#906 Suthan Krishnarajan: Regime Instability and Support for Democracy and Autocracy

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Decent. I'm your host as always Ricard Loops. And today I'm joined by Doctor Sudan Krishna Ryan. He is associate professor in Political Science at a University in Denmark. His research agenda seeks to understand and explain political regime instability. And today we're going to talk about democratic regimes, autocratic regimes, their instability and stability and citizen support for democracy. So Doctor Krish Krishna Rayan, welcome to the show. It's a big pleasure to everyone.

00:38 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. Thanks for, for having me and thank you Ricardo for, for doing this show. I think it's important that we disseminate our research to, to a broad audience. Uh AND series like yours are a vital part of this. So, so thank you as well.

00:52 Ricardo Lopes: Well, thank you for the kind words and it's my pleasure. So let me start by asking you a basic question, I guess. So, from the perspective of political science, what is democracy? I mean, how does a political scientist define democracy?

01:12 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, that's uh probably one of the, the toughest questions to ask because there are almost as many definitions of democracy as you have scholars of democracy, people disagree heavily about what is democracy, how should we define this very contested concept? Um I think in its, in its broadest sense, you would argue that democracy is ruled by the people, right? So you and me, ordinary citizens, we decide who our leaders are. Um But beyond this very general understanding, people disagree heavily about what is democracy. Uh Right now, there seems to be some kind of consensus that we have to start somewhere. Uh And where we start is usually with the most famous democracy scholar Robert Dahl, who argues that democracy or poli archy as he calls it consists of seven attributes, you need seven attributes in a country before you can call you self and electoral democracy. And those seven are, first of all, you need control over the government by elected officials. So you elect some leaders and they could then run the government. That's like the first criterion. Um Then you also need free and fair elections obviously. So no cheating, no unfair elections, it should be free and fair elections. That's the second thing you need in the country. You also need the third thing namely inclusive suffrage. So all adults should be able to, to vote. Uh And you also need the right to run for office. That's 1/4 thing. So all adults should be able to run for office if they wish to do so. So there should be competition for, for power. The fifth is that there should be freedom of expression. So you should be able to say whatever you want. No censorship. Uh AND it should also be, this is the sixth freedom of information. So you should be allowed to read any books you want. What's the news you want? Uh READ newspapers you want, there should be no blocking of information. And finally you need freedom of association. So if you're dissatisfied and you want to go protest, you should be allowed to do that. So this is what we agree on right now is like the electoral core of democracy. If you don't have these things, then you're not a democracy at all, then you're an autocracy. But if you have these seven attributes, then you would be called some kind of electoral democracy, then you have like the core attributes of what you could call a democracy. This does not mean that you cannot become even more democratic. So you could add different dimensions to this core element of democracy. So for example, you could add a liberal component, you could have uh rule of law, you could have horizontal accountability, then you would be a liberal democracy like Denmark, for example, you could also improve your democracy in terms of deliberation. So you could be better at discussing politics among each other. Uh Then you would have a more deliberative democracy. You would also have uh improvements on the participatory dimensions. So more people engage in democracy, more people engage in voting, in parties and so on and so forth, then you have a more participatory democracy. So the idea is that you have this electoral core, the dials attributes on which you can then add other elements to become even more democratic. But most would agree that if you don't have these electoral components, then you're not in democracy. If you have them, then you have the electoral components of what you would term democracy. So I think this is where we have some kind of consensus right now.

04:45 Ricardo Lopes: But aren't there uh a few countries? I mean, first of all, perhaps I should ask you, is are there any countries out there which fulfill all of those criteria? And I if not, I mean, aren't there perhaps a few countries that we still consider democratic even though they do not perfectly uh fulfill all of those criteria?

