At first glance, these two books appear unrelated in that they tackle quite different substantive questions. In Information for Autocrats, Melanie Manion investigates how local people’s congresses in China channel information among citizens, legislators, and party officials. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and rich survey data, she shows that congress deputies—whether they feel that they answer to citizens or the Communist Party—view themselves as “delegates” who are responsible for addressing the local problems and needs of their constituents. While institutions such as local elections and legislatures provide the information necessary for public officials to address constituency needs, what really motivates these officials to act on the information is the promotion system set by the central government. Failure to observe and act on local information leads to tangible outcomes—protests or low turnout in local elections—that Beijing wants to avoid and that, therefore, can lead to negative consequences for local officials. So in many ways, local people’s congresses and elections represent a story of institutional success: Citizens and legislators seem to play by the rules as they have been established by Beijing. There are some chinks in this armor: Manion shows that independent candidates emerge more frequently than usually acknowledged and that most citizens do not view local congressional institutions as meaningful. But these institutions can still work and contribute to authoritarian resilience even if citizens do not believe in them. They provide the information—about citizen demands and local government performance—that the central government needs in order to maintain control.

In Democrats and Autocrats, Agustina Giraudy, in turn, examines why and how subnational pockets of undemocratic rule survive in countries that have experienced a transition to democracy at the national level. Subnational undemocratic regimes (SURs) can survive in two ways: They can survive with the help of national-level leaders (perpetuation “from above”) or in spite of the best efforts of national leaders to undermine them (“self-reproduction”). The mechanism for survival depends on whether national-level leaders (i.e., presidents) have leverage to pressure subnational leaders to cooperate, and whether subnational leaders, in turn, have the tools to fight against such pressure. If presidents have sufficient leverage, then SUR perpetuation from above occurs. If presidents do not have sufficient initial leverage, they try to undermine uncooperative local leaders. If these subnational leaders have the resources to fight back, then SUR survival occurs through self-reproduction. With a rich theoretical framework and extensive comparisons both across and within Mexico and Argentina, Giraudy highlights that there are multiple mechanisms by which SURs can survive. To understand the conditions under which each mechanism occurs, it is necessary to take into consideration both national- and subnational-level features and how they interact.

Both works highlight that the incentives that national leaders provide to their local agents and the mechanisms by which they can (and cannot) control them have an important influence on shaping the behavior of local officials and, by extension, on what happens to the citizens whom they directly govern. As such, it is possible to directly compare the two works within a framework that examines the interaction between national and local government.

What do national leaders want? In the case of China, national leaders, at a minimum, want to avoid “extravagant failures.” These may come in the form of social protests, but as Manion points out, there are more subtle signs, such as low voter turnout or high frequency of write-in candidates in elections. In essence, national leaders want participation in institutions as they have designed them, and they appear to mostly get what they want: Manion’s survey results show that many voters and legislators are primarily interested in parochial problem solving. As Giraudy points out, in the cases of Mexico and Argentina, new presidents seek the help of local elites in boosting their popularity or their legislative effectiveness. Subnational governors can rally popular support for the new administration or pressure national legislators from their states to support the president’s legislative agenda. For these reasons, she highlights how subnational leaders can constitute valuable allies for presidents—whether they are from the same party or not.

How do national leaders get what they want? In terms of their scholarly literatures, the points of departure are different for Manion and Giraudy, but they both lead to the conclusion that political parties are an important vehicle by which national leaders can incentivize subnational ones. In line with the literature on authoritarian institutions, Manion discusses how the promotion system within the Chinese Communist Party incentivizes local officials to heed the information provided by voters through elections and constituency service. Whether the party makes promotion decisions based on local officials’ successful use of this information—and on the avoidance of obvious failures—remains to be shown systematically. But it may be enough that local officials believe that these are the criteria, even if they are not always followed. If this is the case, then Manion’s point is worth reemphasizing: Elections are important in providing information to local officials about what citizens want. But ultimately, it is the regime party—and not the election—that motivates local officials to act on that information in the interests of citizens. We should not become too sanguine about the power of elections and citizens in authoritarian states.

Drawing on the literature on fiscal federalism, Giraudy discusses the conditions under which partisan control can work to the president’s advantage. She also points out that national leaders have fiscal tools as well. Whether and how presidents exercise control over their subnational subordinates depends mostly on whether they have leverage. The extent of leverage that presidents possess depends on features at both the national and subnational levels: the economic autonomy of the subnational units, the budgetary discretionary powers of national government, the partisan links between the two levels, and the degree of patrimonialism of the subnational unit. Giraudy most effectively shows how national-level leaders have used these tools to support or undermine subnational leaders through structured comparisons between pairs of states within Mexico and within Argentina.

Can local actors fight back? In Giraudy’s account, if presidents do not have sufficient initial leverage to get subnational leaders to comply with their requests, they can challenge them by withholding resources and undermining their electoral support. Subnational leaders, in turn, have the chance to fight back. According to Giraudy, whether subnational leaders retain the support of the elites and masses within their localities determines whether they survive in power (and consequently, whether SUR remains). The absence of this support presumably makes democratization at the subnational level more likely. The critical thing here is that elite and mass support for the governor is treated as an exogenous factor that mediates the effect of the president’s initial low leverage in determining whether the SUR survives. This part of the story raises a number of questions. First, if there are a host of factors that determine the president’s initial leverage and hence, the governor’s vulnerability, then why do these factors not influence whether the governor can fight back against the president’s challenges? Second, if national leaders do not have initial leverage over some subnational ones, then why do they go on to challenge those local leaders who have strong elite and mass support? In this case, it seems that presidents are picking costly fights that they are destined to lose. So why do so? Finally, is elite and mass support for subnational leaders affected by presidents’ attempts to reign them in? Giraudy acknowledges the problem of endogeneity, and in future work, it would be useful to consider the full consequences of it.

In the case of China, Manion shows that very few local officials view themselves as either faithful Leninist agents or pawns of the central government. Her surveys of local legislators point to a catalytic personal event, an interest in big political questions, and most of all, a desire to do constituency service as reasons for becoming involved in the political process. Yet even if their motivation is simply to do right by their constituents, they are still furthering the goals of the central leadership. Moreover, there are very few ways for local officials to fight back if they care about promotion through the party. On this point, Manion’s book could provide more empirical support since it goes toward making a very important general point about the study of authoritarian institutions: Rather than examine individual institutions in isolation, future work would benefit from investigating how bundles of institutions affect actors’ incentives, policies, and outcomes.

What are the outcomes of these national and local interactions? Both books highlight institutional success in terms of the survival of incumbent rulers. In Manion’s account, the local people’s congresses in China constitute a system of responsiveness that seems to work for citizens, legislators, and the center. In Giraudy’s account, subnational undemocratic regimes are able to survive—with or without help from the central government. Future work might consider the welfare implications for citizens. On the basis of her case studies, it seems that some SURs better provide for their people than do others. Both books raise complicated questions for our understanding of political regimes. Manion’s work points out that notwithstanding our normative objections to autocracy, we must still acknowledge and better understand the conditions under which some autocracies are responsive to their citizens. Giraudy’s work highlights that the survival of SURs are not just the result of recalcitrant local leaders: They can survive through an unholy alliance between national-level rulers who are in power due to democratic elections and subnational leaders who quash any hopes of them. In this regard, both works challenge our distinctions between democracy and dictatorship.