1.10 - Political Stability
Internal actors, meaning groups and forces within a country, interact with governments in ways that either strengthen or threaten regime stability and the rule of law. How states respond to these actors really shapes political stability overall.
Combating Political Corruption
Different regime types take very different approaches to corruption, with very different levels of success.
Democratic approaches tend to rely on independent anti-corruption agencies that can investigate officials without political interference and bring charges transparently, judicial independence so judges can't be removed for unfavorable rulings and courts can actually prosecute corruption, and free media that exposes wrongdoing through investigative journalism without fear of censorship. Mexico created its National Anti-Corruption System after citizen pressure, setting up independent oversight bodies, though entrenched interests still resist implementation. The UK relies on independent police investigations, judicial prosecution, and aggressive media scrutiny, and the parliamentary expenses scandal showed these accountability mechanisms work even against elected officials.
Authoritarian approaches often involve selective enforcement that targets political opponents while protecting allies, top-down campaigns controlled entirely by leadership with no independent oversight, and limited transparency that restricts information and punishes whistleblowers. China's anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping removed thousands of officials, including high-ranking ones, but critics note it also happened to eliminate Xi's political rivals and consolidate his power. Russia prosecutes some corruption but protects connected officials, and when opposition figures like Alexei Navalny exposed government corruption, they ended up persecuted rather than the officials they exposed.
The scale of China's campaign is huge: by 2022 the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said it had investigated more than 4.6 million people since 2012, including 553 senior officials at the vice-minister level or above. In 2018 China added a state body, the National Supervisory Commission, which can hold suspects for months without a lawyer. In Russia, Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation was labeled a "foreign agent" in 2019 and banned as "extremist" in 2021, and Navalny himself was jailed in 2021 and died in an Arctic prison colony in February 2024.
Hybrid systems often have weak institutional enforcement despite having anti-corruption laws on the books. Nigeria has agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), but corruption remains widespread because selective prosecution and political interference limit how effective these agencies can be.
Iran fights corruption mainly through its judiciary, whose head is appointed by the Supreme Leader. In 2018, as the currency crashed, Khamenei approved special courts for economic crimes that could hand out death sentences, and two men convicted of illegally trading gold coins and foreign currency were executed that November. Critics say enforcement is selective: the powerful bonyads (religious charitable foundations) and businesses tied to the Revolutionary Guard are largely shielded from scrutiny.
State Responses to Separatist Violence
How governments handle groups seeking independence or autonomy affects stability quite a bit. Some negotiate and accommodate, granting autonomy, negotiating settlements, and addressing grievances through power-sharing. Others rely on military suppression, deploying security forces, running counterinsurgency operations, and declaring states of emergency.
Nigeria's response to Biafran separatist sentiment has swung between military action during the civil war (1967 to 1970) and more recent suppression of Indigenous People of Biafra protests, and heavy-handed approaches have sometimes intensified rather than resolved tensions. Iran suppresses Kurdish, Arab, and Baloch separatist movements through military force, which maintains territorial integrity but creates ongoing instability along its borders.
Nigeria's line has stayed hard: Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which a Nigerian court labeled a terrorist organization in 2017, was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to life in prison in November 2025. Mexico's closest case went differently: the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas sought indigenous autonomy rather than independence, and after about 12 days of fighting the government declared a ceasefire and negotiated.
State Responses to Drug Trafficking
How governments deal with drug cartels shapes stability and rule of law too. A militarized approach deploys the military against cartels, runs aggressive operations to capture leaders, and treats trafficking as a national security threat. Mexico's "war on drugs" militarized the conflict, and while it captured or killed cartel leaders, it also fragmented organizations, increased violence, failed to actually reduce trafficking, and raised human rights concerns by putting the military into policing roles.
A law enforcement approach instead strengthens police and judicial capacity, focuses on prosecution and incarceration, and builds up institutional capability over time.
Drug trafficking organizations can also infiltrate government directly, undermining state authority through bribery, intimidation, and violence against officials. Mexican cartels have infiltrated local police and government offices, creating what's known as "plata o plomo" situations, silver or lead, where officials either accept bribes or face assassination.