05:15 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, I mean, we have many countries who fulfill like Daal's criteria, the 71. BUT then when you add even higher criterias, then it becomes fewer and fewer countries, right? So there's like a, a reverse trade off. So uh the more attributes you add the less countries, what to these standards, right? Um But in general you say that the world's most democratic countries would be countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, uh Ireland, Canada, uh countries like this generally live up to many of these very high standards. And then you have countries that have some defects uh but are still very democratic. I mean, uh UK the US uh Spain Italy, France, Germany who are also very democratic countries but, but like some, some of these attributes and then of course, you have countries that are like close to being autocratic uh where there's a debate. Is it auto autocracy now? Is democracy? Uh I mean, Poland Hungary, Turkey, India, you have these countries that are borderline between autocracy and democracy. So you have like a whole specter of countries where for some, you, you know, these are democratic countries but for others, you, you disagree some think they are some think they are not. Um And then you clearly have some countries that are clearly autocratic, right? North Korea, Syria countries like that. So there's a spectrum of countries. Uh SOME are more democratic than others and some we disagree with uh among each other.

06:49 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I was just trying to understand if, for example, a particular country does not uh have all of those seven basic attributes. If we can still uh consider it a democracy as I think we do with some countries, right?

07:08 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, I mean, so Dar Dar would say if you don't have all seven, then you do not live up to these standards, right? So take Turkey, for example, I mean, uh many would take Dar's criteria and say Turkey is no longer a democracy because uh you don't have the freedom of information. You don't have the freedom of expression, for example, in Turkey right now. So they have moved from being a democracy to being an autocracy now. Uh So that's an example of a country that has moved in the wrong direction in terms of DAS attributes. So, so yeah, uh Dal would say you need all seven before you can call yourself uh uh what he calls poli achy, but this is what we would term democracy in our conversation.

07:48 Ricardo Lopes: So when it comes to understanding uh how and why people support democratic regimes and I will get into that into how important is it, it is for democracies to have the support of their own citizens. But how do people form democratic support? Do we know that?

08:13 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, I mean, um it also differs in terms of where you live, right? So if you take old Western democracies, uh many people are just brought up by, by democracy, right? They, they have been internalized throughout their lives. That democracy is the only game in town. Uh Democracy is the only correct way to rule a country. Uh So many Western democracies, democracy hold what we might term intrinsic value. So it's good in itself. So no matter how it performs, people think democracy is the only correct way to govern a society. It's the only socially accepted form of government basically in newer democracies, in younger democracies, you don't have this internalization. So here democracy is more uh instrumental in a way it relies on performance legitimacy. So as long as it performs well, people support it. But if it one day stops performing, then people turn their backs to, to democracy. So here it's more instrumental, it's a lighter version of democratic support. So there's this difference and it depends among other things on whether you live in an old democracy, like in many Western countries or whether you have just started living in a democracy. So it depends on, on that among other things.

09:33 Ricardo Lopes: So let me ask you about one specific factor that might play a role here. Uh IS democratic support influenced in any way by economic experiences in early life.

09:48 Suthan Krishnarajan: Uh Yeah, in general, uh events in early life are very important for, for your support for democracy. Uh There are scholars who actually started this in, in quite interesting projects, for example, as a scholar from Glasgow and Ginor, together with other colleagues Finkel and others who have a large project on this. Uh And what they argue and what they find is that there is some kind of nostalgia for the good old days. So uh if you have, if you're brought up during a period of autocracy, it could be in Tunisia or Eastern Germany and you now live in a democracy. Many people for that generation actually think back on the good old days when things were simpler, more stable, think back to the autocratic days and actually long for that. Uh um And you can find the same thing just in reverse if you was brought up in a democracy, now, live on autocracy. You could also argue that it would be the same pattern. Uh So basically, the idea is that people long back to what they had during the childhood. If they had a good experience with that, then they have this nostri that, that sticks throughout their lives. So your experiences ear early in your, in your childhood in your young youth period are very important for, for how you think about regimes later on in your life. So there's definitely a close relationship here.

11:11 Ricardo Lopes: So if in your early years you live in an autocracy, you can still long for uh going back to it even though it might have had certain issues.

11:26 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. So, I mean, so the authors here, they have tested this in Tunisia, for example. Uh Tunisia is an interesting case because it was for long uh an autocracy, right? And then after the Arab Arab Spring, uh it became a democracy. Uh But despite this, despite the freedoms that people certainly got a large proportion of citizens actually long back to the life they had uh back in the good old autocratic days, not all, but that's a significant part who thought this way. Uh So, so, yeah, despite the fact that democracy brings something, uh uh some people have this autocratic nostalgia um that we should be aware of.

