International democracy and autocracy support and the agency of recipient states: the cases of Kenya and Ethiopia, 1963-2018

This thesis addresses the relationship between African authoritarian governments, and their agency-leveraging capacity with external actors; China, Russia, and Western donors. It focuses in on the phenomenon of autocratic support; the process of external actors supporting and stabilising authoritarian recipient governments by supplying material, political, and diplomatic support. More specifically, it asks how governments receiving autocratic assistance exercise agency and decision-making powers when negotiating for support from external actors. In this thesis, a framework of agency-leveraging strategies that recipient authoritarian governments use to capture autocratic support is developed, through case studies of Ethiopian and Kenyan governments from 1963 until 2018. It is emphasised that in foreign policy negotiations, there exists significant scope for African authoritarian governments to negotiate and leverage their importance- and global dynamics between Western and non-Western supporters to make greater gains from external assistance. Utilising both the existing literature on this subject, and empirical data arising from interviews and archives, this thesis develops a framework of agency-leveraging strategies that African governments frequently use when in discussions with external actors. This analysis reveals that these governments have consistently used strategies from the agency-leveraging framework to bolster and stabilise their rule and capture greater levels of assistance from external donors. These strategies include the development of narratives of authoritarian stability, the aligning of political aims and interests between recipient governments and supporters, and the use of historical legacies to endear supporters to gain greater benefits for recipients. The choice of strategies used by governments in both states has been motivated by the domestic politics in both states, including the level of domestic legitimacy the government has, alongside domestic, regional, and international crises and threats.