of social coexistence. Accordingly, identity constructions of political myths are at the service of a respective totalitarian ideology and its central line of conflict (class, ethnicity, religion)-both internally and externally. Against the backdrop of either historical laws, racist ideas of superiority, or a fundamentalist understanding of religion, formative ideologies serve as unassailable doctrines for the political regime (Backes 2014, p. 44;Kailitz 2013, p. 47). They provide a reliable, monistic interpretation about all issues of life, society, and politics as well as explanations of the system's values (greater good; equality, purity, faith) and structures (communist or fascist mass party, reign of clergy). 4. Although military regimes do not exhibit an original pattern of legitimacy, the telling of political myths can fulfill a meaning-giving function that results from intervention in a (perceived) political, social, or economic crisis. Against the background of such a challenge, the military determines the values, norms, and structures considered appropriate to ensure the protection of the population, public order, the constitution, or the national interest against internal or external threats and enemies (Kailitz 2013, p. 44). Yet, as supposedly rational and apolitical mediators, military regimes usually act on the premise that political power will be returned to a civilian government (Finer 1974). Following the status quo, they limit their rule to a temporary horizon and do not develop a permanent claim accordingly. It should therefore hardly come as a surprise that the strategic use of mythical narratives is scarcely employed; as long as no autocratic regime transformation takes place (Geddes et al. 2014).
In addition to military regimes, Kailitz includes electoral regimes, personalist regimes, and one-party regimes among those types whose lack of a strong original pattern of legitimacy helps to explain their short-lived nature. However, given the average lifespan of regimes, it is interesting to note that even within these types, there are certainly contrasting cases that proved to be quite long-lasting. Defying the assumption of original legitimacy patterns, I would argue that T 3 : especially in electoral, personalist, and one-party regimes the telling of political myths is capable of contributing to political-culturally specific patterns of legitimation.
While there is not enough space for a detailed analysis here, a brief and illustrative look will be taken at three such cases. In the case of the Russian Federation, for example, historical revisionist discourses and nostalgic-symbolic references to the Soviet-era are produced in distinction to the economically chaotic Yeltsin era. From this, recourse is made not only to the political, cultural as well as religiousconfessional construction and ethnicization of Russian identity (Kolstø 2016) but also to Vladislav Surkov's concept of a sovereign Russian democracy. In the course of De-Westernization-the concept legitimizes deviations from the type of Western democracy because the latter fails to account for Russia's specific nature. Venezuela already bears the core of the mythical narrative in its name. With the proclamation of the República Bolivariana de Venezuela, a state was formed that invoked the teachings, values, and historical as well as moral legacy of Simón Bolívar. After the previous era of democratically-pact Puntofijo, it sought to realize the political and social reorganization of a socialism of the 21st century in the struggle between the upright pueblo and the corrupt oligarquía (Moser 2011, p. 124). For oneparty regimes, Turkmenistan is another case that has achieved astonishing longevity within its type and has developed a strong pattern of legitimation through its mythical narrative. Amid the return and revival of a Turkmen history and culture, that had been suppressed under the Soviet Union, a fundamental reorganization of the regime took place with the overarching goal of unifying the Turkmen tribes. This 'Turkmenization'-by patterns and principles of the tribal organization-was so comprehensive that it symbolically and institutionally permeated all spheres of life (Akbarzadeh 2010;Kuru 2002). In all cases, strong personalistic elements can be identified (Putin as a necessary strong personality in Russia's history; Hugo Chávez as a savior and liberator of within a Venezuelan trinity; Saparmurat Niyazov as a father, turkmenbashi, of the reunited Turkmen tribes), whose mythical references allow for their inclusion in the narration. 10

Conclusion
Johannes Gerschewski rightly emphasizes that when it comes to the question of legitimacy in autocratic regimes "methodological creativity is called for in future research" (2018, p. 27). This applies both to the articulated endogenous claims of the elites and their perceived legitimacy to rule as well as to the beliefs and convictions of the population. By relating to political myths as a strategy for integrating the political community and promoting legitimacy beliefs for the regime and its authorities, a cultural variable was proposed. While this approach focuses on elite discourses and power structures, it also takes into account the importance of the recipients in terms of acceptance as well as their cultural, political, cognitive, and affective predispositions. In favor of addressing the phenomenon and conceptualizing an interpretive approach to political culture, the analysis of mythic narrations had to remain illustrative in the scope of the article. On the one hand, this is due to the conceptual design, but on the other hand, of course, it results from the requirements of a corresponding analysis in different cultural and linguistic contexts as well as fields of expertise. Regarding future case studies, this article is intended to be preliminary work and to provide an overview for the cultural analysis of narrative discourses, iconic condensations, and ritual enactment in autocracies-especially since this endeavor requires a reflection on plural methods of comparative politics. Both for understanding political objects in different political-cultural contexts and for explaining legitimation, detailed analysis of mythical strategies can prove to be a fruitful approach here. Precisely because they aim at the total sum of individuals who live their 'quite normal' lives in dictatorships (Kailitz and Köllner 2013, p. 25) and have to deal with the existing conditions in different communicative and mythological ways.