12:06 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm And with that in mind. Uh Of course, people are worried about this or sometimes worry about this. I, if uh people, citizens in western democracies really do support democracy, do we know if they do? What do we know about that?

12:27 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's a good question. That's also what I research on these days. So we, if you ask people directly, do you support democracy? Uh Almost all say yes. Uh So almost all say yes, I support democracy very much. Um And I think they actually mean it, I think it's in, especially in western democracies, it's in people's core values to support democracy. Uh So people in western democracies at least want to live in a democracy, they want freedom, they want all the things that come with living in a democracy. So people mean it when they say yes, I support democracy, but you also have to separate support for democracy from satisfaction with democracy. Often these things get conflated because you can easily on the one hand support democracy and think this is the only way, only good way to go on a society. And on the other hand, be very dissatisfied with how it actually works in your country. Um So you can support democracy and be dissatisfied with how it works in your country. You can easily have both intimates. We need to be careful not to conflate these two sentiments. Uh You can have one and also have the other. Uh BUT if you talk about support for democracy, then yes, during the last 50 years, if you ask people year after year, it's very, very stable, very, very high. Most people in western societies support democracy. We demand a lot from democracy. We are becoming more and more critical. Uh We hold it to higher, higher esteem. So we want more and more from it and therefore many get dissatisfied, but we support democracy. That's very clear. We want to live in democracy, at least in, in western societies.

14:11 Ricardo Lopes: But about the second point, you mentioned there about people being satisfied or not with democracy. Do we know anything about that? I mean, because even though people uh say that they support democracy, do we know if they are really satisfied with living in a democratic regime or at least with certain practices that they see occurring in democracy?

14:36 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yes. So that's the thing. So uh many are, are dissatisfied with democracy but it's actually fewer than we think. Uh If you look at the uh the data, at least for Europe for the last 50 years in most countries, satisfaction with democracy goes up actually. Uh But you don't hear much about this because the media like to portray the negative stories. That's the one that's the one people want to read about and hear about. But it is actually a positive story that satisfaction with democracy. Although low in some countries is going up in most places, we are getting more satisfied uh Despite what we hear in mainstream media. So, so I think that's always important to say that yes, democracy has its problems. We need to keep improving it. We need to take care of those who are not satisfied with democracy. But it is a fact that more and more people in most European democracies at least are getting more satisfied with democracy. It might be a different story in other places like in us and, and in in more developing democracies, but at least in Europe uh in most countries, people are getting more satisfied, not less with the democracies. And I think that's important also to mention.

15:49 Ricardo Lopes: So that, that's really interesting because many people worry uh about the rise of certain extreme right wing parties in certain European countries. And sometimes people point to things like uh the 2008 economic crisis and more recently, inflation and also the COVID pandemic and all of that. And uh they say or suggest that people uh are not, are no longer that satisfied with democracy. But according to what you're saying, across most, at least European countries, even with all of that over time, people are saying that they are more satisfied with democracy.

16:32 Suthan Krishnarajan: Actually, we saw a quite sharp dip after the 2008 crisis. So that's important to mention. So in almost all countries, it went sharply down to 2008 and the following years. But now, given the recoveries in most countries is rising again. So this is so that's an important qualification to make that 2008 to 2011 12 was a sharp decline in satisfaction with democracy across all, almost all countries. But we're getting back to the level in most countries before the crisis and actually beyond that level. Uh But it's also important to say, I'm not saying that there are no problems with democracies, right? I mean, uh we citizens, we we do act uh in inconsistent ways uh in many ways. So, so my point here is that the problem is not lack of support for democracy. The problem is not dissatisfaction with democracy. The problem is that we as ordinary citizens are quite inconsistent with our democratic values. So as I said, when we are asked directly to support democracy, then we say yes, but when we then have to act on this, then we are quite inconsistent. Um uh The scholars who started this in a very nice way. Uh The two scholars from Yale, uh Matt Graham and Milan Soli who, who in a quite forceful uh high contribution article showed that people are very inconsistent in terms of the democratic values. Um And what you should try to imagine here is uh try imagine that your politician or your party uh is acting undemocratically. So you have your party, your politician, he or she gives you all the policies, you want, you get taxes, you want, you get the social spending, you want, you get the immigration policy, you want, you get the health care, you want, you get the climate policy, you want, you get everything you want politically. However, this party of yours is acting undemocratically, he's violating core democratic rules and norms. Would you then in this situation, vote for the opposition, would you reject your party and vote for the opposition? You should, if you are a Democrat, right? Like small d Democrat, if you, if you really believe in democracy, you should punish your party despite all the politics you get and vote for the opposition. But the thing is very few will do this. When push comes to show we are not willing, at least most are not willing to punish our parties because we are partisans first and Democrats only second. So when politics conflict with democracy, then politics win. And this is a problem in our society is that we do support democracy, we do, we are pretty satisfied with it. But when it clashes with other values like political values, then politics wins. And this is the problem uh in many Western democracies that when push comes to show we are not willing to act consistently on our democratic values. We are likely to, to put all our values above democracy, for example, getting the politics we want. And this is one of the reasons why undemocratic politicians can get away with it because their voters don't punish them because politics is more important for most.

