Authoritarian Forms Research Articles

Can Civil Society Safeguard Rights in Asia?

ABSTRACT As the Cold War waned, civil society came to be regarded as the domain that made democracy work. Optimism and attention nevertheless faded as new democracies failed to thrive. Now, once again we find regimes in flux globally, amidst what seems to be a “democratic recession”. Heightened political angst has prompted renewed attention to civil society, as a possible antidote to institutional malaise. A sequence of incomplete or reversing transitions from forms of authoritarianism across Asia since the 1980s makes these concerns especially germane. Opening the public sphere allows for full-throated rights claims, but also for demands for exclusivity in conferring those rights. Similarly, economic globalisation fosters mobility and far-flung community, but also deference to business interests in policy processes. Even so, I argue that the nature and confluence of Asian states’ transitions, situated amidst structural changes to media and markets, increase transparency and information flows, and nurture creativity born of urgency. Civil society remains heterogeneous across the region, but even where weakly organised and embattled, it can still support effective, if oblique, efforts at shaping norms and contesting violations. The current balance warrants tempered expectations, but also cautious optimism for a civil-societal role in claiming and maintaining human rights.

Embedded ethics and reflexivity: narrating a charter of ethical experience

We address the call to situate organizational codes of ethics in practice and local values rather than authoritarian forms of control. Our contribution lies in: (1) drawing on Ricoeur’s work on the capable human being to develop the idea of embedded ethics, which we argue is a form of lived ethics situated in how people understand and enact ethical values in specific contexts; and (2) illustrating, through an action research project carried out in a large Italian non-profit organization, how a hermeneutic-inspired narrative methodology can be used to develop an ethics charter situated in lived values. A hermeneutic approach to research recognizes that each research encounter is unique and co-created, therefore participant interpretations are important. The originality of our work centers around the novel narrative form and approach to developing an ethical charter based on embedded ethics. We conclude by suggesting that this approach to developing an ethical charter encompasses a form of orientational learning in which people come to understand a sense or feel for issues in their reflexive dialogue around narratives that surface and explore ethical tensions.

Bangladesh-India Diplomatic Relations (1975-1996): Transitions, Bilateral Disputes and Legacies

Bangladesh, born in 1971, endured her very first setback in 1975 when a bloody military coup took place, which killed the Father of the nation and subsequently army seized power. From then to 1990, two military dictators ruled the country for a short time as a military dictator and the rest of the time under the veil of the democratically elected statesman. With the fall of the Mujib government, a new diplomatic stance had been taken up; from a socialist, liberal, secular and democratic state, Bangladesh crawled down to a capitalist, conservative, Islamist and authoritarian form of state. It appears from the policy of the dictators that they had tried to satiate the people through the amendments of the constitution to shape it as an Islamist country and to satisfy the capitalist class, they introduced the capitalist economy from the moderate socialist economy. An identical procedure which was followed by the Pakistani military rulers in pre-independence time had been conceived smoothly by the military dictators in independent Bangladesh.

Militarized masculinity and the paradox of restraint: mechanisms of social control under modern authoritarianism

Abstract The twenty-first century is marked by the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, many of which are characterized by the ‘paradox of restraint’, in which reforms compliant with the rule of law are used to unshackle the ruler's arbitrary power. Despite a proliferation of scholarly studies on this topic, we still have limited understanding of how national-level authoritarian power reaches ordinary citizens in these contexts. This article identifies the performance of militarized masculinities as an understudied mechanism that does so. It offers two main contributions: first, it highlights how performances of militarized masculinities enact the paradox of restraint through gendered idioms, thereby magnifying the ambiguities of modern authoritarianism and diffusing them at a local level. Second, it recasts the conceptual utility of militarized masculinities, showing that the concept's inherent tensions between ordered discipline and unaccountable violence produce and project authoritarian power, giving militarized masculinities special potency as a mode of social discipline in these contexts. The article draws on feminist International Relations, employing grounded ethnographic research to illustrate how national-level power circulates locally. To do so, it first illustrates the relationship between the paradox of restraint and militarized masculinities using the cases of Putin's Russia and Duterte's Philippines. It then turns to an in-depth case study of a local dispute between soldiers and civilians in Museveni's Uganda to trace how gendered local encounters facilitate the transmission of national-level authoritarian power into the lives of ordinary people.

Desenmarañar, iluminar y avanzar

Schwarcz, L. M. (2019). Sobre o autoritarismo brasileiro. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.The book Sobre o autoritarismo brasileiro, authored by Lilia Moritz Schwacz, brings a set of data, deep research and historic information to support an important present discussion. The authoress is insightful in the act of unraveling the reality by relating what we are living with previous points of our national history and, defining as central axis the authoritarianism, which reflects in several points discussed in the book, she reaffirms the relevance of the study of the past for the construction of a critical sense, necessary to foment the reflection about the realities experienced by certain groups of society. The book, short and straight to the point, takes the reader to flip through contents that can shed light on the tangles of the present thinking engineered during the construction of our nation, which complicates the comprehension of the forms of authoritarianism fixed in our economic, politic and social relations.

