Externe Autokratieförderung? Das autokratiefördernde Potenzial russischer und chinesischer Außenpolitik

After the Orange Revolution, political analysts linked the stagnation of democratisation processes in many parts of the world to nondemocratic regional powers, fi rst among them Russia and China. But so far no attempt has been made either to theorise the causal mechanisms gearing such nondemocratic exogenous regime infl uences, or to compare Russian and Chinese policies. We develop the concept of autocracy promotion in which we distinguish external policies that directly aim to restrict democratic rights in another country from policies that indirectly support authoritarian stability by enhancing the socioeconomic performance of a nondemocratic leadership. Based on this distinction, we conduct an empirical review of the respective Russian and Chinese policies. We find that Russian policymakers tend more towards a direct approach to autocracy promotion, while the Chinese approach is more indirect.