19:40 Ricardo Lopes: So, that's one of the main reasons why sometimes people support undemocratic behavior.

19:48 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, definitely. So, uh, if Trump does something, uh, well then, uh, Trump voters, they, they will just accept it because, uh, they, they will never vote for the Democrats. Politics is more important for them than, than, uh, getting the democracy. Right. Uh, AND this goes for both sides. It's not just a right wing thing. Uh It's both on the left and the right. We are willing to uh accept undemocratic behavior from our politicians as long as we get the policies we want because that's more important for us. Um And that's one of the main challenges in in western democracies. Um And then people can ask, so how can people live with themselves? How can they cope with this situation? Right? Uh And people have many coping mechanisms to, to accept that they do what they do. Um And a lot of research have examined how people actually deal with this tense situation. It must be to accept an undemocratic politician. Uh If I should just mention 41 reason would be simply the people acknowledge, yes, I'm supporting an undemocratic candidate, but this candidate or this party gives me the policies I want. So you just do it with open eyes, you just accept that politics is more important for you than democracy. That's one way to, to cope with this just to do it with, with eyes wide open a second opportunity. A possibility is to rationalize what you mean by democracy and non democracy. So this is what I do in my research. So what I find is that when people are confronted with undemocratic behavior from their side, so again, imagine your party or your politician acting undemocratically, then most people will actually just argue that this is not undemocratic. They rationalize, they tell themselves that this behavior that objectively might be undemocratic. They convince themselves that this is not undemocratic. It, it follows all democratic rules and norms. So they are not uh selling democracy to get policy. They're actually getting both democracy and politics because it's not undemocratic. So they keep simply rationalized and tell themselves that a certain undemocratic behavior is perfectly democratic. A third way is to accept that yes, I am supporting uh an undemocratic candidate, but I'm not voting for the opposition because they will be even worse. Uh If I vote for the opposition, then they would violate democracy even more and then democracy is doomed. So I support my candidate despite his or her flaws because the other side would be even more undemocratic. It would be even worse for democracy. So I'm kind of saving democracy by sticking to my candidate. That's the third way people cope with this by telling themselves that the other side is worse. 1/4 and final way they can cope with. This is by uh telling themselves that democracy is very strong. I mean, at least in western democracies, people don't think many don't think that their democracies can break down. I mean, they've been used to living in democracy for their whole lives so they don't know how fragile democracy is in reality. Uh So by telling yourself that democracy is strong, uh you can easily accept supporting one or two undemocratic candidates, right? It doesn't matter. Uh DEMOCRACY will, will stay despite the fact that you vote for this undemocratic candidate. Uh So that's like the fourth way to cope with this situation is by telling yourself that democracy can with uh withstand these candidates without any problems. Democracy is strong voting once or twice for this candidate does not make a difference. So, so there are many coping mechanisms, these are just four of them, but uh they show how people can uh live with themselves despite the fact that they vote for un democratic candidates from time to time. So

23:36 Ricardo Lopes: people are good at rationalizing their inconsistent positions to democracy.

23:44 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah, there are many ways to, to do so. Yeah.

