Download or read book The Ideal World of Dictatorship written by Stefan Wolle and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Perfect Dictatorship written by Stein Ringen and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving. Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, the author concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe. By analysing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of ‘socialist market economy’, corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, the book broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies. ‘A new interpretation of the Chinese party-state—shows the advantage that derives from a comparative theorist looking at the Chinese system.’ —Tony Saich, Harvard University ‘This is an excellent book which asks important questions about China’s future. In a lively and persuasive manner, the author vividly analyses key data in a comparative and theoretical manner. Far and away the best introduction to how the CCP dictatorship works.’ —Edward Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison ‘There is no lack of scholars and pundits abroad who tell us that dictatorship in China is for the greater good. In a timely and engagingly written book, Stein Ringen systematically demolishes all the components of this claim.’ —Frank Dikötter, University of Hong Kong ‘Stein Ringen shows how the Chinese state has used both fear and material inducements to build a “controlocracy” of a size and complexity unprecedented in world history. Perfect as a dictatorship, but brutal, destructive, and wasteful. The author’s encyclopedic understanding of his topic is based on a mastery of relevant scholarship and is delivered in clear, no-nonsense prose that bows to no one. Ideal as a textbook.’ —Perry Link, University of California, Riverside ‘China is a complex country, and there is a range of reasonable interpretations of its political system. Professor Ringen’s interpretation is different than my own, but China watchers need to engage with his thought-provoking and carefully argued assessment. If current trends of repression intensify, less pessimistic analysts will need to recognise that Ringen’s analysis may have been prescient.’ —Daniel A. Bell, Tsinghua University ‘Inspirational and trenchant. Stein Ringen’s book is a must-read to understand China’s politics, economy, ideology and social control, and its adaptability and challenges under the CCP’s rule, especially in the 21st century.’ —Teng Biao, Harvard Law School and New York University ‘Stein Ringen’s insights as a prominent political scientist enable a powerful examination of the Chinese state in a penetrating analysis that reaches strong conclusions which some will see as controversial. The book is scholarly, objective, and free from ideological partiality or insider bias. Whether one ultimately wishes to challenge or embrace his findings, the book should be read.’ —Lina Song, University of Nottingham Click on these links for more information: Blog: https://thechinesestate.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stein.ringen.7/about
Download or read book Universities Under Dictatorship written by John Connelly and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Strongman written by Kenneth C. Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of the Don’t Know Much About® books comes a dramatic account of the origins of democracy, the history of authoritarianism, and the reigns of five of history's deadliest dictators. A Washington Post Best Book of the Year!A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year! A YALSA 2021 Nonfiction Award Nominee! What makes a country fall to a dictator? How do authoritarian leaders—strongmen—capable of killing millions acquire their power? How are they able to defeat the ideal of democracy? And what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? By profiling five of the most notoriously ruthless dictators in history—Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein—Kenneth C. Davis seeks to answer these questions, examining the forces in these strongmen’s personal lives and historical periods that shaped the leaders they’d become. Meticulously researched and complete with photographs, Strongman provides insight into the lives of five leaders who callously transformed the world and serves as an invaluable resource in an era when democracy itself seems in peril. * "A fascinating, highly readable portrayal of infamous men that provides urgent lessons for democracy now." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "Strongman is a book that is both deeply researched and deeply felt, both an alarming warning and a galvanizing call to action, both daunting and necessary to read and discuss." —Cynthia Levinson, author of Fault Lines in the Constitution
Download or read book Spin Dictators written by Daniel Treisman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New Yorker Best Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year An Atlantic Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Politics Book of the Year 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.
Download or read book Surviving Dictatorship written by Jacqueline Adams and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intentionally written as a book for undergraduate students as well as a work of unique scholarship, Surviving Dictatorshipis also, both a visual sociology, and case study, that communicates the lived experience of poverty and powerlessness in an authoritarian society, that of Pinochet’s Chile. So powerful a shaper of the poor’s experience is a dictatorship, that one might add "degree of authoritarianism" as an additional dimension to the idea, conceived by Patricia Hill Collins, that race, class, and gender intersect to shape people’s lives. Useful for courses in social inequalities, poverty, and race/class/gender.
Download or read book Still the Best Hope written by Dennis Prager and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservative radio host and syndicated columnist Dennis Prager provides a bold, sweeping look at the future of civilization with Still the Best Hope, and offers a strong, cogent argument for why basic American values must triumph in a dangerously uncertain world. Humanity stands at a crossroads, and the only alternatives to the “American Trinity” of liberty, natural rights, and the melting-pot ideal of national unity are Islamic totalitarianism, European democratic socialism, capitalist dictatorship, or global chaos if we should fail. America is Still the Best Hope, as this eminently sensible, profoundly inspiring volume so powerfully proves.
Download or read book Strongmen Mussolini to the Present written by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped). Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.
Download or read book Departing at Dawn written by Gloria Lisé and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] quiet, powerful novel” of a young woman caught in the chaos of Argentina in the mid-1970s, when speaking against the government could mean death (Publishers Weekly). March 23, 1976. Berta watches horrified as her lover, a union organizer named Atilio, is thrown from a window to his death by soldiers. The next day, Colonel Jorge Rafael Videla stages a coup d’état and a military dictatorship takes control of Argentina. And even though she was never a part of Atilio’s union efforts, Berta is on a list to be “disappeared.” Fleeing to relatives in the countryside, she becomes part of the family she knows only from old photographs: Aunt Avelina, who blasts music from an old record player; Uncle Nepomuceno, who watches slugs slither in the garden every afternoon; and Uncle Javier, who sits in his tiny grocery store day and night. But soon enough, Berta realizes she must run even further to save her life—and those she has come to love. With a prose that is light yet penetrating, Gloria Lisé has written “a beautifully simple, poetic story of solidarity and love, with memorable characters painted in the tender strokes of a watercolor” (Luisa Valenzuela, author of Black Novel with Argentines).
