Comparing Democracy and Authoritarianism No two governments, past or present, are exactly the same. This terms used to describe this form of government are competitive authoritarianism or illiberal democracy. Basically, the leaders of these governments came to power through an election but then went on to consolidate their power through undemocratic means. However, it also involves forms of mass patronage: where economic transformation is perceived to be slow and expectations high, welfare is required while the transition is underway and incomplete. It stands in opposition to democracies, monarchies and so on. However, it is possible to examine the similarities and differences among political systems and categorize different forms of government. var magazine_button_bg_color_403073 = ''; (For a contrasting image, one need only consider the disastrous 1988 photo of US presidential candidate Michael Dukakis riding in a tank. In their introduction, Levitsky and Way identify 35 competitive authoritarian regimes that existed in the early 1990s. } jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_403073 a").attr("href",inline_cta_url_403073); slotId: "thenation_article_indent", Despite the suggestion of permanence, however, the books main purpose is to study change in these systems. In fact, the competition between democracy and authoritarianism suf- To illustrate this apparent contradiction, Bell focuses on four world-famous individuals who exemplify these competing tendencies: George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture, and Simon Bolvar. if( is_user_logged_in != null ){ It[End Page 171]seems intuitively right, for example, that the combination of high levels of Western leverage and weak domestic political institutions has led to many democratic transitions in Africa. tn_articleid: [403073], For Reprints and Permissions, click here. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. similarities between radical and liberal feminismclarence krusen laredo, texas obituary. Brexit, England leaving the EU via referendum, was an example of modern direct democracy in action. Both forms of government discourage individual freedom of thought and action. Your email address will not be published. 1 0 obj VIDEO: People in Denmark Are a Lot Happier Than People in the United States. Alexander Beresford is Associate Professor in African Politics at the University of Leeds. } 4 0 obj tn_subject: ['cultural-c', 'history'], Learn More. if( inline_cta_button_text_403073 !='' ){ inline_cta_text_403073 = '
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'; The authors define competitive authoritarian regimes as political systems that remain essentially authoritarian despite allowing meaningful electoral competition. Clearly, neither is perfectly democratic nor authoritarian in the old-fashioned sense, though surely Belarus comes pretty close to being[End Page 170]authoritarian. Marie E. Berry is Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Ubaid Sidique outlines how despite several government and private welfare initiatives, chronic structural flaws alongside corruption and the impact of global events is hindering Indias aim of achieving zero hunger for her people. jQuery("#magazine_button_403073 a").attr("href",magazine_button_url_403073); They claim they are doing it to protect the population in a time of medical crisis, but the crackdowns have the advantage of stifling political opposition and solidifying their hold on power, which is exactly what they want. The National Resistance Movement in Uganda or the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front in Ethiopia spring to mindand PM Abiy Ahmeds seismic recent reforms add a critical new angle to the discussion in Ethiopia. With the rise of the new social history in the 1960s and 70s, we were told to question and ultimately disavow the great man theory of history, since history is made, after all, not just by great men but by the people tooand so we set out to examine how the people were as essential to the workings of history as the ruling elite. Why do some hybrid regimes remain stable over time, while others become more authoritarian? if( magazine_button_url_403073 !='' ){ More generally, many authoritarian regimes exhibit cyclical behavior, alternating the carrot of liberalization with the stick of repression. Best Authoritarianism Topic Ideas & Essay Examples. var magazine_button_text_403073 = ''; North Korea was rated as the least democratic country for 2020. <>/Metadata 58 0 R/ViewerPreferences 59 0 R>> Dictators such as Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe or Cameroons Paul Biya (whose countries both figure among Levitsky and Ways 35 cases) are known to harden or soften their regimes depending on how threatened they feel at this or that moment. There are no checks or balances in authoritarian regimes and all power rests at the top. inline_cta_text_403073 = 'Readers like you make our independent journalism possible.
