Liberal autocracy: Possibility and stability

Abstract For more than twenty years under Chinese rule, Hong Kong was a liberal autocracy: it had the rule of law and ample freedoms without full democracy. Since 2020, however, Hong Kong’s freedoms have rapidly declined. This Article examines the case of Hong Kong to understand the factors that contribute to the sustenance and decline of liberal autocracy. It highlights two considerations that underlie an autocrat’s calculus for maintaining liberalism. The first is the perceived level of threat to the autocrat’s rule posed by such maintenance: the lower the perceived threat, the more likely the autocrat is to maintain liberalism. Hong Kong’s experience suggests a possible sequence in which the decline of liberalism may occur: the autocrat may puncture the rule of law first and then, only upon further escalation of the perceived threat, proceed to use the law for the large-scale repression of human rights. Hong Kong’s experience also suggests the instability of a model of liberal autocracy that includes extensive freedoms of political expression, and the challenges of using such a model to transition towards liberal democracy. The second consideration in the autocrat’s calculus is the extent to which the polity is economically independent of the maintenance of liberalism: the greater the extent, the less likely the autocrat is to maintain liberalism. Hong Kong’s experience has relevance not just for the sustenance of what liberalism is left in the territory, but also for the maintenance of liberal enclaves within authoritarian states more generally, as well as for liberal regimes dealing with such states.