The Power of Indoctrination:

China, The Soviet Union, and Islamic Iran, have one thing in common: a deep ideological or doctrinal core. China has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Marxism-Leninism for the Soviets, and Shi'a Islamism for Iran.

Fisher claims some autocracies have grown exceptionally skilled at managing public anger through their prioritizing of management of dissent over outright suppression, and the practical benefits for preventing internal fissures they get from being a revolutionary government.

While Fisher does a good job of examining the surface level factors behind their newfound resilience, there's a deeper factor to be examined. The doctrinal core that unites the three regimes mentioned by Fisher, is the fundamental factor that provides this resilience.

With a doctrinal core, ideology or revolutionary order, elites and state actors are bound to something larger than any single ruler. This loyalty underpinning the dictatorship is what gives cohesion and unity amongst elites and state actors, thus deepening the infrastructural capacity of the state and making it harder for protests to fracture the regime from within and take it down.

How does unity help the regime?

It gives it high infrastructural power to manage dissent effectively. Even Fisher commends China for being "especially skilled at maintaining unity among the country's elite," characterized as a deciding factor in protests attempting to create systemic change.

Authoritarian states have high infrastructural power, coming from strong institutions (Mann, 1984). These institutions built and run by the elites and state actors are strengthened by their unity and cohesion, thus setting the backbone for the infrastructural power of such regimes.

We see this with China through their exceptional management of dissent. China sees thousands of protests every year, and even when officials are taken by surprise, like in the two protests Fisher mentions, the regime is effective in containing them by using its deep infrastructural capabilities, that includes being a global leader in digital repression and surveillance technology, to spread propaganda and promote fissures in movements.

What else does this unity provide?

It keeps protests as outside pressures without access or leverage, making such regimes more resilient.

Success of pressure groups is dependent on their highest accessible level and presence of insider groups that can put pressure that leads to systemic change (Newton and Van Deth, 2012). Fisher also alludes to this saying that protests will fizzle out if China's elite do not break ties with Xi. Fissures among the elite granting protests access to internal pressure points in the regime are needed for protests to succeed, and strong unity amongst elite and state actors prevents this. One of the benefits Fisher states China got from being a revolutionary government is exactly this, few internal rivals or threats and closure of high-level fissures that protests movements need to force leadership change.

So what makes these revolutionary governments exceptional at maintaining this unity?

Having a strong ideology or doctrine that the state is based on is correlated with stronger institutions, and greater unity amongst elites and state actors.

The three states fit into the definition of Totalitarian/Authoritarian states. The characteristics of such states relevant to us are strong institutions, and a strong ideological core that they are built on (Linz and Stepan, 1996). This would also lead to united elites/state actors. In China the core would be the CCP, which has entrenched, "deep party roots in everything from business boardrooms to local village affairs" (Fisher, 2022). This is also seen as features of the revolutionary government: "A deeply institutionalized party bureaucracy. Internally enforced hierarchies of power. Pervasive political control of security and military forces" (Fisher, 2022).

These states are historically also less susceptible to political change as there are less fissures within the regime to exploit.

For example, after Stalin the Soviet Union became a Post-Totalitarian state, characterised by ideological and institutional weakening with elites beginning to lose conviction in the rule, leading to "parallel societies" emerging with different ideologies (Linz and Stepan, 1996). This is one of the factors thought to have eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Even Fisher says, autocracies odds of collapsing increase "as public support erodes and as cracks widen within the ruling elite."

Protests are effective at toppling dictatorships when they exploit fractures in the coalition behind the regime. However, where elites and state actors are bound to a larger ideology or doctrine over one ruler, these fractures are harder to be seen. Thus we say durable dictatorships have power embedded in a system larger than the dictator itself.

So the real source of resilience for the revolutionary regimes that Fisher mentions is the doctrinal loyalty underpinning the dictatorship. Protest is far less dangerous when the state's actors see themselves as defending a doctrine, a party, or revolutionary project rather than serving one man.

Dictatorships that succeed in making doctrine go beyond individual actors within the state, stand the test of time as movements can live forever. Dictators must emulate "messiahs," who bring doctrine to fruition and keep it running. Then movements have to go beyond these messiahs, finding power of its own to keep state actors subordinate and united.

The irony of it all is that the dictators who seem to hold "unlimited" power must then become subordinate to the very cause that brought them to power, in hopes of retaining said power indefinitely.