Digital authoritarianism and political settlements: a theory-building framework for understanding regime survival strategies in Eastern European hybrid regimes

Abstract

This thesis examined how personalised political settlement types shape digital authoritarian strategies for regime survival in Eastern European hybrid regimes. Existing scholarship on regime survival, digital authoritarianism, and political settlements analysis addresses different dimensions of this problem but lacks a framework connecting the structural configuration of ruling coalitions to the organisation of digital governance tools. The thesis developed a six-layer analytical framework bridging these three literatures and conducted a plausibility probe of its first three layers through a structured, focused comparison of Georgia and Serbia across 2022–2024, combining qualitative document analysis with quantitative triangulation. The findings indicated that settlement type shaped not which digital tools regimes possessed but how overlapping repertoires were organised into distinct configurations. Serbia's personalised dominant settlement produced a knowing–behaviour operative axis, where surveillance directly generated behavioural compliance through chilling effects and institutional intimidation, with beliefs serving a complementary role. Georgia's personalised competitive settlement produced a belief–behaviour sequential linkage, where narrative construction delegitimised organised outsiders before legal-administrative instruments codified those categories into enforceable obligations. The enabling logic also diverged: Serbia's digital means were institutionally embedded through captured institutions, while Georgia's were legally constructed, application-layer, and functionally deniable. The probe found evidence consistent with three propositions and partially consistent with the fourth, which required qualification due to observational limitations on insider targeting in secondary sources. The findings also generated refinements: knowing can itself become disciplinary under dominant conditions, deniability varies by governance function rather than by settlement type, and legal construction and institutional capture operate in sequence rather than as alternatives. The framework offers a structural explanation for variation in digital authoritarian configurations and identifies directions for geographic extension, methodological deepening, and full operationalisation.