23:47 Ricardo Lopes: So uh it's one thing for people to support democracy and be satisfied or not with it to different degrees. But uh one thing that uh some people also suggest is for us to try to intervene and improve citizens democratic values. I mean, is it possible to do that? At least from a scientific perspective. Are there any evidence-based interventions out there?

24:16 Suthan Krishnarajan: Uh There are few, but we don't know much about this right now. So we are slowly getting the diagnosis. Right. Right. So we are slowly understanding what the problem is. Uh But we are very, it's very early days for the intervention research. Uh It's right now, people are trying to work on this, trying to find out. So what can we do about it? How can we make people not vote for democratic candidates? How can we make people stick to the democratic core values? Um uh So we don't know much about it right now. Uh We know a bit and I can explain that to you. So one thing we can do at least on the long term, uh it's education, right? So back to the and Neo and Finkel and those uh those guys in that team, they show that civic education, democracy, education actually works. Uh You can educate people in understanding democracy, valuing democracy uh preferably at an early age in their lives. And that actually works in terms of getting people to become more democratic later in life. Uh This is like the long term intervention, right? Uh We can also do something on the short term now and here. Uh But this is where we really don't know much. Uh For example, there's this quite impressive mega study done by a team from Stanford University. Uh uh Wil Robb Willer and colleagues, what they did is that they acknowledged that we don't know anything about this. So they invited scholars, ordinary citizens practitioners to submit intervention suggestions to them. Uh They got more than 400 then they chose the 25 best or most promising interventions and tried to test them in the real world or test them in, in a big online sample of uh representative sample of Americans to see which of these 25 interventions worked. Unfortunately. Uh So almost all of these interventions worked in all the outcomes. They worked in terms of reducing polarization, for example. So that's great but almost non worked in terms of improving democratic norms, almost non worked in terms of making people stick to democracy uh and reject on democratic behavior. Uh So that's a sad story, a sad part of it. And it shows that we know very little about this. Um There were two interventions that worked. Uh ONE that worked was by telling people or by like correcting the misbelief about the other side. So telling them that the other side is not worse. So as I told before, this is one of the coping mechanisms, we support undemocratic behavior because we think the other side is worse and therefore we stick to our candidate. But this is not the case. I mean, the other side is not worse. Uh This, these are the facts that show this. So uh our political opponents are not more undemocratic than we are. They are as democratic and like democracy as much as we do. And if people are being told this, if people are being told that the other side is not worse, they love democracy as much as you do, then you yourself become less willing to support undemocratic behavior. Um And that actually works. So that's an intervention that works to, to tell people that uh we all appreciate to live in democracy and therefore we should stick to it. So by telling that the other side is not worse, you yourself become less uh undemocratic in a sense. Another intervention that worked uh uh is related to the the last force coping mechanism, namely this idea that democracy is strong and and not fragile because what they did here is that they showed a, a bunch of videos to respond. Uh A bunch of videos showing democracies in trouble. So democracy being attacked by coups, uh January 6th footage uh stuff like that. So showing a lot of videos of democracies in troubles. Uh AND what this had an effect was that it showed that democracies are not immune to these kind of troubles, it could happen in your country. And after watching these videos, the treatment group were less willing to support violations of democracy compared to the control group. So it also worked in terms of improving our democratic norms. So these are like the two interventions so far we know works but apart from this, we know very little about how we can make people stick to the democratic values. So we need to do more research and maybe in one or two years, uh I can tell you more about this.

28:41 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. Uh But do you have any idea about exactly what kind of research we would need specifically and what kind of knowledge we, we would need to have when it comes to developing more and better science based interventions to improving uh citizens, democratic values.

