What drives politics in dictatorships? Milan W. Svolik argues authoritarian regimes must resolve two fundamental conflicts. Dictators face threats from the masses over which they rule - the problem of authoritarian control. Secondly from the elites with whom dictators rule - the problem of authoritarian power-sharing. Using the tools of game theory, Svolik explains why some dictators establish personal autocracy and stay in power for decades; why elsewhere leadership changes are regular and institutionalized, as in contemporary China; why some dictatorships are ruled by soldiers, as Uganda was under Idi Amin; why many authoritarian regimes, such as PRI-era Mexico, maintain regime-sanctioned political parties; and why a country's authoritarian past casts a long shadow over its prospects for democracy, as the unfolding events of the Arab Spring reveal. Svolik complements these and other historical case studies with the statistical analysis on institutions, leaders and ruling coalitions across dictatorships from 1946 to 2008.
Does authoritarian rule benefit from political repression? This book claims that it does, if restrictions and violence, two fundamentally different forms of repression, complement each other. Based on an in-depth quantitative analysis of the post-Second World War period, the author draws three central conclusions. Firstly, restrictions and violence offer different advantages, suffer from different drawbacks, and matter differently for identical problems of authoritarian rule. Secondly, empirical data supports complementarity only as long as political repression preempts political opposition. Lastly, despite its conceptual centrality, political repression has little influence on the outcomes of authoritarian politics. The book also offers new insights into questions such as whether repression hinders successful political campaigns or whether it is more likely to trigger coups d’état.
Autocrats must overcome a range of challenges as they seek to gain and maintain political power, including the threat that comes from both rival elites and discontented publics. The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule examines the ways in which international forces can encourage and assist autocratic actors in overcoming these challenges. Often, autocratic incumbents are strengthened in power by events on the international stage and by the active support of international allies. The book offers a typology of different international forms of influence on authoritarianism, and examines the ways in which external forces shape autocratic rule at the domestic level. The typology distinguishes between three broad forms of international influence: passive influences, unintended consequences, and active forms of external autocratic sponsorship. The book focuses in particular on the latter category, and examines intentional autocratic sponsorship in the post-Cold War period. A central contribution of the book is to address the question of how international autocratic sponsorship can bolster authoritarian rule. It highlights the ways in which international sponsorship can contribute to authoritarian practices is three significant ways: by increasing the likelihood that authoritarian regimes will pursue 'authoritarian practices' (such as coups, repression or election fraud), by contributing to the implementation of those practices, and finally by shielding autocratic actors from international punishment after such practices are pursued. External sponsorship can thus lower the costs of authoritarian behaviour, and protect and shield authoritarian regimes from the negative consequences of their actions. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.
Scholars have generally assumed that courts in authoritarian states are pawns of their regimes, upholding the interests of governing elites and frustrating the efforts of their opponents. As a result, nearly all studies in comparative judicial politics have focused on democratic and democratizing countries. This volume brings together leading scholars in comparative judicial politics to consider the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment in authoritarian states. It demonstrates the wide range of governance tasks that courts perform, as well as the way in which courts can serve as critical sites of contention both among the ruling elite and between regimes and their citizens. Drawing on empirical and theoretical insights from every major region of the world, this volume advances our understanding of judicial politics in authoritarian regimes.
Through a focus on Singapore, this book presents an analysis of authoritarian legalism, showing how prosperity, public discourse, and a rigorous observance of legal procedure enable a reconfigured rule of law - liberal form but illiberal content. It shows how institutions and process become tools to constrain dissenting citizens while protecting those in political power.
Provides an intra-Asia comparative perspective of authoritarian legality, with a focus on formation, development, transition and post-transition stages.
The nature of personal authoritarian rule in Egypt has remained virtually unchanged for over five decades. Maye Kassem traces the shaping of contemporary Egyptian politics, considering why authoritarian rule has been so resilient and assessing why it hassurvived.
Despite the spread of democratization following the Cold War's end, all signs indicate that we are living through an era of resurgent authoritarianism. Around 40 percent of the world's people live under some form of authoritarian rule, and authoritarian regimes govern about a third of the world's countries. In Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Erica Frantz guides us through today's authoritarian wave, explaining how it came to be and what its features are. She also looks at authoritarians themselves, focusing in particular on the techniques they use to take power, the strategies they use to survive, and how they fall. Understanding how politics works in authoritarian regimes and recognizing the factors that either give rise to them or trigger their downfall is ever-more important given current global trends, and this book paves the ways for such an understanding. An essential primer on the topic, Authoritarianism provides a clear and penetrating overview of one of the most important-and worrying-developments in contemporary world politics.