Mexico's approach has swung back and forth. Felipe Calderón launched the militarized war on drugs in 2006. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018 to 2024) promised "hugs, not bullets," focusing on social programs, but he also created a National Guard in 2019 and, through a 2024 constitutional reform, put it under the Defense Ministry. Claudia Sheinbaum has gone harder after cartel leaders: Mexico sent 92 cartel figures to the United States between February 2025 and January 2026, and in February 2026 the army killed Nemesio Oseguera ("El Mencho"), leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which set off cartel roadblocks and burned vehicles across several states.
Iran sits on a major smuggling route for opium and heroin from Afghanistan and treats drug trafficking as a security threat, using the death penalty heavily. A 2017 reform raised the amounts of drugs needed for a death sentence, but drug executions rose again in the 2020s.
State Responses to Discrimination
How governments handle gender and religious discrimination affects both stability and legitimacy. Some states offer legal protections: constitutional equality guarantees, anti-discrimination laws, and enforcement mechanisms. Others actually institutionalize discrimination in law, through religious restrictions on participation, gender-based legal inequality, or unequal citizenship rights.
Iran's legal system institutionalizes gender discrimination: women need male permission for certain activities, inheritance law favors men, and testimony is weighted differently by gender. This creates ongoing tension as women's rights activists push back, and the government's repression in response destabilizes its own legitimacy. Nigeria faces both religious discrimination issues, since Sharia law in northern states affects non-Muslims' rights, and ethnic discrimination, where some groups face marginalization in political positions and resource allocation, fueling conflicts. Mexico's indigenous populations face discrimination in legal systems and services, and efforts to recognize indigenous rights and provide bilingual services aim to reduce these inequalities.
Religious discrimination is built into Iran's system too: the constitution reserves five seats in the Majles (parliament) for recognized religious minorities (Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians), but the Bahá'í faith isn't recognized, and its followers are barred from universities and often jailed. In September 2022, Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran's morality police after being arrested for wearing her hijab "improperly," setting off the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests. The regime cracked down hard (human rights groups count more than 500 protesters killed), but in December 2024 its Supreme National Security Council put a harsh new hijab law on hold before it could take effect. Mexico has used the law against gender discrimination: a 2019 constitutional reform requires gender parity across government, and Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico's first woman president in 2024.
State Responses to Mass Protests
How regimes handle protests reveals a lot about their character and affects stability.
Democratic responses tend toward accommodation and reform: protecting the right to peaceful protest, negotiating with protest leaders, and implementing policy changes to address grievances. The UK generally allows protests, and when students protested tuition increases, police facilitated the demonstrations while the political system debated the policy, maintaining stability by accommodating dissent rather than crushing it.
Authoritarian responses lean toward repression: deploying security forces, arresting leaders, using violence to disperse crowds, and banning demonstrations outright. China's 1989 Tiananmen Square protests ended with a military crackdown that killed hundreds to thousands, and while it maintained short-term stability, it undermined the regime's legitimacy and required ongoing censorship ever since. Iran's response to the 2009 Green Movement protests involved mass arrests, violence, and executions, which kept the regime in power but badly damaged its legitimacy.
Iran used the same approach against the 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests and again in January 2026, when it shut down the internet nationwide and killed thousands of protesters (see 1.9).
Hybrid approaches involve selective tolerance, allowing some protests while suppressing others depending on the issue. Russia permits some protests with permits but suppresses unsanctioned or anti-regime demonstrations through arrests and violence, a way of maintaining control while still allowing some dissent to be expressed. Mexico constitutionally protects protest rights, but responses vary a lot in practice: some protests get police protection while others, especially those challenging powerful interests, face harassment or violence, leading to inconsistent application of the law.
Nigeria's response to the 2020 #EndSARS protests was mixed too. Young Nigerians marched against abuses by the police's Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), and the government disbanded the unit on October 11, 2020, but on October 20 soldiers opened fire on protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos. A Lagos judicial panel later called it a massacre, which the army denies.