29:06 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. So I personally, I think we should focus on the coping mechanisms, right? So we need to take them one at a time and say, OK, how do people cope with the fact that they support on democratic candidates? And then we should try to block these coping mechanisms, right? So those two that worked, worked in terms of one of these four coping mechanisms I showed you. So that would be my suggestion to start with how do people overcome this dilemma and then try to block that ability to overcome that dilemma. So they have to reject our democratic behavior because we want people to act democratically, right? Uh I think that's one way another way is also to acknowledge that this is not a fringe phenomenon. We have this idea that those citizens who do this are on the flanks. Like I say, extreme citizens on the right wing or extreme left. These are the people we need to educate, right? But research showed that this is you and me, I mean, ordinary citizens, uh we all do this from time to time. We all have these biases inherent in us. So we shouldn't think that this is something other people do. We do it ourselves. We need to acknowledge that this is a mass phenomenon we like if not all, then most of us are inconsistent when push comes to show and we need to acknowledge this. So intervention should be aimed at the broad population, not just those on the fringes, you could easily think that. And then yeah, we need uh clear control treatment trials. Uh So what people do right now is online surveys. I think we should, we need more of that. So we have a control group and then we have a treatment group who undergo one kind of treatment. So it could be watching a video or, or reading some kind of information or, or doing something else and then to see the effects compared to the control group. So we need more of that kind of studies in order to be smart on this very important topic.

31:02 Ricardo Lopes: So uh uh when it comes to people satisfaction, satisfaction with democracy, I would like to ask you one specific question. So uh do we know if national elections are unequivocally good for that? For people's satisfaction with democracy?

31:21 Suthan Krishnarajan: That's a good question because uh uh one solution many people suggest is to make citizens participate more on democracy. There's this idea that the more participation, the better. Uh BUT I'm not sure this is the right way to go and you see this with national elections because it, it all depends on the experiences you have when you participate in the democratic process, if you have good experiences, then that sentiment sticks in the years to come and you become more satisfied with democracy. If you had bad experiences, last time you participated in the democratic process, then that bad sentiment sticks and you get more dissatisfied with democracy and you see this with the elections. So if your last election took place during uh uh economic growth period, then you are more satisfied with democracy in the years to come regardless of how the economy performs afterwards. On the other hand, last time you went to the polls, if there was a period of economic crisis and you had a bad experience that day, you, you had bad sentiment when you participate in democracy, then that bad feeling sticks in the years to come again, regardless of how the economy performs. So it all depends, it depends on whether you had good or bad experiences. Last time you participated in the democratic process and that sentiment is likely to stick until next time you, you go vote for example. So, so it all depends.

32:47 Ricardo Lopes: Uh YOU mentioned economic crisis there and earlier in our conversation, uh I brought to the table the 2008 economic crisis very briefly. So why is it that sometimes economic crisis lead to democratic breakdown and sometimes they don't.

33:07 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. So economic crisis is probably one of the most destabilizing events we know of uh in terms of regime stability. Uh AND one of the reasons is at least in, in, in many places around the world, people want basic necessities, right? I mean, they want to have a job, they want to be able to provide for the families, they want to uh have a decent living basically. And during an economic crisis, these things are, are threatened, you might lose your job, you might not be able to put food on the table to provide for your family. And when that happened, you turn your anger towards the regime and it goes both ways, both for autocracies and democracies. Uh YOU get dissatisfied and maybe you even will challenge the regime. Maybe you go to the street in a protest or at least you don't do anything if others try to topple the regime. So economic crisis are perhaps the most destabilizing events because it makes people very angry and very dissatisfied with whatever regime they have.

34:11 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And what other factors apart from economic crisis? Explain democratic breakdown.

34:20 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yes, I mean, uh age I think is uh perhaps one of the strongest expenditure factors. So the older the democracy, the more stable it is the younger the democracy, the more unstable and more likely to break down. It is uh so regime stability take many years to, to kind of build up. Um uh A good example is uh the interwar period. So the period between the 1st and 2nd World War, uh so at the end of the first world war, almost all countries in Europe were democracies. When the second world war started, half of the continent's democracies broke down. So it's a very, very neat laboratory to understand why some democracies broke down while others didn't. And what we see here is that all those countries, all those democracies that were democracy prior to First World War. So we could call them relatively old democracies. They all survived without exception, all those who broke down were new democracies. So countries that only became democracy after first World war, Germany, uh Italy, Spain uh countries like that. Um um Not to say that all young democracies broke down. We had some young democracies who survived uh Finland, for example. Uh But it is a very, very strong relationship. Um So the age of democracy or autocracy is very important, the older you are, the more stable you are basically. Um So that's uh that's important to know. Uh Then of course, economic crisis as we talked about. Uh BUT having a stable party system and strong civil society is also a good thing if you want a stable democracy. Um And then I think it's also important to mention external influence. So uh if you are in a democratic neighborhood, if you have a good democratic superpower next to you, that also makes your country more democratic. Uh On the other hand, if you have like an autocratic superpower next door, like like China or Russia, then it's much harder for you all to say, sustain your democracy because then you have this autocratic influence coming every day constantly from this autocratic superpower. So geography and international factors also matters a lot in terms of your survival chances.

