Popular Dictatorships

Shows that the most widespread and malignant dictatorships today emerge by attracting genuine popular support in societies plagued by crises.

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

This accessible volume shines a light on how autocracy really works by providing basic facts about how post-World War II dictatorships achieve, retain, and lose power. The authors present an evidence-based portrait of key features of the authoritarian landscape with newly collected data about 200 dictatorial regimes. They examine the central political processes that shape the policy choices of dictatorships and how they compel reaction from policy makers in the rest of the world. Importantly, this book explains how some dictators concentrate great power in their own hands at the expense of other members of the dictatorial elite. Dictators who can monopolize decision making in their countries cause much of the erratic, warlike behavior that disturbs the rest of the world. By providing a picture of the central processes common to dictatorships, this book puts the experience of specific countries in perspective, leading to an informed understanding of events and the likely outcome of foreign responses to autocracies.

In the late nineteenth and twentieth century, with the disappearance of monarchies in many parts of the world, a new autocratic system emerged – the dictatorship, in which all power over a state or community was again concentrated into the hands of one person, without being restricted by constitution, laws or opposition. The individual with this kind of absolute authority was known as the dictator. Here are the twenty dictators of modern times whose actions have left a strong imprint on destiny of the country they ruled, and sometimes even influenced the very history of the world. More often though, dictators rose to the power by leading a coup d’état, in which often a weak monarch of government was deposed and instead a dictatorship established. A nice read book to deep into history.

Examining constitutional rules and power-sharing in Africa reveals how some dictatorships become institutionalized, rule-based systems.

The Crisis of the Dictatorships is Nicos Poulantzas's fourth book. It is a compact study, at once topical and theoretical, of the historical end of the reactionary and authoritarian regimes that have dominated much of Southern Europe. Poulantzas applies the categories of his now standard general works - on Political Power and Social Classes, Fascism and Dictatorship, and Classes in Contemporary Capitalism - to the specific social structures and political systems of Portugal, Spain and Greece. The international environment and the internal dynamic of class conflict in each country are surveyed. The book then assesses the ruling bloc, the popular classes and the State apparatus in Portuguese, Greek and Spanish societies. The result is a novel and powerful analysis of the causes of the fall of the Papadopoulous-Ioannides Junta, the overthrow of the Salazarist State, and the crisis of Franco's heirs, that contrasts these with the end of German Nazism and Italian Fascism thirty years ago. The Crisis of the Dictatorships will be essential reading for all who are concerned with the political future of Europe.

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracy Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond. Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping. Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.

A finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize One of Back Obama's Favourite Books of the Year A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Applebaum describes many of the new advocates of illiberalism in countries around the world, showing how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and even nostalgia to change their societies. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.