Limits of autocratic learning: institutional constraints on policy diffusion in Eurasian autocracies

In the twenty-first century, several Eurasian autocracies have successfully reformed their institutions of governance and emerged as high-capacity regulatory states. Much of this transformation occurred through institutional diffusion and regulatory policy transfer. Eurasian autocracies have borrowed policies and institutions from democratic regimes, successfully adapting them to serve the autocrats’ benefit. But can we successfully identify which types of policies and institutions are likely to diffuse across regime types? Focusing on economic regulatory policies in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia, this paper investigates constraints on autocrats’ ability to improve institutional quality. I argue that the political strategies of regime survival affect the extent to which autocratic states can ‘borrow’ best practice policies and institutions from democratic regimes, leaving them with fewer institutional options for building effective states. By linking mechanisms of policy implementation to political strategies, this research explores the limits of policy diffusion and institutional borrowing in autocracies.