The Authoritarian Rebranding of Democracy

“We will no longer tolerate criticism of our democracy. Our democracy is the best.”
Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary to Vladimir Putin

“We have shortages, we have problems, we have limitations but there are no missing people here, there are no murders here. This country is more democratic than the United States.”
Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of Cuba

“Thanks to the wise leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung, the Constitution of the DPRK…developed into a legal guarantee for fully and substantially ensuring democratic rights and freedom of the people.”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

“If we become an ordinary country, an ordinary democracy, then our performance, I can tell you, will become ordinary.”
Lee Hsien Loong, Senior Minister of Singapore

Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Singapore are clearly governed differently. Some have proclaimed competitive elections, others do not. Some are wealthier, some poorer. Daily life under these regimes can range from feeling extremely repressive to relatively permissive. Yet their leaders all make a strikingly similar claim: that they are not just ordinary democracy; they are the best, most faithful examples of democratic governance.

What is so bewildering about these cases, however, is that no one ever associates them with the term. Quite the opposite, in fact. Scholarly classifications by Varieties of Democracies or Freedom House place these countries firmly on the non-democratic end of the spectrum. Public discourse often favors an even blunter term: “dictatorships.”

It seems like no modern autocrats embrace their “autocratic” labels. Yet, far from simply rejecting the allegations, they describe themselves as democratic, even more so than some Western democracies.

This presents an interesting puzzle: Why do the so-called autocrats love the D-word so much?

Autocrats’ Mimicry of Democracy

Pundits of authoritarian politics offer two compelling explanations.

The first explanation is that autocrats’ invocation of democracy is deceptive—mere propaganda that creates a façade of democracy to convince both the domestic mass and the outside world that their rule is legitimate. The democratic rhetoric is valuable to autocrats only insofar as it helps them win the hearts and minds of the people.

The second explanation is that autocrats’ embrace of democracy is strategic, extending beyond the realm of rhetoric. Contemporary authoritarian regimes often allow for carefully engineered democratic institutions including elections, legislatures, courts, and partially free press, because these mechanisms serve rather than harm autocratic interests. Specifically, these democratic institutions help autocrats facilitate information extraction about public opinion, distribute resources to regime-supporting elites, repress oppositions, and improve quality of governance.

Whether one adopts the institutionalist or propagandistic account, the conclusion is largely the same: autocrats’ said commitment to democracy is insincere. It is merely a response to post-Cold War pressures for democratization emanating from the U.S.-led Western democratic bloc as well as international institutions set up to uphold liberal democratic values. In this story, with the fall of the Soviet Union, autocrats found themselves in a vulnerable position. To survive, they had to learn to act and speak like democrats.

Beyond Mimicry: Autocrats Redefining Democracy

Political scientists might be largely right. But they have missed a crucial move in the autocrats’ playbook: autocrats aren’t just mimicking democracy—they are redefining it.

Why do autocrats want to undertake such an ambitious goal? Simply put, to create a world much safer for not one, but all of them.

If there is anything I agree with Francis Fukuyama on, it is the reality that democracy has become the gold standard of political legitimacy in the 21st century. Citizens in democracies and autocracies alike want their governments to be democracies of some sort. However, how a democratic government should come into existence and how it ought to function are open questions escaping popular consensus. That is why democracy is not “the end of history.”

Autocrats know this best. Rather than “faking it until making it,” authoritarian regimes have gradually coalesced around the shared project of norm contestation, denying Western democracies the monopoly to dictate what legitimate governance looks like. Their vision is to provide a new concept of democracy that accommodates single-player politics and normalizes autocratic ruling practices. As such definitions of democracy spread, criticisms against them lose their persuasive authority. In this new world, autocrats are no longer tabooed. But how exactly do autocrats pull this off?

The Autocrat’s Recipe for Democracy

The autocrat’s project of redefining democracy unfolds of two main ways.