36:39 Ricardo Lopes: So just a second ago, when I asked you about the effects of economic crisis, you also mentioned there that even in autocracies, they can sometimes lead to regime instability. So, but what happens specifically when autocratic leaders are exposed to economic crisis or how do they deal with it?

37:03 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yes, in many ways, it's kind of the same scenario, right? I mean, uh if an autocracy is experiencing crisis, they also face dissatisfaction from their citizens because they want the same thing. Uh People still want bread on the table to provide for the families a decent job. Uh So they also get the same challenges. Uh Often it is in different ways because autopsies are better at uh uh suppressing, at least tough autopsies are better at suppressing the center from below. Uh uh But perhaps they are more vulnerable to other types of breakdowns like coups, for example. So historically, coups has been the number one way to, to topple many, many regimes around the world. Uh So the leaders removed from by the military or all those within the state. So the point is they are also vulnerable during times of economic crisis, but they can also shield themselves. I mean, democracies don't break down every time there's a crisis and likewise, autocracies don't break down every time there's a crisis, they can shield themselves. For example, if they have natural resources, uh oil, uh diamonds, stuff like that, then they ensure this constant flow of money despite being in an economic crisis. And if they have this constant flow of money, then they can still pay off the core supporters of the regime and stay stable despite the crisis. So some autocracies are very stable despite the fact that they might have a crisis, especially if they have other sources of income, natural resource being one of the most important ones.

38:35 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So, I mean, when it comes to shielding themselves from, for example, revolutions, coups and assassination attempts, it's um uh many times a matter of having enough resources to do it.

38:52 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And preferably resources that are unrelated to the broad society. So no matter whether you're having a crisis or not, you'll get your oil income, right? I mean, uh oil country still need to buy the oil. So it's relatively unrelated to an economic crisis where you get your oil income or not. Uh So having this source of income that is unrelated to the broader societal economy, that's preferable as an autocrat because then you ensure a stable inflow of money that you can use to pay off your key supporters uh during this tough time. So that's a very important shield.

39:29 Ricardo Lopes: OK. So Doctor Krishna Rayan, uh just before we go, uh I, I mean, e even before I ask you, where can people find you on the internet? Would you like to tell us what are you working on at the moment and what work you will be doing in the near future?

39:47 Suthan Krishnarajan: Yes, I'm actually working on this intervention aspect. As I said, we don't know much about what can we do about this situation, right? In democracies, especially in western democracies, the fact that people are very inconsistent, they say they value democracy, but then they still support undemocratic candidates and many does. So how can we intervene and prevent this from happening? So this is what I'm working on right now. Uh And this very early days also in my research, so I don't have any concrete results right now, perhaps in a year or two. But I'm also, I've also jumped into this question right now because I think it's one of the most uh important and vital questions to ask uh in democracies today, how can we help people? How can we empower people to resist undemocratic behavior? So this is what I do right now.

40:38 Ricardo Lopes: OK. And where can people find your work on the internet.

40:43 Suthan Krishnarajan: Uh I mean, I have my web page student dot DK. Uh So it's just my name dot DK so that uh uh that should be straightforward. I have all my papers articles in there. Um And then also at the conferences, uh I'm going to, to Glasgow for IP S A conference uh uh in June. Uh So, yeah, there, I'm also available. Um I write me an email.

41:08 Ricardo Lopes: Ok, great. I will be leaving uh links to your work in the description box of this interview. Uh And thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It was really fun to talk to you and hopefully somewhere in the future you can come back to the show to talk about your uh current work. So

41:28 Suthan Krishnarajan: thank you, Ricardo.

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