Often dismissed as window dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national ...study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Jennifer Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power. In their efforts to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from society, autocratic leaders use these institutions to organize concessions to potential opposition. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship.
Dictatorship in South America explores the experiences of Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean experience under military rule.Presents a single-volume thematic study that explores experiences with ...dictatorship as well as their social and historical contexts in Latin AmericaExamines at the ideological and economic crossroads that brought Argentina, Brazil and Chile under the thrall of military dictatorshipDraws on recent historiographical currents from Latin America to read these regimes as radically ideological and inherently unstableMakes a close reading of the economic trajectory from dependency to development and democratization and neoliberal reform in language that is accessible to general readersOffers a lively and readable narrative that brings popular perspectives to bear on national histories
Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state ...itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ‘organized over-world’, the ‘state employing mafia methods’ and the ’adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework.The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules.
A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, ...the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia's international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia's supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.
Contrary to our stereotypical views, dictators often introduce elections in which they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud. Why do electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these ...elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box argues that strong autocrats who can garner popular support become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition’s stunning election victories. The book’s theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
BOOK REVIEW
Sá Motta, Rodrigo Patto (2023). A present past - the Brazilian military dictatorship and the 1964 coup (Portuguese-Speaking World: Its History, Politics and Culture). Sussex Academic ...Press: Brighton, 210 p
El estudio describe el tratamiento de la Educación Física bajo las leyes franquistas aprobadas tras 1939, para concluir el importante efecto de la orientación política de esta disciplina escolar ...hasta su progresiva modernización en los 70s. El trabajo parte de los estudios realizados sobre historia de la Educación Física en España durante el franquismo (1936-1975) que han versado sobre dos ejes: el ideal moralizador de la Educación Física acorde con el contexto político-social del momento y los estudios que han analizado los hábitos de práctica física y gimnástica de organizaciones políticas dependientes al régimen, como “Frente de Juventudes” o la “Sección Femenina”. Como conclusión se aportan aspectos relevantes sobre la interpretación de la Educación Física desde las diferentes referencias legislativas y otros documentos durante la dictadura que podrían ayudar a entender diversas perspectivas de esta área.
A distinguished group of historians and political theorists examine the complex relationship between nineteenth-century democracy, nationalism, and authoritarianism, paying especial attention to the ...careers of Napoleon I and III, and of Bismarck. An important contribution of the book is to consider not only the momentous episodes of coup d'etat, revolution, and imperial foundation which the Napoleonic era heralded, but also the contested political language with which these events were described and assessed. Political thinkers were faced with a battery of new terms - 'Bonapartism', 'Caesarism', and 'Imperialism' among them - with which to make sense of their era. As well as documenting the political history of a revolutionary age, the book examines a series of thinkers - Tocqueville, Marx, Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt - who articulated and helped to reshare our sense of the political.
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