Campus Governance in U.S. Universities and Colleges

The governance of universities and colleges in the United States basically follows the concept and spirit of democracy embraced by the nation from its birth. The systems and practices in place at most U.S. institutions of higher learning include collaborative, representative, or collective decision-making arrangements known as shared governance. However, these systems and practices are hardly uniform due to the diversity of governance patterns that reflect the unique and different history, needs, and mission of a particular institution. Sometimes they are differentiated from, and contrasted with, corporate, business, and more authoritarian or centralized forms of institutional governance.
 In contrast with university governance elsewhere in the world—that can range from strong central government control to private self-regulated operations—the U.S. forms of campus governance have emerged in a country that does not have centralized authority over education. U.S. institutions of higher learning respond to a variety of controls and interests that are on display variously at public, private non-profit, private for-profit, and religious universities. Governance, authority, and administration are spread across a wide spectrum of players, including governing boards; presidents, chancellors, and other administrators; the academy/faculty; administrative staff; campus committees; students; and, even some external factors.
 Shared governance is not a perfect formula or panacea for university administration and decision-making. It does, however, provide a methodology, system, and concept that can help guide the leadership of a university as it approaches the administration and conduct of its educational responsibilities. In today’s higher education environment, the term governance is rather expansive. In one sense, it means top-down governance that is the rightful role and authority of an institutional board charged with overseeing policy, programming, performance, and executive guidance and evaluation. But, it also variously means the use of institutional strategies, operations, and components to distribute, disseminate, and “share” authority and responsibilities for a university’s administrative, management, and decision-making functions, i.e., “on-campus governance.” In this respect, shared governance “borrows” many of the attributes and principles of democratic government. In any case, shared governance, in its many forms and applications, is widely practiced in U.S. universities, including Delta State University.

Capitalism, Racism, and Trumpism: Whitelash and the Politics of Oppression

That the rising tide of fascism, headwinds of neoliberalism, or persistence of racism in the United States is institutional, systemic, and part of a long history of oppression towards various groups is not new news. The bigger question is how we got to a point in which overt manifestations of racism, sexism, faux democracy, and other forms of illegality and authoritarianism has once again become normalized. What does it mean when a sitting President claims that Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals, and drug runners? How did we get to a point where we, collectively, are not as outraged as we reasonably should be? In this paper, we argue that part of the explanation for the rise of, and loyalty to, Trumpism lies in Donald Trump’s ability to fuel “whitelash.” We define whitelash as individual, institutional, and/or structural countermeasures against the dismantling of white supremacy or actions, real or imagined, that seek to remedy existing racial inequities. Whitelash, we argue, is a reaction to challenges made to the white status quo; it is a reaction to growing diversity; it is a reaction against any progressive changes that would call out racism, question white privilege, or suggest racial equality is necessary to meet American ideals of fairness, in any of its forms. We present two historical case studies (immigration and affirmative action) that highlight the role of whitelash in the U.S.

Pre-emptive Constitution-Making: Authoritarian Constitutionalism and the Military in Myanmar

Constitutions are an important feature of many authoritarian regimes. But what role do they in fact perform in processes of authoritarian regime stabilization and legitimation? Much of the contemporary literature focuses on authoritarian constitutionalism in transitions away from constitutional democracy. This article considers the opposite scenario: pre-emptive constitution-making as a mechanism of authoritarian constitutionalism to contain a potential transition toward constitutional democracy. This is illustrated through the case of Myanmar. Since the 1960s, Myanmar has experienced successive periods of direct military rule without a constitution, followed since 2011 by a new constitution. Adding to the comparative literature on constitutions in authoritarian regimes, this article explains how pre-emptive constitution-making limits a transition to liberal democracy and contributes to authoritarian-regime resilience. This article further identifies “military-state” constitutionalism as a variation of authoritarian constitutionalism in Myanmar. The case of Myanmar offers comparative insights into the ways constitutions are used to contain transitions to constitutional democracy and illustrates the varieties inherent in authoritarian constitutionalism.

The Constitutional Legitimation of Authoritarian Regimes – A Comparative Analysis of Apartheid South Africa and Communist Hungary

This paper studies the use of constitutional legitimation strategies in authoritarian regimes. The introduction analyses constitutional democracy through David Beetham’s concept of legitimate authority. Beetham considers that an authority is legitimate if three conditions are gathered: the existence of a written rule, a spread feeling of fairness and the explicit consent to the creation of legitimate authority. I argue that a transposition in the field of constitutional democracy gives rise to the concept of constitutional legitimation – namely the use of constitutional instruments to support the existence of a democratic fiction in a given society. Conceptually, I argue that constitutional legitimation strategies can be equally used by authoritarian regimes to compensate the lack of legitimacy of their policies. The following sections are dedicated to the case studies of apartheid South Africa and communist Hungary. The two authoritarian systems differed in almost everything, but they seemed to give an equal importance to constitutional legitimation. The comparative work focuses on three aspects. Section two studies how the constitutional design of the two authoritarian constitutions ensured a control of the electoral outcome. Section three focuses on how a specific constitutional design gave the authoritarian rulers a total control on the political institutions. It challenges the notion that authoritarian constitutions are barely more than shame constitutions. Section four looks at constitutional legitimation and the creation of channel of subordination. More precisely, it looks at the role of the judiciary (South Africa) and social organizations (Hungary) in the legitimation of the authoritarian policies.

