The social roots of authoritarianism

• Verfasst von: Forrat, Natalia [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: The social roots of authoritarianism
• Verf.angabe: Natalia Forrat
• Verlagsort: New York, NY
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: 1 Online-Ressource
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford scholarship online : Political Science
• ISBN: 978-0-19-779038-0
• DOI: doi:10.1093/oso/9780197790359.001.0001
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Druck-Ausgabe
• Sach-SW: Politics and Government
• Sach-SW: Politics & government
• K10plus-PPN: 1909913979
• K10plus-PPN:
  Universitätsbibliothek
• Lokale URL UB: Zum Volltext

Abstract

In this text, Natalia Forrat describes two models of authoritarianism: the first in which people see the state as their team leader and the other where they trust informal (non-state) leaders and see the state as a source of perks or punishment. Forrat compares the structures of political machines in four Russian regions, finding that the two maintaining unity-based authoritarianism demonstrated a stable performance across multiple elections, while the other two delivered less stable results. Carefully crafted and sophisticated, Forrat's theory of authoritarian power sheds new light on state-society relations in Russia and helps explain the divergent patterns of regime maintenance strategies in authoritarian countries throughout the world.

Abstract

"Dictatorships differ from each other more than democracies do. There are many ways to think about this variety of authoritarian regimes: one can use, for example, the characteristics of groups seizing power, electoral competitiveness, the configuration of legislative institutions and party scene, and the strength of the coercive apparatus to capture the variety of ways, in which authoritarian regimes form and endure. Each of these theories expands our understanding of authoritarianism and provides more tools for researchers to explain how specific regimes succeed or fail. This book expands the study of the variety of authoritarianisms by turning our attention from the ruling elites and organizations to societal characteristics. I argue that the power of a state ruler, as well as his strategies of consolidating and holding on to this power, are largely shaped by the kind of group identities dominate in society and by how people in society view the state. In countries, such as Russia or China, where the population views the state as its legitimate collective leader and holds it as the centerpiece of its identity, autocrats use the ideas of social unity and civic duty to build and consolidate institutions maintaining their power. In contrast to that, in countries, such as Venezuela or Sudan, where class, religious, or ethnic identities play the dominant role and divide societies into competing groups, autocrats capitalize on these divisions and particularistic group interests to consolidate their regimes. These unity- and division-based authoritarianisms use different playbooks based on the opposite principles, which have not been articulated in the literature before"--