Ethiopian and Kenyan Government Negotiations with Non-Western Autocracy Promoters

This project explores the phenomenon of 'autocracy promotion'; a collective term for actions that major authoritarian powers such as China and Russia undertake to stabilise and support authoritarian recipients across the non-Western world. Previous research in this area has explored the motivations and impact of Russia and China's engagement and support for authoritarian recipients. This project will expand upon prior research by undertaking a comparative overview of Russia and China's approaches and motivations in supporting recipient regimes, and the eventual outcomes of their autocracy promoting activities. In doing so, it will utilise a mixed methods approach, combining in-person interviews with African policy makers, academics, and journalists, alongside archival research to explore historical instances of autocracy promotion and negotiations.

This project moves beyond a focus primarily on the autocracy promoting states themselves, to instead highlight the role of recipient authoritarian regimes in the process of autocracy promotion. Utilising an agency framework, this project will highlight how recipient regimes are capable of selectively engaging with China and Russia, picking and choosing the times in which to receive support for their regimes from autocracy promoting states.

This research will be centred upon two case studies of the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments throughout the Cold War and contemporary periods. This project will highlight how both regimes utilise several strategies to exercise their agency in negotiations with autocracy promoters, leading to a significant amount of movement for both recipient regimes to focus on their preferences, even within the restricted negotiating space given to them by donors and their nominally disadvantageous position in the global system.

The project will engage with the theoretical debates of the autocracy promotion literature by assessing whether negotiations with Russia and China can be classified within this phenomenon. It will be demonstrated that the negotiating process between recipient regimes, Russia, and China is not a simplistic narrative of autocracy promoters expanding their influence at the detriment of recipients, but that instead the relationship is more nuanced. Recipient regimes can shape the process of negotiations, as evidenced through both these cases.

To explore these issues and understand the actions and agency of African policy makers, semi-structured interviews with government officials, academics, journalists, members of think tanks and policy institutes will be undertaken in Nairobi, Kenya. These interviews will provide vital insights into how African policy makers have exercised agency within negotiations.

As mentioned prior, African agency are often overlooked in the scholarly literature so far, which has provided undue focus on the promoter side of this process. Interviews with African policy makers will highlight the mutually constructed nature of autocracy promotion itself, demonstrating how recipients and promoters both play a vital role in how autocracy promotion operates.

To complement the interviews, archival visits and document analysis will also be undertaken, both to explore negotiations undertaken during the Cold War, alongside being used to corroborate interview data.

With this project highlighting agency exercising and decision-making on the part of recipient authoritarian states in how they shape outcomes related to autocracy promotion, it is anticipated that this project's findings could contribute to wider understandings of the process of Russian and Chinese authoritarian support, and how best this can be counteracted by Western governments and democracy promoters.