Download or read book Promoting Authoritarianism Abroad written by Rachel Vanderhill and published by Lynne Rienner Pub. This book was released on 2013 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen efforts by several states to promote authoritarianism abroad, garnering the attention of foreign policy analysts-and raising a number of questions. What determines the success or failure of these efforts? How does the relationship between international and domestic politics play out? Do states comply with external pressures for ideological reasons, or primarily to attain material benefits? How does promoting authoritarianism differ from promoting democracy? Addressing these questions, Rachel Vanderhill draws on the experiences of Russia, Venezuela, and Iran to provide an illuminating comparative analysis.

Download or read book Promoting Democracy Abroad written by Peter Burnell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promoting democracy has grown from a small, little- known activity to a high-profile endeavor. It now involves academia, think tanks, and the popular media. The number of countries and organizations, inter-governmental, non-governmental, as well as governmental involved in supporting the spread of democracy is now legion. Countries touched by these efforts include a majority of all the world's states and some independent territories that are not yet fully sovereign. The definitional boundaries between promoting democracy and international advocacy and defense of human rights and "good governance" are not precise. Similarly, the concept of promoting democracy itself is not uniformly accepted. It has become a slogan that attracts both fervent support and grave condemnation. For Burnell, promoting democracy refers to a wide range of non-coercive attempts to spread democracy abroad for whatever reason. At its heart, it is political intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries that seeks to affect the distribution of power, whether by patient and non-violent involvement or more urgent action, democracy assistance projects form a core activity. Burnell holds that participation in the democracy assistance industry will continue to grow. However, the industry's progress up until now has in part been contingent on the progress of democratization itself. The slowdown that is currently happening in the advance of freedom and democracy around the world, and the strength shown by leading authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, must raise questions about the outlook for democracy promotion. If democracy promotion and assistance are to be fit for the future, then the need for a broadly based, appropriately contextualized examination of the policy and the performance is greater now than at any time in the past.

Download or read book Democracy Challenged written by Marina Ottaway and published by Carnegie Endowment. This book was released on 2013-01-25 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1990s, international democracy promotion efforts led to the establishment of numerous regimes that cannot be easily classified as either authoritarian or democratic. They display characteristics of each, in short they are semi-authoritarian regimes. These regimes pose a considerable challenge to U.S. policymakers because the superficial stability of many semi-authoritarian regimes usually masks severe problems that need to be solved lest they lead to a future crisis. Additionally, these regimes call into question some of the ideas about democratic transitions that underpin the democracy promotion strategies of the United States and other Western countries. Despite their growing importance, semi-authoritarian regimes have not received systematic attention. Marina Ottaway examines five countries (Egypt, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Croatia, and Senegal) which highlight the distinctive features of semi-authoritarianism and the special challenge each poses to policymakers. She explains why the dominant approach to democracy promotion isn't effective in these countries and concludes by suggesting alternative policies. Marina Ottaway is senior associate and codirector of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment.

Download or read book International Politics and National Political Regimes written by Peter Burnell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is much speculation about whether democracy is still advancing around the world and the influence that leading authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes such as Russia are starting to have on the trends. This collection assesses global trends in democratisation, reviews the condition of international democracy promotion and enquires into whether serious competition in the form of autocracy promotion is now a major possibility. The influence of international politics on national political regimes is explored in more detail for Russia’s resistance to democracy promotion and Russian influence on regimes in Central Asia in particular, along with an Indian perspective on India’s reluctance to push for democracy abroad and concerns that democracy promotion itself should be considered more critically if it undermines democratisation in foreign aid-dependent states. The book concludes by briefly addressing the potential significance of the 2011 ‘Arab spring’ for these themes. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

Download or read book Authoritarianism Goes Global written by Larry Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With democracy in decline, authoritarian governments are staging a comeback around the world. Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians. As undemocratic regimes become more assertive, they are working together to repress civil society while tightening their grip on cyberspace and expanding their reach in international media. These political changes have fostered the emergence of new counternorms—such as the authoritarian subversion of credible election monitoring—that threaten to further erode the global standing of liberal democracy. In Authoritarianism Goes Global, a distinguished group of contributors present fresh insights on the complicated issues surrounding the authoritarian resurgence and the implications of these systemic shifts for the international order. This collection of essays is critical for advancing our understanding of the emerging challenges to democratic development. Contributors: Anne Applebaum, Anne-Marie Brady, Alexander Cooley, Javier Corrales, Ron Deibert, Larry Diamond, Patrick Merloe, Abbas Milani, Andrew Nathan, Marc F. Plattner, Peter Pomerantsev, Douglas Rutzen, Lilia Shevtsova, Alex Vatanka, Christopher Walker, and Frederic Wehrey

Download or read book The World According to China written by Elizabeth C. Economy and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An economic and military superpower with 20 percent of the world’s population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping’s bold calls for China to “lead in the reform of the global governance system” suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China’s ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country’s past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways. Xi’s vision is one of Chinese centrality on the global stage, in which the mainland has realized its sovereignty claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, deepened its global political, economic, and security reach through its grand-scale Belt and Road Initiative, and used its leadership in the United Nations and other institutions to align international norms and values, particularly around human rights, with those of China. It is a world radically different from that of today. The international community needs to understand and respond to the great risks, as well as the potential opportunities, of a world rebuilt by China.