First, because democracy is a multidimensional concept, autocrats can cherry pick some elements and not others. They can, for example, claim that democracy must ensure good governance outcomes rather than adopt a procedural definition underscoring free and fair elections. In other words, autocrats can direct democratic legitimacy toward things they have strong records for and those that will not threaten their rule.

For years, China framed economic growth, social harmony, and tackling inequality as the primary yardsticks for democracy, taking stock of their awe-inspiring achievements in these regards as proof of democratic success. Another example is the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore, which champions an effective governance definition of democracy. Under PAP’s leadership, Singapore has indeed become a global economic powerhouse with high-quality educations, affordable housing, and exceptional medical care for citizens. For the PAP, these are all that are needed to measure a country’s democracy. Whether or not the opposition parties ever stand a chance in the ballot box matters a lot less. This is a legacy of Lee Kuan Yew—the country’s founding father. Lee’s speeches and writings often provide stern criticisms of the Western model, which he implicitly argued breeds chaos. Lee noted that “A country must first have economic development, then democracy may follow.”

Second, in principle, autocrats cherish democracy just as much as their democratic counterparts. What they have problem with is its “liberal” face. From a liberalist standpoint, democracy is a means to individual liberty. Multiparty competitive elections must be used to aggregate individual preferences over political leadership. Freedom of speech and expression must be protected unconditionally to enable citizens to articulate individual wills. Checks and constraints must be placed on governments to safeguard individual rights.

For autocrats, democracy need not be liberal. In the words of Vladimir Putin, liberalism is “obsolete.” Autocrats concur that true democracy must represent the will of the people. Yet, what they mean by “the people” is not a sum of all individuals. Rather, “the people” is a political collective with predefined, uncontested shared values and common interests. In this model, individual rights must succumb to the collective will. Democratic procedures such as elections are repurposed as platforms for consent, rather than individual input. Yes, democracy respects human rights, but not individual rights. Dissent becomes a betrayal of the collective, a contradiction of democratic principles.

Paul Kagame, who has ruled Rwanda for more than 20 years, articulated these ideas clearly through his suggestion of a consensus democracy: “Our experience has taught us that confrontation, anger, and division are not at all the essence of democracy. That style of politics may be a fun game in certain countries, but in others it is a matter of life or death.”

A close read of “Democracy That Works,” the white paper published by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China in 2021, reveals similar nuances. The socialist “whole-process people’s democracy” model is portrayed as “ensur[ing] the people’s status as masters of the country,” one that is a special hybrid between “democracy” and “dictatorship.” It further adds, “A tiny minority is sanctioned in the interests of the great majority, and ‘dictatorship’ serves democracy.”

With this reworked framework for democracy, authoritarian governments afford a powerful assertion: as long as they embody the collective will, solo rule must not be questioned. This rhetoric now supplies a moral, legal rationale for criminalizing any form of opposition or criticism. All in the name of “the people.”

Marketing the New Model

The last step of autocrats’ grand strategy is to promote their model at home and abroad.

Public opinion surveys such as World Values Survey or Global Barometer Surveys show that across sociocultural settings citizens adopt varied conceptions of democracy. Domestically this gives autocrats the upper hand. Their people seem to be buying it. Autocratic governments such as China and Singapore enjoy a high level of public support for both their efficiency and democratic quality. This is ironic, given that a high percentage of Americans are dissatisfied with how democracy works in their country, according to a recent Gallup poll. The same trend has been observed in other consolidated democracies, namely the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea. Internationally, China is often seen as the principal exporter of the illiberal model of democracy. Officially, Beijing resists such convictions, but elements of its governance formula appear to gain traction across different countries.

Long gone are the days when the “D-word” was the magic weapon against autocrats. In the next few decades, we may observe not only intensified military and economic competition, but also deepening struggles over norms and legitimacy centered on the very meaning of democracy itself.

Duong Pham is a PhD candidate in political science at UC San Diego. They study propaganda and information control in authoritarian regimes, with a special focus on how these governments redefine democracy and related norms such as human rights to reinforce their legitimacy.

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