week 9 - authoritarianism Flashcards
Classifying authoritarian regimes (a regime featuring rule)
a) not by the people
b) but by a constitutionally unaccountable leader, group or organization
c) not selected by the people
d) so, if democracy features free and fair elections, authoritarian either don’t hold elections at all, or manufacture victories in them
Varieties of authoritarianism: according to rulers and their legitimacy formulae
a) personal dictatorship/sultanism (Single individual at the core of the regime) - charisma
b) monarchical rule - tradition, heredity, divine right
c) military rule - superior performance: end to disorder, development
d) one-party rule/totalitarianism- ideological justification
e) post-totalitarianism - de-ideologized, performance criteria
Varieties of authoritarianism: according to range of ambition
- authoritarianism is predatory rule (want to maintain power and extract wealth from population)
a) excepts apolitical civil Society
b) actively undermines explicitly political associations and organizations - totalitarianism is transformative rule (tries to change society)
a) nazism - hitler sought racial purification
b) communism - Stalin pursued forceful creation of new soviet man
c) totalitarians sought state control over society - undermining pluralism, mobilizing people
d) modern regimes requiring high state capacity
Sources of authoritarianism: economic and cultural
Economic
a) underdevelopment
b) Alexander Gerschenkron - may be required to solve problems faced by later industrializers
c) economic crisis (bring about authoritarian regimes)
d) resource curse-trap (The more a country relies on an international commodity the less likely they will achieve a democratic transition)
Cultural
a) some religions not suited to democracy (Weber)
b) Asian values (lee kuan yew)
c) hierarchical patterns of social authority (Putnam)
But
a) religions broadly interpretable
b) cultural case repeatedly proven wrong
c) high social capital alone is not enough - Germany (Berman)
Totalitarianism
- term originated in Italy in the 1920s:
a) destruction of independent civil society
b) pursuit of fundamental unity of state and society
c) incorporation and mobilization of masses by a single party
d) Focus of energies exclusively on ideological goals
e) employment censorship, surveillance, propaganda, violence, terror - Applied first primarily to fascist Germany and Italy, then extended in Cold War to Soviet Union and its satellites
- challenges liberal modernization theory (Lipset)
- Barrington Moore’s three roots to modernity:
a) liberal Democratic
b) fascist
c) communist
Fascism
- Applied to Italy 1922 to 1943 and Germany 1933 to 1945
- Southern and eastern Europe traditional dictatorships or Proto-fascist regimes
Robert Paxton, the anatomy of fascism
Fascism: “a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion”
- clear sense of a society in decline
- strong sense of unity on the part of the population
Fascism’s contradictions:
Fascism is:
a) anti-modern (liberalism, rationalism, socialism) - but embraced modern forces and features, above all modern nationalism and the state
b) anti-capitalist - but marshalled modern economic might
c) anti-conservative- but revealed in tradition
d) charismatic - cult of leader at core of highly organized project
Fascism’s variation:
- minorities:
a) Germany: racist and brutally anti-Semitic
b) Italy: fascist movements initially integrate Jews, engages in smaller subversions - regime character:
a) Italy: “semi pluralist” (Stanley Payne) - corporatist state with monarchy
b) Germany - rabbit dismantling of German democracy in every respect, hegemony over pluralism
Sources of fascism:
Some major factors:
a) Late and incomplete nation formation
b) effects of World War I - devastation, imperial collapse, new states
c) Russian revolution: fear of communism (1917]
d) frailties of young democratic institutions
e) charismatic leadership
What happened to social capital why didn’t it make democracy work?
- berman: parties as key intervening factors
Stalinism (people are left wondering what could get them killed)
- by 1924, from proletarian internationalism to socialism in one country
- forced collectivisation of agriculture
- rapid industrialization based on heavy industry
- command economy, five year plans
- intimidation via terror - swift, arbitrary
Nazism and Stalinism: similarities
- use of powerful modern state, and a single party, in a transformative enterprise - contagious revolution (Michael Mann)
- don’t overstate it: working towards Hitler (ian Keyshawn) and Stalin‘s rapid purge of competent officials
- political violence: concentration camps and gulags; millions killed; terrorism as a tool of rule
Nazism and Stalinism: differences
- soviet‘s absorbed society and economy
- National versus class revolution
- character an extent of territorial ambition
Is North Korea totalitarianism?
a) surveillance
b) social control
c) repression
d) prison camps