'; DISCLAIMER: Please note that this website does NOT provide legal, business or financial advice. So, this is also the basic similarity between democracy and autocracy. It makes sense why the most unpopular tyrants manipulate the outcomes of elections. Crisis management in authoritarian regimes: A comparative study of COVID-19 responses in Turkey and Iran. Democratic and dictatorial regimes both vest their authority in one person or a few individuals. What was a democracy 200 years ago may not fit the modern definition. jQuery("#magazine_button_403073").html(magazine_button_text_403073); Readings: ollier, David and Steven Levitsky (1997). According to the authors own criteria, more than the 35 countries chosen could (taking in view the last two decades) be considered examples of competitive authoritarianism. While I am sympathetic to such an approach, the absence of a serious discussion about the origins of their causal factors is disappointing. Hungarys right-wing leader Viktor Orbn publicly stated in a 2014 speech that, the new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It is the nature of the social system governance is deciding the fate of Continue Reading Mats Andersson Current Issue if( magazine_button_text_403073 !='' ){ Questions About Authoritarianism. Yet to a large extent their authoritarianism did not provoke a populist counterreaction; the masses they ruled over continued to admire, even adore them.13 endobj When forming the United States, our founding fathers used the Romans ancient society as a structure for America. Others combine both and are hybrids that elect both presidents and prime ministers, such as India. They win elections running as populists but then manipulate the system to make it nearly impossible for any opposition to challenge their rule. The light that the authors shine on international relationships reveals how so many countries can hold regular competitive elections while making no other concessions to democratic rule: Levitsky and Way contend that the West has an electoralist bias and will often indulge undemocratic regimes as long as they hold elections. magazine_button_text_403073 = ''; Russia is an oligarchy where a small number of elites, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, run the country. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. So, authoritarians appeal to elections as proof of the legitimacy for their rule. tn_ptype: 'article', Beyond dropping a few hints about their own intuitions, Levitsky and Way treat their causal factors as exogenously determined. The ambiguity and inconsistency of the political rules in these countries are precisely why different scholars disagree on how to code them, and why, in the end, a more expansive categorization is probably preferable to the narrow one used by Levitsky and Way. Get JoD Updates, Copyright 2012 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1201 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20004, USA, Published for the National Endowment for Democracy by Johns Hopkins University Press, The Authoritarian Resurgence: Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela, The Maidan and Beyond: Civil Society and Democratization, Elections Without Democracy: Africas Range of Regimes. }else{ magazine_button_bg_color_403073 = '#dd3333'; )15, Yet in spite of his popularity, Washington resisted calls that he become a benevolent dictator or even a king, insisting instead on the importance of democratic leadership, which only made him more popular than ever. % (DeAgostini / Getty Images), On January 6, 2021, hundreds of demonstrators invaded the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the election of Joseph Biden as president of the United States and install the man they regarded as the legitimate victor and leader of America, Donald Trump. Country specialists will no doubt question the odd judgment call here and there in a book that is chock full of them; but the impressive accumulation of facts, examples, and insights in support of their thesis from such a diverse array of countries and situations is compelling. Levitsky and Way generally dismiss more structural explanations, such as national income, for the political outcomes of their case studies, hewing instead to political dynamics. He alone? Meanwhile, Venezuela has slid into being the least democratic country in Latin America and the Caribbean under the leadership of Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro. Trump's ten-dencies notwithstanding, that deeper conflict is likely to continue shaping great-power strife. India, home to more than 1.39 billion [], The entrepreneurship/business Advice-giving industry is growing apace in South Asia, and in several sectors. }, For a book devoted to the historical biographies of four very well-known individuals, Men on Horseback begins with a surprising choice: the life of a man few people today have ever heard of. Unlike the contingent democrats of Asian developmental states, these parties operate at the margins of the global economy, making their economic transformations even more challenging and slow. jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_403073 a input").css("color",inline_cta_font_color_403073); Although popular at home, Paoli proved to be even more attractive to people in Europe and America, thanks largely to the efforts of one man, the great Scottish writer James Boswell. Despite the spirit of participation that characterized the Maidan, organizedcivil society groups were not a key factor. The volume is comprehensive in its coverage both of the recent literature on democratization and of contemporary democratic practices in the non-Western world; and it is also an empirical tour de force featuring authoritative analyses of nearly three-dozen countries. For instance, it includes both Botswana, a country regularly rated Free by Freedom House over the last twenty years, and Belarus, a country consistently rated Not Free during the same period. Initiating an insurrection that stunned the nation and the world, the demonstrators drew their inspiration directly from Trump: Many had attended a rally in Washington earlier that day where he called for resistance, proclaiming, If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. Yet when the actual invasion of the Capitol took place, Trump was nowhere to be seen. The leaders Bell discusses all spoke of their reign as a symbol of popular power; they were the tribunes of their people. Today, Africa south of the Sahara has a relatively small number of both democracies and full-blown dictatorships,along with a large number of hard-to-define regimes that fit neither category. The questions about democracy that Men on Horseback raises have relevance not just to the 18th century but to our own time as well.19, The study of charismatic leadership also offers insights into the world of human emotion: how people feel about their own lives and their relationships with others, and how these feelings enable them to remake their worlds. The books conclusion tries to tie up loose ends and assess the explanatory framework, but the number of actual permutations described is by then bewildering. In a recentarticle for Political Violenceat a Glance, Alexander Beresford (University of Leeds),Marie E. Berry (University of Denver) andLaura Mann (LSE) summarise their recent paper:Liberation movements and stalled democratic transitions: reproducing power in Rwanda and South Africa through productive liminality.