Henry Hale’s Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective offers a remarkably thoughtful, innovative, and comprehensive account of post-Soviet politics that argues for a fundamental rethinking of regime trajectories. Rather than seeing regime evolution as unidirectional (either towards democracy or authoritarianism), Hale suggests that post-Soviet regimes exhibit cyclical change between greater and lesser democracy—a dynamic that is primarily driven by shifting elite perceptions of a top leader’s likelihood of staying in power.

To understand such dynamics, Hale argues that we need to focus on the “patronal” character of post-Soviet politics. Patronalism “refers to politics in societies where individuals organize their political and economic pursuits primarily around the personalized exchange of concrete rewards and punishments through chains of actual acquaintance” (pp. 9–10). In such cases, political dynamics are shaped less by formal institutions, ideological conflict, or competition between ethnic or other “imagined communities,” and much more by struggle for individual power and resources.

In patronal systems, politics are primarily organized around informal and highly personalistic networks rather than political parties or other formal institutions. Systems differ primarily in terms of the degree to which a country’s main networks are “glommed together” under a single or competing pyramids of authority (p. 64). In single-pyramid countries, political competition is restricted by the fact that most major groups in society are tied to one leader. By contrast, competing-pyramid systems are characterized by cases in which no single patronal network “clearly dominates the other and where each has strong incentive to compete for power and resources” (p. 64).

According to Hale, regime dynamics in such systems are shaped mostly by “the great power of expectations” (p. 19). Elite actors are desperate to remain on the winning side in order preserve their rents and thus readily shift alliances towards those deemed to be most powerful. As a result, “Clients obey patrons when they expect others to do so” (p. 34). The “weakness” or “strength” of political systems is primarily a product of “self-fulfilling prophesies” (p. 35). Hierarchical systems of rule are weak when they are widely perceived as weak; and strong when they are thought to be strong.

This argument is compelling and reminiscent of the highly voluntarist work of Charles Kurzman (The Unthinkable Revolution: Revolution in Iran, 2004) who argues in the context of the Iranian revolution that revolutionaries succeed when large numbers of people expect them to succeed. This approach helps account for the sometimes-sudden demise of seemingly stable authoritarian systems following events that abruptly make these systems appear weak—such as Gorbachev’s indication that he would not back communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 or television footage of Ceausescu in Romania showing that he lacked control over the situation. Communist regimes rapidly collapsed because, as one Zambian politician put it in another context, “only a stupid fly … follows a dead body to the grave” (Henning Melber, “Southern African Liberation Movements as Governments and the Limits of Liberation,” Review of African Political Economy No. 121 (2009): 454.).

Attention to expectations leads Hale to compelling reinterpretations of the impact of both public opinion and constitutions on regime outcomes. First, presidential popularity is central not just because it leads to more votes in elections (which are often rigged in any case) but because such popularity powerfully shapes elite expectations about a leader’s durability. Highly unpopular leaders in all but the most dictatorial regimes will be considered vulnerable—a fact that in turn motivates the emergence of competing networks and serious political challenges.

A focus on expectations also leads to Hale to rethink the impact of constitutional design in countries where laws are regularly ignored. Here, Hale provides a refreshingly nuanced take on an old debate. On the one hand, many standard institutionalist accounts simply assume compliance with institutional rules—an assumption that is hardly warranted in many developing countries. Other work (including some of my own) has often gone to the other extreme by suggesting that constitutional rules have little or no impact. Hale tries to reconcile these two perspectives by suggesting that even when most specific rules are ignored, constitutions may strongly influence outcomes by signaling whether or not the president will be the main power holder or will share significant power with other actors and institutions. Here, constitutional design matters not because actors assiduously obey the law but because such design creates widespread and self-fulfilling expectations about the degree to which the president will monopolize political power. In divided executive systems, expectations of divided power encourage leaders to break up into competing networks. By contrast, in patronal presidential regimes, expectations of a single dominant leader compel previously competing factions to ally with the new president to create a much more centralized political system.

But such effects are not necessarily stable. Political fragmentation in patronal presidential systems may rapidly reemerge when one of various factors—including the advanced age, illness, or term limits—lead to widespread expectations of a leader’s “imminent departure” (p. 84). In such cases, “a lame duck syndrome” induces the advent of competing networks and often greater democracy. However, once a new patronal president takes power, competing groups coalesce around the new leader and the system rapidly reverts to greater authoritarianism (p. 88).

Finally, Hale contends that term limits in patronal presidential regimes foster regularized cycles of political contestation—as fragmentation and pluralism increase in the run-up to a leader’s final term, decline after the election of a new leader, reemerge near the end of that leader’s final term, and so on… For Hale, this relatively predictable logic explicates the seemingly chaotic elite politics that prevailed in many post-Soviet regimes in the late 1990s and 2000s. Such an account of the internal dynamics of many hybrid regimes is both elegant and largely on the mark.

