Theses - Political Science

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Browsing Theses - Political Science by Author "Bah, Musa"

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    Unravelling the dynamics of authoritarian strategies : a comparative study of Suharto’s new order in Indonesia and Jammeh’s rule in the Gambia
    (Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia, 2024) Bah, Musa; Gde Dwitya Arief Metera; Djayadi Hanan
    The dynamics of authoritarian power consolidation is receiving more attention today than it has ever been before as a result of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. However, there exists an undertheorized and variations on autocrat’s decision calculus for prioritizing repression over co-optation, vice versa. Drawing from this, I make two assumptions that state: 1. Low resource endowment leads to high repression, and 2. High resource endowment leads to low repression and high co-optation. To understand this phenomenon, I compared Yahya Jammeh (1994–2016) in the Gambia (a low resource authoritarian regime) and Suharto (1966–1998) in Indonesia (a high resource authoritarian regime). I used the Gambian case (1994-2016) to explain the first assumption, and the second assumption is examined using the case of Indonesia (1965-1998). By observation, both regimes on the surface appear similar as both were military juntas in Muslimmajority countries. However, the literature shows that their authoritarian strategies and tactics varied in profoundly – Jammeh primarily imposed repression as strategy, whereas Suharto was inclined more towards co-optation. However, I do not argue that this explanation is exclusive, as it is context dependent. To examine this phenomenon, I drew data from government websites, international reports, journal articles, news outlets, and other online resources. Thus, this study intends to contribute to the understanding of autocrats’ decision-making strategyies.