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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) APSA Comparative Democratization (vol. 13, issue 2) Glasius, M. Publication date 2015 Document Version Final published version Published in APSA Comparative Democratization Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Glasius, M. (Ed.) (2015). APSA Comparative Democratization (vol. 13, issue 2). APSA Comparative Democratization, 13(2). http://www.compdem.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/APSA-CD-June-2015.pdf General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. 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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:28 Sep 2021 See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/280069617 Reconceptualizing Authoritarianism ARTICLE · JUNE 2015 READS 55 2 AUTHORS, INCLUDING: Marlies Glasius University of Amsterdam 43 PUBLICATIONS 466 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Available from: Marlies Glasius Retrieved on: 21 December 2015 The American Political Science Association APSA Volume 13, No. 2 Comparative Democratization June 2015 In This Issue CD INTRODUCING THE SYMPOsiUM AND A RESEARCH AGENDA “Reconceptualizing Marlies Glasius, University of Amsterdam Authoritarianism” he resurgence of authoritarianism in most Arab countries after the 1 Editorial Board Note uprisings of 2011 has led to a renewed empirical interest in authoritarian Kelly M. McMann rule, with attention shifting from what causes authoritarianism to how 1 Introducing the Symposium and a Research Note Marlies Glasius Tit is sustained today. Robert Kaplan and Dafna Rand have recently put forward 1 Authoritarianism and the “postmodern autocrats” who fear public opinion, rely on social media and consult elites, and Problem of Democratic Distinction Lisa Wedeen Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman discern a “new authoritarianism” based on manipulating 2 Authoritarianism and information rather than on mass violence, whereas Steven Heydemann sees a “decisive shift Democracy: Beyond Regime 1 Types David Beetham in governance” in the MENA region. But this renewed empirical interest has not come 2 Authoritarianism and with renewed attention to the conceptual category of authoritarian rule. If authoritarian Globalization in Historical rule is done differently, operating in a changed context, is it still the same phenomenon, to Perspective Pedro Ramos Pinto be studied in the same way, as the military junta’s and people’s republics of the past, or do 3 Authoritarianism: Learning from Subnational Enclaves Kelly M. McMann 1. Robert D. Kaplan and Dafna H. Rand, “The Postmodern Autocrat’s Handbook,” Bloomberg View, 1 February 3 Like Oil and Water? 2015 (www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-01/the-postmodern-autocrat-s-handbook); Sergei Guriev and Authoritarianism and Daniel Treisman, “The New Authoritarianism,” CEPR’s Policy Portal, 21 March 2015 (www.voxeu.org/article/new- Accountability Andreas Schedler authoritarianism); and Steven Heydemann, “Arab Autocrats Are Not Going Back to the Future,” Washington Post 4 4 Authoritarianism, Democracy, December 2014 (www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/12/04/arab-autocrats-are-not-going-back-to- and Repression Todd Landman the-future/). 26 Section News (click to continue on page 5) 30 New Research 36 Editorial Committee AUTHORITARIANisM AND THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC DisTINCTION FROM THE EDITORIAL Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago BOARD his symposium invites us to move away from an understanding of authoritarian With the Arab Spring now regimes in terms of what they lack, as opposed to what democracies have, some three years behind us, a provocation that impels us to think beyond the specific mechanisms of and challengers to democracy autocratic management. It enjoins us to resist self-satisfication and moral superiority gaining ground in a diverse T as we compare authoritarian and democratic dynamics; it demands instead that we consider the range of countries such as uncomfortable proposition that these regime types may not be as different as we think they are.1 Thailand, Russia, Hungary, Mali, and Venezuela, the The chronic exclusion of large populations in the United States from the basic privileges (if not study of democracy and always rights) of citizenship, like the subjugation of colonized peoples by European powers, democratization is as suggests that the distinction between democracy and dictatorship may be more equivocal important as ever. As a than most comparisons acknowledge. In this “neoliberal” era of global capitalism, moreover, community, we have always any neat distinction is vulnerable to the effects of new forms of market mediation, which sought to be relevant for policy and continue to be 1. Thanks are owed especially to Michael Dawson, Sofia Fenner, Marlies Glasius, Daragh Grant, Rohit Goel, Ellen Lust, John McCormick, Jennifer Pitts, Don Reneau, Dan Slater and the participants of the June 2014 seminar on committed to understanding authoritarianism at the University of Amsterdam for thoughts on earlier versions of this essay. how peoples across the world (click to continue on page 9) (click to continue on page 4) Vol. 13, No. 2 Comparative Democratization June 2015 AUTHORITARIANisM AND DEMOCRACY: BEYOND REGIME TYPES David Beetham, University of Leeds n this piece I argue that the approach of democracy studies to the subject of authoritarianism is too narrow, because it does not consider the possibility of authoritarianism occurring within a democratic regime. What exactly is the distinctive approach of democracy—and democratisation—studies to the subject of authoritarianism? At the Iexpense of some generalisation, I would say that their distinctive approach consists in three features. First is a definition. This is not so much a definition of authoritarianism as such, but of the authoritarian regime or system, which is defined negatively, through the lack of some feature necessary to a democratic one. So Andreas Schedler lists seven mutually reinforcing conditions for a democratic election, failure to achieve any one of which defines a system as authoritarian.1 And Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way list four central features of democracy, the subversion of one or more of which defines a regime as authoritarian.2 It is significant that in these and many other articles the terms “authoritarian”, “autocratic” and “non-democratic” are used virtually interchangeably. I shall argue below that this definition by opposition fails to get to the heart of what is distinctive about authoritarianism. A second feature of the approach from democracy studies is a typology of authoritarian regimes, often according to their degree of distance from full democracy. So Larry Diamond distinguishes between competitive authoritarian regimes, hegemonic electoral regimes, and politically closed authoritarian ones.3 These last (sometimes called “full authoritarianism”) reject all electoral competition, while the first two are differentiated by the degree to which electoral competition is subverted, or merely distorted, compromised, or managed in some way. As Diamond admits, these distinctions constitute degrees along a spectrum of distance from democracy, and assigning countries to a particular category of authoritarianism is a matter of fine judgement. 1. Andreas Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation,”Journal of Democracy 13.2 (2002): 36-50. 2. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13.2 (2002): 51-65. 3. Larry Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,”Journal of Democracy 13.2 (2002): 21-35. (click to continue on page 12) AUTHORITARIANisM AND GLOBALIZATION IN HisTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Pedro Ramos Pinto, University of Cambridge or historians, just as much as for political scientists, the concept of authoritarianism is deeply bound up with the related ideas of democracy and, in particular, 20th century totalitarianism. In political science this has often evolved into debates over classification, e.g. what regimes were truly “totalitarian” or truly “fascist.” Yet, Fwhile issues of taxonomy are important when comparing nations quantitatively and synchronically, they become less salient when considering dynamics of change over time. Thinking historically about the relationship between authoritarianism and globalization, our attention is drawn away from fixed definitions and towards the ways in which regimes secure their authority over time. The way in which they do so develops in response to changing internal and external contexts and challenges, not least that of globalization. The idea of globalization has also been embraced by historians in recent years, but in ways that emphasize the evolving nature of transnational forces, linkages and flows since (at least) the last five centuries