External autocracy promotion? The autocratic potential of Russian and Chinese foreign policies

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