Non-traditional authoritarianism: A new theoretical framework of contemporary regime transformations

Most research on regime transformations has paid scant attention to classic authoritarians due to a less aggressive and bloodless process of authoritarian transformation. Because of that, the study of contemporary authoritarianism has become overshadowed by democracy-oriented frameworks, such as democratic backsliding, democratic erosion, and autocratisation. Concerning the consistently emerging military coup around the world in the post-1991, many authoritarian regimes emerge through military coups. Why do some military-led authoritarian regimes more sustain than others? What are strategies the military use in post-coup politics? A lack of theoretical framework for contemporary regime transformations has left post-coup politics and post-coup strategies wielded by coup plotters unknown in the black box of authoritarianism. To the best of my knowledge, none of the authoritarian-oriented conceptual frameworks has provided systemic approaches capturing non-traditional strategies that classic authoritarians, in particular the military, use in present-day authoritarianism. This article proposes to develop a new theoretical framework to understand non-traditional authoritarian regimes. I argue that the military's non-traditional strategies revolve around civil-military relations. In so doing, I map 59 successful coups between 1991-2021 in 34 countries and trace the trajectory of post-coup politics. To test the developed theory, I apply theory-testing process tracing, which enables cross-case inference, and choose to study Thailand, as the least-likely case. I investigate and analyze the dynamics of Thailand’s civil-military relations in post-coup politics during the 2006 post-coup and the 2014 post-coup.