Popular Dictatorships: Crises, Mass Opinion, and the Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism. By Matovski, Aleksandar . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 316 p. $39.99 cloth.

Popular Dictatorships: Crises, Mass Opinion, and the Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism. By Matovski Aleksandar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 316 p. $39.99 cloth.

This ambitious and innovative book advances a new theory of electoral authoritarianism. Departing from the dominant, neoinstitutionalist theorizing about electoral autocracies that focuses on the instrumentalist foundations of hybrid (democratic and authoritarian) institutions in such regimes, Aleksandar Matovski brings attention to the specific circumstances that create a popular demand for such regimes. He argues that electoral authoritarian regimes originate in deep systemic crises that create a core popular demand for stability and order. Electoral autocrats deliver to meet that demand, appealing to anxious, insecure populations with the promise of a “strong-armed” rule that would return order and stability. They gain genuine popular support and legitimize their rule through a doctrine that combines three core principles: (1) electoral authoritarianism is a form of emergency rule; (2) no other political force “has the strength, competence, devotion, and integrity to lead the nation in times of national emergency” (p. 50); and (3) their rule rests on the core democratic tenet of majoritarianism.

The big innovation of this approach is the shift from the mainstream, elite-centered analysis characteristic of neoinstitutionalist approaches to electoral authoritarianism to the social drivers of these regimes and the crucial (if somewhat uncomfortable) recognition that they enjoy genuine popular support. Popular Dictatorships thereby adds to the recent literature (unacknowledged in the book, probably due to the proximity of publications), that has made a similar point focusing specifically on Russia: Samuel Greene and Graeme Robertson’s Putin V. People (2019) that advanced a vision of a coconstructed regime in Russia; and this author’s own The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (2020) that relies on social identity theory to explain the leader–follower dynamic in Russian politics under Putin’s presidency.

As opposed to the single-country studies mentioned in the preceding text, Matovski develops a...