Download or read book Twilight of Democracy written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The 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. 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.

Download or read book Competitive Authoritarianism written by Steven Levitsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.

Download or read book Making the World Safe for Dictatorship written by Alexander Dukalskis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making the World Safe for Dictatorship is about how authoritarian states manage their image abroad using both "promotional" tactics of persuasion and "obstructive" tactics of repression. All states attempt to manage their global image to some degree, but authoritarian states in the post-Cold War era have special incentives to do so given the predominance of democracy as an international norm. Alexander Dukalskis looks at the tactics that authoritarian states use for image management and the ways in which their strategies vary from one state to another. Moreover, Dukalskis looks at the degree to which some authoritarian states succeed in using image management to enhance their internal and external security, and, in turn, to make their world safe for dictatorship.

Download or read book Promoting Democracy Reinforcing Authoritarianism written by Benjamin Schuetze and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed examination of the role of US and European 'democracy promoters' in Jordan based on a diverse range of original source material.

Download or read book The Rise of Digital Repression written by Steven Feldstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Book" -- dust jacket.

Download or read book The Lessons of Tragedy written by Hal Brands and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant” examination of American complacency and how it puts the nation’s—and the world’s—security at risk (The Wall Street Journal). The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than seventy years of great-power peace and a quarter-century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades. In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable—so long as we regain an appreciation of the world’s tragic nature before it is too late. “Literate and lucid—sure to interest to readers of Fukuyama, Huntington, and similar authors as well as students of modern realpolitik.” —Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Civil Society under Authoritarianism written by Jessica C. Teets and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil Society under Authoritarianism takes a fresh look at civil society in China, analyzing the nuanced and dynamic relationship between civil society and government officials.

Download or read book Authoritarian Gravity Centers written by Marianne Kneuer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autocracies not only resist the global spread of democracy but are sources of autocratic influence and pressure. This book presents a conceptual model to understand, assess, and explain the promotion and diffusion of authoritarian elements. Employing a cross-regional approach, leading experts empirically test the concept of authoritarian gravity centers (AGCs), defined as "regimes that constitute a force of attraction and contagion for countries in geopolitical proximity." With an analysis extending across Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Asia, these AGCs are shown to be effective as active promoters (push) or as neutral sources of attraction (pull). The authors contend that the influence of exogenous factors, along with international and regional contexts for the transformation of regime types, is vital to understanding and analyzing the transmission of autocratic institutional settings, ideas, norms, procedures, and practices, thus explaining the regional clustering of autocracies. It is the regional context in which external actors can influence authoritarian processes most effectively. Authoritarian Gravity Centers is a vibrant and comprehensive contribution to the growing field of autocratization, which will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of comparative area studies, illiberalism, international politics, and studies of democracy.

Download or read book Aiding Democracy Abroad written by Thomas Carothers and published by Carnegie Endowment. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aid to promote democracy abroad has emerged as a major growth industry in recent years. Not only the United States but many other Western countries, international institutions, and private foundations today use aid to support democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Though extensive in scope, these activities remain little understood outside the realm of specialists. Debates among policymakers over democracy promotion oscillate between unhelpful poles of extreme skepticism and unrealistic boosterism, while the vast majority of citizens in aid-providing countries have little awareness of the democracy-building efforts their governments sponsor. Aiding Democracy Abroad is the first independent, comprehensive assessment of this important new field. Drawing on extensive field research and years of hands-on experience, Thomas Carothers examines democracy-aid programs relating to elections, political parties, governmental reform, rule of law, civil society, independent media, labor unions, decentralization, and other elements of what he describes as "the democracy template" that policymakers and aid officials apply around the world. Steering a careful path between the inflated claims of aid advocates and the exaggerated criticisms of their opponents, Carothers takes a hard look at what such programs achieve and how they can be improved.

Download or read book The Taming of Democracy Assistance written by Sarah Sunn Bush and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most government programs seeking to aid democracy abroad do not directly confront dictators. This book explains how organizational politics 'tamed' democracy assistance.

Download or read book The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule written by Oisín Tansey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autocrats must overcome a range of challenges as they seek to gain and maintain political power, including the threat that comes from both rival elites and discontented publics. The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule examines the ways in which international forces can encourage and assist autocratic actors in overcoming these challenges. Often, autocratic incumbents are strengthened in power by events on the international stage and by the active support of international allies. The book offers a typology of different international forms of influence on authoritarianism, and examines the ways in which external forces shape autocratic rule at the domestic level. The typology distinguishes between three broad forms of international influence: passive influences, unintended consequences, and active forms of external autocratic sponsorship. The book focuses in particular on the latter category, and examines intentional autocratic sponsorship in the post-Cold War period. A central contribution of the book is to address the question of how international autocratic sponsorship can bolster authoritarian rule. It highlights the ways in which international sponsorship can contribute to authoritarian practices is three significant ways: by increasing the likelihood that authoritarian regimes will pursue 'authoritarian practices' (such as coups, repression or election fraud), by contributing to the implementation of those practices, and finally by shielding autocratic actors from international punishment after such practices are pursued. External sponsorship can thus lower the costs of authoritarian behaviour, and protect and shield authoritarian regimes from the negative consequences of their actions. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.