Life After Dictatorship

Life after Dictatorship launches a new research agenda on authoritarian successor parties worldwide. Authoritarian successor parties are parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes, but that operate after a transition to democracy. They are one of the most common but overlooked features of the global democratic landscape. They are major actors in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and they have been voted back into office in over one-half of all third-wave democracies. This book presents a new set of terms, definitions, and research questions designed to travel across regions, and presents new data on these parties' prevalence and frequent return to power. With chapters from leading Africanists, Asianists, Europeanists, and Latin Americanists, it asks: why are authoritarian successor parties so common? Why are some more successful than others? And in what ways can they harm - or help - democracy?

How did political power function in the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945? Making Sense of Dictatorship addresses this question with a particular focus on the acquiescent behavior of the majority of the population until, at the end of the 1980s, their rejection of state socialism and its authoritarian world. The authors refer to the concept of Sinnwelt, the way in which groups and individuals made sense of the world around them. The essays focus on the dynamics of everyday life and the extent to which the relationship between citizens and the state was collaborative or antagonistic. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of life in this period, including modernization, consumption and leisure, and the everyday experiences of “ordinary people,” single mothers, or those adopting alternative lifestyles. Empirically rich and conceptually original, the essays in this volume suggest new ways to understand how people make sense of everyday life under dictatorial regimes.

Explains how dictatorships rise, survive, and fall, along with why some but not all dictators wield vast powers.

A former Chilean columnist offers a dramatic first-person chronicle of life under dictatorship as she records her own personal experiences and those of others whose lives were dramatically affected by Chile's Pinochet government. Reprint.

Augusto Pinochet was the most important Third World dictator of the Cold War, and perhaps the most ruthless. In The Dictator's Shadow, United Nations Ambassador Heraldo Munoz takes advantage of his unmatched set of perspectives -- as a former revolutionary who fought the Pinochet regime, as a respected scholar, and as a diplomat -- to tell what this extraordinary figure meant to Chile, the United States, and the world. Pinochet's American backers saw his regime as a bulwark against Communism; his nation was a testing ground for U.S.-inspired economic theories. Countries desiring World Bank support were told to emulate Pinochet's free-market policies, and Chile's government pension even inspired President George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The other baggage -- the assassinations, tortures, people thrown out of airplanes, mass murders of political prisoners -- was simply the price to be paid for building a modern state. But the questions raised by Pinochet's rule still remain: Are such dictators somehow necessary? Horrifying but also inspiring, The Dictator's Shadow is a unique tale of how geopolitical rivalries can profoundly affect everyday life.

During the age of dictatorships, Latin American prisons became a symbol for the vanquishing of political opponents, many of whom were never seen again. In the postdictatorship era of the 1990s, a number of these prisons were repurposed into shopping malls, museums, and memorials. Susana Draper uses the phenomenon of the "opening" of prisons and detention centers to begin a dialog on conceptualizations of democracy and freedom in post-dictatorship Latin America. Focusing on the Southern Cone nations of Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, Draper examines key works in architecture, film, and literature to peel away the veiled continuity of dictatorial power structures in ensuing consumer cultures. The afterlife of prisons became an important tool in the "forgetting" of past politics, while also serving as a reminder to citizens of the liberties they now enjoyed. In Draper's analysis, these symbols led the populace to believe they had attained freedom, although they had only witnessed the veneer of democracy—in the ability to vote and consume. In selected literary works by Roberto Bola–o, Eleuterio Fernandez Huidoboro, and Diamela Eltit and films by Alejandro Agresti and Marco Bechis, Draper finds further evidence of the emptiness and melancholy of underachieved goals in the afterlife of dictatorships. The social changes that did not occur, the inability to effectively mourn the losses of a now-hidden past, the homogenizing effects of market economies, and a yearning for the promises of true freedom are thematic currents underlying much of these texts. Draper's study of the manipulation of culture and consumerism under the guise of democracy will have powerful implications not only for Latin Americanists but also for those studying neoliberal transformations globally.

Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

Oppression and violence are often cited as the pivotal aspects of modern dictatorships, but it is the collusion of large majorities that enable these regimes to function. The desire for a better life and a powerful national, if not imperial community provide the basis for the many forms of people's cooperation explored in this volume.

Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, xenophobia, and paeans to “traditional values,” in brazen bids for electoral support. How are we to understand this move to the mainstream of political policies and platforms that lurked only on the far fringes through most of the postwar era? Does it herald a new wave of authoritarianism? Is liberal democracy itself in crisis? In this volume, three distinguished scholars draw on critical theory to address our current predicament. Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon, and Max Pensky share a conviction that critical theory retains the power to illuminate the forces producing the current political constellation as well as possible paths away from it. Brown explains how “freedom” has become a rallying cry for manifestly un-emancipatory movements; Gordon dismantles the idea that fascism is rooted in the susceptible psychology of individual citizens and reflects instead on the broader cultural and historical circumstances that lend it force; and Pensky brings together the unlikely pair of Tocqueville and Adorno to explore how democracies can buckle under internal pressure. These incisive essays do not seek to smooth over the irrationality of the contemporary world, and they do not offer the false comforts of an easy return to liberal democratic values. Rather, the three authors draw on their deep engagements with nineteenth–and twentieth–century thought to investigate the historical and political contradictions that have brought about this moment, offering fiery and urgent responses to the demands of the day.

Where do strong conservative parties come from? While there is a growing scholarly awareness about the importance of such parties for democratic stability, much less is known about their origins. In this groundbreaking book, James Loxton takes up this question by examining new conservative parties formed in Latin America between 1978 and 2010. The most successful cases, he finds, shared a surprising characteristic: they had deep roots in former dictatorships. Through a comparative analysis of failed and successful cases in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala, Loxton argues that this was not a coincidence. The successes inherited a range of resources from outgoing authoritarian regimes that, paradoxically, gave them an advantage in democratic competition. He also highlights the role of intense counterrevolutionary struggle as a source of party cohesion. In addition to making an empirical contribution to the study of the Latin American right and a theoretical contribution to the study of party-building, Loxton advances our understanding of the worldwide phenomenon of authoritarian successor parties--parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy. A major work, Conservative Party-Building in Latin America will reshape our understanding of politics in contemporary Latin America and the realities of democratic transitions everywhere.