Limiting Divisive and Violent Actors
States across regime types try to limit divisive and violent actors partly to attract private capital and foreign investment and boost economic growth. Investors want a predictable security environment, rule of law protecting their assets, stable politics, and reduced violence. So both democratic and authoritarian regimes work to suppress violent extremist groups, reduce ethnic conflict, and control criminal organizations, all in part to look stable to international investors.
Nigeria's fight against Boko Haram is partly driven by the need to attract oil industry investment, and continued violence in the Niger Delta and northeast scares off investors worried about security. China maintains tight control over Xinjiang partly to secure transportation routes for its Belt and Road Initiative, and its suppression of Uyghur resistance, however violent, is partly meant to demonstrate control to potential investors. Mexico's inability to control cartel violence deters investment too, since businesses face extortion and uncertainty that hurts economic growth, which motivates the government's anti-cartel operations.
Internal Reform Pressure
Citizen protest groups and civil society can create internal pressure that leads to new institutions or policies protecting rights and improving governance. This pressure comes from civil society organizations, student movements, labor unions, religious groups, media, and broader social movements.
When this pressure succeeds, it can produce real change:
Civil liberties protections, like expanded speech and press freedom, assembly and association rights, and due process protections. In Mexico, civil society pressure led to a National Human Rights Commission (created in 1990 and made fully independent in 1999). After the 1994 Zapatista uprising, a 2001 constitutional reform recognized indigenous peoples' rights, though the Zapatistas said it fell short of the 1996 San Andrés Accords they had negotiated, and a 2011 reform added internationally recognized human rights to the constitution.
Improved transparency, through freedom of information laws, public budget disclosure, and open government meetings. The UK's Freedom of Information Act (2000) came partly from civil society pressure and lets citizens request government documents.
Election fairness, through independent election administration, monitoring, and reduced fraud. Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (now INE) was created after massive civil society pressure following the fraudulent 1988 election, and the independent authority now runs credible elections.
Reform pressure can also target media bias in elections. After complaints about attack ads and unequal coverage in Mexico's 2006 race, a 2007 reform banned parties and outside groups from buying TV and radio ads and had the electoral institute hand out free airtime instead. Russia's 2011 to 2012 protests won some changes too: in 2012 direct elections for governors came back and registering a new party got much easier, though a "municipal filter" on governor candidates and later crackdowns on opposition parties blunted both. In Nigeria, civil society pressure helped produce the 2022 Electoral Act's electronic accreditation and online results, but when the 2026 Electoral Act left out the mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results that opposition lawmakers and civil society groups had demanded, they accused the government of weakening transparency before the 2027 elections.
Media independence, through protections for journalists, diverse ownership, and less censorship. Nigeria's vibrant independent media sector exists partly because civil society defended press freedom against government restrictions.
Anti-corruption measures, through oversight bodies, whistleblower protections, and prosecution mechanisms. In Russia, civil society tried to pressure for reform through organizations like Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, but the government's authoritarian response, labeling them "foreign agents" and imprisoning leaders, blocked reform, showing how regime type shapes whether pressure actually succeeds.
Equality under law, through anti-discrimination provisions and equal rights legislation. Iran's women's rights activists keep pushing for legal reform through campaigns against mandatory hijab and unequal family law, and even facing repression, sustained pressure has produced some minor reforms and kept the issues visible.
When reform pressure fails, it's usually because authoritarian regimes resist it by repressing civil society, imprisoning activists and journalists, banning protests, restricting foreign funding to NGOs, and labeling reformers as foreign agents. This resistance can maintain short-term stability, but it builds underlying tension that may eventually destabilize the regime once pressure builds up beyond what can be suppressed.
Bottom line: political stability depends heavily on how governments interact with these internal actors. Handling corruption, conflict, discrimination, and protest through rule of law and responsive policy builds stability, while relying mainly on repression might hold things together short-term but creates legitimacy problems underneath. Economic motivations push even authoritarian regimes to limit violence, and successful civil society pressure drives reforms that strengthen governance overall.