Download or read book The Dictators written by Richard Overy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 757 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They were the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. They fought the largest and costliest war in all history. Yet millions of Germans and Russians enthusiastically supported them and the values they stood for. In this first major study of the two dictatorships side-by-side Richard Overy sets out to answer the question: How was dictatorship possible? How did they function? What was the bond that tied dictator and people so powerfully together? He paints a remarkable and vivid account of the different ways in which Stalin and Hitler rose to power, and abused and dominated their people. It is a chilling analysis of powerful ideals corrupted by the vanity of ambitious and unscrupulous men.
Download or read book Dictators and Autocrats written by Klaus Larres and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to truly understand the emergence, endurance, and legacy of autocracy, this volume of engaging essays explores how autocratic power is acquired, exercised, and transferred or abruptly ended through the careers and politics of influential figures in more than 20 countries and six regions. The book looks at both traditional "hard" dictators, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and more modern "soft" or populist autocrats, who are in the process of transforming once fully democratic countries into autocratic states, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The authors touch on a wide range of autocratic and dictatorial figures in the past and present, including present-day autocrats, such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, military leaders, and democratic leaders with authoritarian aspirations. They analyze the transition of selected autocrats from democratic or benign semi-democratic systems to harsher forms of autocracy, with either quite disastrous or more successful outcomes. An ideal reader for students and scholars, as well as the general public, interested in international affairs, leadership studies, contemporary history and politics, global studies, security studies, economics, psychology, and behavioral studies.
Download or read book Abortion Politics written by Ziad Munson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-21 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abortion has remained one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the United States for over four decades. Americans are more divided today than ever over abortion, and this debate colors the political, economic, and social dynamics of the country. This book provides a balanced, clear-eyed overview of the abortion debate, including the perspectives of both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. It covers the history of the debate from colonial times to the present, the mobilization of mass movements around the issue, the ways it is understood by ordinary Americans, the impact it has had on US political development, and the differences between the abortion conflict in the US and the rest of the world. Throughout these discussions, Ziad Munson demonstrates how the meaning of abortion has shifted to reflect the changing anxieties and cultural divides which it has come to represent. Abortion Politics is an invaluable companion for exploring the abortion issue and what it has to say about American society, as well as the dramatic changes in public understanding of women’s rights, medicine, religion, and partisanship.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Merit written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.
Download or read book Dictatorship written by Ron Fridell and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2008 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Discusses dictatorships as a political system, and details the history of dictatorships throughout the world" -- Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Can Democracy Work written by James Miller and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of all the books on democracy in recent years one of the best is James Miller’s Can Democracy Work? . . . Miller provides an intelligent journey through the turbulent past of this great human experiment in whether we can actually govern ourselves." —David Blight, The Guardian A new history of the world’s most embattled idea Today, democracy is the world’s only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s protest Democracy Is in the Streets, offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present. As he shows, democracy has always been rife with inner tensions. The ancient Greeks preferred to choose leaders by lottery and regarded elections as inherently corrupt and undemocratic. The French revolutionaries sought to incarnate the popular will, but many of them came to see the people as the enemy. And in the United States, the franchise would be extended to some even as it was taken from others. Amid the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, communists, liberals, and nationalists all sought to claim the ideals of democracy for themselves—even as they manifestly failed to realize them. Ranging from the theaters of Athens to the tents of Occupy Wall Street, Can Democracy Work? is an entertaining and insightful guide to our most cherished—and vexed—ideal.
Download or read book The Dictator s Handbook written by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain coalitions.
Download or read book The Dictator the Revolution the Machine written by Tony McKenna and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonplace wisdom that from the authoritarian roots of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 grew the gulags and the police state of the Stalinist epoch. The Dictator, the Revolution, the Machine overturns that perspective by showing how the October Revolution was inspired by a profound mass movement comprised of urban workers and rural poor-a movement that went on to forge a state capable of channelling its political will in and through the most overwhelming form of grass-roots democracy history has ever known. In the context of civil war and foreign invasion, the fledgling democracy was eradicated and the Bolshevik party was denuded of its social basis-the working classes. While the party survived, its centrist elements came to the fore as the power of the bureaucracy asserted itself. From the ashes of human freedom there arose a zombified, sclerotic administration in which state functionaries took precedence over elected representatives. One man came to embody the inverted logic of this bureaucratic machine, its remorseless brutality, and its parasitic drive for power. Joseph Stalin was its highest expression, accruing to himself state powers as he made his murderous, heady rise to dictator. This book examines his historical profile, its roots in Georgian medievalism, and shows why Stalin was destined to play the role he did. In broader strokes, Tony McKenna raises the conflict between the revolutionary movement and the bureaucracy to the level of a literary tragedy played out on the stage of world history, showing how Stalinism's victory would pave the way for the 'Midnight of the Century.' Subject: Politics, Biography, Communism & Revolution, History, Russian Studies]
