Research framework and broader academic knowledge base
Serbia: documented application of the same framework
How do banks, companies, lawyers, and platforms from democracies help authoritarian governments?
Institutions and companies from democracies can become an important part of the authoritarian network without an official political alliance. Banks and the real estate market can hide assets, lawyers and accountants make complex ownership structures, lobbyists and experts fix reputations, technology firms sell surveillance, and platforms hand over data or spread coordinated campaigns.
These services turn money and openness of democracy into protection for the power acquired without responsibility at home. However, dealing with an authoritarian state is not automatic complicity and the service can have a legitimate purpose. Responsibility depends on what the provider knew or could reasonably check, what precautions he applied and whether he continued to cooperate after reliable evidence of abuse.
Cooperation with authoritarian government is not automatic complicity. It is important what the company or expert knew, what he could check and how the service was really used.
Works supporting this answer, with their evidence type and an explanation of how they relate to the claim.
Analysis of international cash flows and impacts
Cooley, A. i Heathershaw, J. (2017), Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia, Yale University Press.
- Contribution to this answer
- Cooley and Heathershaw show perhaps most directly how authoritarian power uses the infrastructure of democracies: money is kept in Western banks and real estate, lawyers and intermediaries protect the interests of the elites, lobbyists fix political ties, and legal systems and financial markets allow authoritarian money and influence to operate far beyond the home state.
comparing several countries or cases
Feldstein, S. (2021), The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology Is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance, Oxford University Press.
- Contribution to this answer
- Feldstein shows a similar relationship in the technology sector: the ability of the regime to monitor and control citizens depends not only on the state, but also on companies that produce and sell tracking, filtering and data analysis technologies.
comparing several countries or cases
Schiffrin, A. (ur.) (2017), In the Service of Power: Media Capture and the Threat to Democracy, CIMA/NED.
- Contribution to this answer
- Schiffrin and the authors in the proceedings show how private media can lose independence through a combination of political and economic power through ownership, advertising, financial dependence and business pressures. For this question, it is useful as an example of how the private sector can become part of the political control system, but not primarily work on companies from democratic countries that help foreign autocracy.
comparing several countries or cases
Tansey, O. (2016), The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule, Oxford University Press.
- Contribution to this answer
- Tansey shows that international actors can directly change the chances of an authoritarian regime to survive and that external support is not just a diplomatic matter. But the book does not specifically study Western banks, lawyers or technology platforms, so here is a broader framework.
review more research
Tsourapas, G. (2021), „Global Autocracies: Strategies of Transnational Repression, Legitimation, and Co-Optation in World Politics“, International Studies Review 23(3): 616–644.
- Contribution to this answer
- Tsourapas shows how repression outside the borders often uses the infrastructure of the country in which the critic lives digital tools, international legal procedures, extradition, monitoring and other cross-border mechanisms. This shows how much authoritarian control depends on the international environment, although the work is not specifically about commercial “enablers”.
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