Ideology And Authoritarian Persistence

If the Arab uprisings initially heralded the end of tyrannies and a move toward liberal democratic governments, their defeat not only marked a reversal but was of a piece with emerging forms of authoritarianism worldwide. In Authoritarian Apprehensions, Lisa Wedeen draws on her decades-long engagement with Syria to offer an erudite and compassionate analysis of this extraordinary rush of events—the revolutionary exhilaration of the initial days of unrest and then the devastating violence that shattered hopes of any quick undoing of dictatorship. Developing a fresh, insightful, and theoretically imaginative approach to both authoritarianism and conflict, Wedeen asks, What led a sizable part of the citizenry to stick by the regime through one atrocity after another? What happens to political judgment in a context of pervasive misinformation? And what might the Syrian example suggest about how authoritarian leaders exploit digital media to create uncertainty, political impasses, and fractures among their citizens? Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a variety of Syrian artistic practices, Wedeen lays bare the ideological investments that sustain ambivalent attachments to established organizations of power and contribute to the ongoing challenge of pursuing political change. This masterful book is a testament to Wedeen’s deep engagement with some of the most troubling concerns of our political present and future.

This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

Examines new authoritarian practices and state control in MENA countries to target and neutralise dissidents

Authoritarian regimes craft and disseminate reasons, stories, and explanations for why they are entitled to rule. To shield those legitimating messages from criticism, authoritarian regimes also censor information that they find threatening. While committed opponents of the regime may be violently repressed, this book is about how the authoritarian state keeps the majority of its people quiescent by manipulating the ways in which they talk and think about political processes, the authorities, and political alternatives. Using North Korea, Burma (Myanmar) and China as case studies, this book explains how the authoritarian public sphere shapes political discourse in each context. It also examines three domains of potential subversion of legitimating messages: the shadow markets of North Korea, networks of independent journalists in Burma, and the online sphere in China. In addition to making a theoretical contribution to the study of authoritarianism, the book draws upon unique empirical data from fieldwork conducted in the region, including interviews with North Korean defectors in South Korea, Burmese exiles in Thailand, and Burmese in Myanmar who stayed in the country during the military government. When analyzed alongside state-produced media, speeches, and legislation, the material provides a rich understanding of how autocratic legitimation influences everyday discussions about politics in the authoritarian public sphere. Explaining how autocracies manipulate the ways in which their citizens talk and think about politics, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, comparative politics and authoritarian regimes.

In the postcolonial era, Arab societies have been ruled by a variety of authoritarian regimes. Focusing on his native Morocco, Abdellah Hammoudi explores the ideological and cultural foundations of this persistent authoritarianism. Building on the work of Foucault, Hammoudi argues that at the heart of Moroccan culture lies a paradigm of authority that juxtaposes absolute authority against absolute submission. Rooted in Islamic mysticism, this paradigm can be observed in the drama of mystic initiation, with its fundamental dialectic between Master and Disciple; in conflict with other cultural forms, and reelaborated in colonial and postcolonial circumstances, it informs all major aspects of Moroccan personal, political, and gender relations. Its influence is so pervasive and so firmly embedded that it ultimately legitimizes the authoritarian structure of power. Hammoudi contends that as long as the Master-Disciple dialectic remains the dominant paradigm of power relations, male authoritarianism will prevail as the dominant political form. "Connecting political domination to gift exchange, ritual initiation, social loyalty, and gender reversals, Master and Disciple is nothing less than a thoroughgoing revision of our understanding of authoritarian rule in Morocco and in the Arab world in general."—Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study

While the international system has been evolving in an increasingly liberal direction, the level of democratic practice within the post-Soviet region has, on the whole, declined. Two decades after the popular uprisings against communism, many governments in the region have successfully blunted both popular and international pressures for democratic consolidation. Each selection in this volume explores how international factors interact with domestic conditions to explain the persistence of authoritarianism throughout the region. The selections in the volume cover several countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; special attention is paid to the Russian Federation since it is both a member of the region and acts as an external actor influencing the political development of its neighbors. This volume is especially relevant as the world again experiences the surprising overthrow of long-running authoritarian regimes. The failure of democratic consolidation among post-Soviet states offers important lessons for policymakers and academics dealing with the recent wave of political transitions in the Middle East and Asia.

Far from sweeping the globe uniformly, the 'third wave of democratization' left burgeoning republics and resilient dictatorships in its wake. Applying more than a year of original fieldwork in Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines, in this book Jason Brownlee shows that the mixed record of recent democratization is best deciphered through a historical and institutional approach to authoritarian rule. Exposing the internal organizations that structure elite conflict, Brownlee demonstrates why the critical soft-liners needed for democratic transitions have been dormant in Egypt and Malaysia but outspoken in Iran and the Philippines. By establishing how ruling parties originated and why they impede change, Brownlee illuminates the problem of contemporary authoritarianism and informs the promotion of durable democracy.

To shed light on the global reassertion of authoritarianism in recent years, this volume analyses transnational diffusion and international cooperation among non-democratic regimes. How and with what effect do authoritarian regimes learn from each other? For what purpose and how successfully do they cooperate? The volume highlights that present-day autocrats pursue mainly pragmatic interests, rather than ideological missions. Consequently, the connections among authoritarian regimes have primarily defensive purposes, especially insulation against democracy promotion by the West. As a result, the authors do not foresee a major recession of democracy, as occurred with the rise of fascism during the interwar years. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Democratization.