Interscalar Authoritarianism: A New Approach to Studying Regime Transformations

In this paper, we propose an interscalar approach for studying how authoritarianism is promoted, spread, strengthened and embedded. We contend that we are currently experiencing an authoritarian momentum in which even long-established liberal democracies are under threat. Scholars have responded to this by developing a rich stream of work on autocratisation, democratic backsliding and democratic resilience (Croissant and Tomini 2024; Bunce et al. 2025, Riedl et al. 2025). While we have gained enormous insights into the inner workings of authoritarian and autocratising regimes, we argue that we should overcome the dominant perspective that is still regime-bound and country-specific. With Glasius (2018, 523) we put forward that we need to go “below, above, and beyond the state.” In this light, we propose that we should understand authoritarianism as a fundamentally interscalar phenomenon. That is, authoritarian ideas, practices and technologies are shaped and spread through the interaction and mutual influence of local, national, and transnational networks of actors. We lay out the main ideas of interscalarity, a concept that we borrow from human and urban geography, and how this can be applied the study of authoritarianism. We propose that an interscalar approach to authoritarianism bridges recent developments in regime studies, a “local turn” and a “transnational turn”, and allows for new theorisation of how the local, national and transnational interact to shape regime transformations. We illustrate the analytical potential of “interscalar authoritarianism” through empirical evidence from Canal Istanbul, a controversial mega-development project emblematic of the broader struggle between Turkey’s authoritarian central government and the opposition-led municipal government of Imamoğlu, currently arrested. This site offers a lens into the stage of advanced executive-led autocratisation and the regime’s legal-regulatory, symbolic, repressive, and co-optation strategies of authoritarian consolidation. Most importantly this site illuminates the actors and interactions that shape and contest the distributive networks linking local business groups and communities, national government, and global capital (i.e. Gulf capital) that is central to the land-based accumulation regime sustaining autocratisation processes. It is these interscalar interactions, we argue, rather than only state action, that shape Turkey’s autocratisation and prospects for further authoritarian consolidation or anti-authoritarian resistance.