Building autocracy in the twenty-first century: Three monumental strategies

This article discusses the question how autocracies in the twenty-first century try to use the built environment to increase their legitimacy. It first briefly discusses whether monumentality is distinctly autocratic or not. It then endorses the argument recently made by social scientists that autocracies in the twenty-first century differ significantly from dictatorships in the twentieth century. Three strategies of autocratic construction are then identified: A traditional one, which seeks to increase the legitimacy of an autocratic regime through both monumentality and modernization; a populist-authoritarian one, which uses the built environment to convey a message about who constitutes the “real people;” and, finally—and most in line with the innovative nature of some twenty-first-century autocracies—a strategy which appropriates distinctly subversive or even counter-cultural ideas to rebrand autocracy.