The international relations of small neoauthoritarian states: Islamism, warlordism, and the framing of stability

The literature on democratization and authoritarian survival has rightfully studied the role external forces play in such processes. These external actors and structural constraints are said to be especially substantial when dealing with small and poor authoritarian states. Although this literature acknowledges that small states are not entirely powerless when confronting hegemonic external forces, little effort has been made to refine and specify the role they play and the actions they undertake to engage international democratization pressures. This paper addresses this lacuna by using the framing approach and the concept of "extraversion'" to analyze the process by which weak African authoritarian states draw on and change the representations that Western powers hold about them. These representations provide a specific lens through which Western governments and experts look at political dynamics in developing countries, and eventually shape policies toward these countries. This paper analyzes how two small authoritarian African regimes, Guinea and Mauritania, have enacted a series of performances such as the arrests of alleged "Islamists," "warlords," and other transnational "subversive threats," thereby framing their domestic and foreign policies in ways that can resonate with hegemonic international discourses, seeking to obtain either more support from Western states or to lower their democratization pressure (or both).