Overall, Hale’s book offers a provocative take on the character of post-Soviet politics that is backed up by in-depth case studies of the twelve non-Baltic, post-Soviet states as well as the four unrecognized states of Abkhazia, Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. The breadth and depth of the cases covered in this book are simply astounding. Furthermore, he rightly criticizes the tendency of observers to treat almost any politician who is in opposition to the ruling autocrat as “democratic” when in fact post-Soviet opposition (such as Saakashvili in Georgia) often became about as autocratic as the regime it was battling.

At the same time, while Hale offers a compelling account of post-Soviet elite politics and coalition formation, he provides a somewhat less satisfying explanation of divergent outcomes across different cases. Hale argues that the survival or demise of many presidents can be explained by their popularity and whether or not they have ever been “lame ducks” (p. 241). Both of these factors lie in close proximity to the outcome being explained. Thus there is very little space between a lame duck syndrome—defined by widespread perception of a “president’s imminent departure” (p. 84)—and Presidential turnover. Indeed, the survival of a “lame duck” leader is by definition surprising.

While clearly central in some cases, constitutional design is also of limited utility in explaining differences among post-Soviet cases. Thus, patronal presidential regimes, which have dominated the former Soviet Union, have exhibited extremely wide ranges of pluralism—from Ukraine under Yanukovych, which had a relatively dynamic, open media, and active opposition to Belarus under Lukashenka, where opposition and independent media have largely been suppressed. Simultaneously, term limits have little predictive value. Since 1991 they have been ignored or sidestepped about as often as they have been followed. As I suggest in my book, Pluralism by Default, almost all of those post-Soviet leaders who fell in the run-up to their final term were backed by exceptionally weak states. The one clear exception—Saakashvili in the tiny country of Georgia in 2013—faced significant Western leverage and external pressure from Russia. Hale is probably right that term limits can sometimes account for the timing of autocratic breakdown. However, more attention to the broader context is necessary if we are to understand why rules are sometimes followed but often ignored.

Hale makes a convincing case that popularity has sometimes played an important role in shaping regime dynamics. Yet, popularity would seem to be a poor tool for understanding cross-country regime variations—unless we are to believe that all nine governments in relatively democratic Moldova and Ukraine just happened to be less popular than their post-Soviet counterparts. Indeed, popularity is quite proximate and (as Hale recognizes) frequently endogenous to regime outcome. Thus, popularity is often heavily shaped by the extent of permitted public criticism—a fact that may explain why Putin has been consistently more “popular” than virtually any of his counterparts in democratic countries.

Along these lines, Adam Przeworski has famously argued that support for an autocrat is heavily influenced by the existence or absence of plausible alternatives to the existing power structure. People often back a regime if there are no serious alternatives or the alternatives appear to be much worse—a phenomenon best exemplified by Belarus’s Lukashenka who has used repression and economic control to marginalize opposition challenges. In fact, it is not clear whether (even genuinely felt) “popularity” in such a closed regime can be considered the same animal as popularity in an open society where there is a plausible opposition. “Popularity” without real choice (as in Russia) is obviously not the same thing as popularity with choice.

Overall, Hale’s focus on expectations leads him to adapt an extremely voluntarist approach. For example, according to Hale’s analysis, Nazerbayev in Kazakhstan has survived primarily because he is “charismatic” and was “highly attentive to avoiding the lame duck syndrome” (p. 249). Similarly Lukashenka in Belarus maintained power because of “elaborate” preparation for presidential campaigns (p. 259).

In my view Hale overplays the importance of such choices. After all, Lucinschi in Moldova and Kuchma and Yanukovych in Ukraine also tried quite hard to stay in power but failed. More importantly, while leadership is clearly important, authoritarian durability is powerfully shaped by a range of organizational and structural factors that heavily influence elite expectations and the emergence or lack of a lame duck syndrome. Most obviously, autocrats in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been significantly bolstered by access to resource wealth—a factor noted by Hale but underemphasized in favor of more contingent leadership choices. In addition, leadership choices may shape the creation or maintenance of authoritarian institutions that in turn limit the degree to which regimes are subject to the kind of cyclical shifts Hale focuses on. Thus, as Hale notes, the ability/choice of Niyazov (Turkmenistan) and Karimov (Uzbekistan) to preserve Soviet institutions at the start of the 1990s has so far foreclosed pluralism in these countries. In addition, the building of powerful armed forces in Armenia and the recreation of central economic control by Lukashenka in Belarus limited the emergence of outside opposition that might generate a lame duck syndrome in those countries.

In sum, Hale provides a brilliant and innovative theory that makes sense of the seemingly chaotic fluidity found in so many post-Soviet countries since 1991. Yet, to understand why lame ducks and regime cycles have emerged in some countries but not others we need to pay greater attention to the distinctive organizational, ideational, and structural contexts found in different post-Soviet cases. Indeed, this is an area where Hale’s book and my own Pluralism by Default (summarized and reviewed in this issue by Hale) are quite complementary. While my book highlights some of the more structural factors that have shaped divergent regime trajectories in the former Soviet Union, Hale draws much-needed attention to the dynamic role of expectations in shaping power dynamics within these regimes and the developing world as a whole.