Jóvenes, autoritarismo y “movida rock” en la transición uruguaya (1980-1989)

Este trabajo propone una aproximación inicial a las características de la democracia posdictatorial uruguaya a la luz de las herencias del período de facto y las nuevas formas autoritarias que se configuraron, haciendo énfasis en el impacto que el autoritarismo posdictatorial tuvo en los jóvenes y la manera como estos canalizaron sus denuncias, articularon su resistencia y organizaron propuestas alternativas a través de un importante repertorio de acciones político-culturales, donde la música rock jugó un papel central. Metodológicamente se ha realizado un análisis de la bibliografía producida en el Uruguay sobre la temática, así como también de trabajos significativos a nivel regional, se ha trabajado además con el contenido de varias piezas musicales que conforman el repertorio de importantes grupos de rock uruguayo de la época.

Opening the can of worms: A comprehensive examination of authoritarianism

We carry out an exhaustive analysis of both right-wing and left-wing forms of authoritarianism in order to assess the specific predictors of these illiberal agendas. Firstly, we conduct a literature review on authoritarianism as a multidimensional psychological construct, with emphasis on its controversial links to the political spectrum, religion, and economic conservatism. Moreover, we review its potential associations with social axioms, as an interesting psychological framework to aid understanding of authoritarian attitudes. We extract three working hypotheses from this literature review, all successfully tested in two empirical studies (n = 1097 and n = 1102). Our results suggest that the strongest predictor of right-wing authoritarianism is social conservatism, whereas left-wing authoritarianism is better understood as an illiberal backlash against conservatism-related constructs. Both authoritarian agendas may be motivated by their opposed expectations of reward for conventional behavior.

Perspectives on the rebel social contract: Exit, voice, and loyalty in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Abstract This article considers the concept of the rebel social contract by examining the case of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. The concept of the social contract is a cornerstone of political theory and is increasingly invoked in discussions of civil war and authoritarian regimes, when prospective rulers offer political protections and social benefits in return for the allegiance of citizens. The social contract is often assumed to exist, but is rarely evaluated empirically. It remains difficult to distinguish between political stability derived from consent and stability derived from coercion and domination given their observational equivalence. Civil wars, in which rebel groups seek to supplant the state, provide opportunities to observe the construction and negotiation of new social contracts. The article uses Hirschman’s exit/voice/loyalty typology to develop a qualitative empirical method for evaluating evidence of the rebels’ “offer” of a social contract to civilians and their acceptance or rejection of that offer. We demonstrate this method by applying it to the case of IS using evidence including official IS documents, social media posts from within IS-controlled territory, and interviews with individuals who have personally experienced IS governance. We conclude that while IS leadership wanted to gain voluntary assent, most of the civilian response to IS rule suggested domination and authoritarian forms of social-contract building. This finding is illustrative of the analytical and methodological challenges involved in studying the social contract in rebel governance and the importance of considering domination, not just reciprocity, as the foundation for political order.

Form and Power On the Disciplinary Coding of National Identity in “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” by Witold Gombrowicz

The aim of this article is to analyse Witold Gombrowicz’s short story entitled “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” in the context of the convergence between the writer’s worldview and the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Nietzschean motifs inspired both authors to formulate a similar constructivist anthropology and a similar criticism of the concept of discipline. The themes of form and creating a human being by a human being – central to Gombrowicz’s writing – correspond to Foucault’s notion of the production of the subject. In such a perspective, “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” can be read as a record of the experience of an individual subjected to social practices of disciplinary embarrassment, aimed at producing a subject defined by nationality and heteronormativity, as well as the experience of rebellion against an imposed identity. Such a reading reveals the political stakes of the literary output by the author of Ferdydurke: expressed in the deconstruction of authoritarian forms of empowerment and in the pursuit to replace them with forms of subjectification based on irony, fluidity and distance.

Brutalism and the People: Architectural Articulations of National Developmentalism in Mid-Twentieth-Century São Paulo

AbstractThis article examines the question of how architects in São Paulo during the 1950s and 1960s addressed the political nature of their work, and more specifically the connections between their practice and the lives and politics of the urban poor in the context of a rapidly expanding metropolis of the Global South. More specifically, it assesses how they elaborated strategies to articulate the semiotic and material practices of Brutalism and the political repertoire of national developmentalism, initially in its democratic and later in its authoritarian form. The article argues that these architects deployed two semio-material strategies to operationalize the articulation between that political repertoire and the field of architecture: metaphorical indexicality and the impetus for the industrialization of construction. The image of the urban poor reinforced by that political repertoire was marked by a severe distance from their empirical life experiences, which deeply affected the practices of design and construction that progressive architects advanced.

Engineering Representation in A Single-Party Regime: A Mobilizational Model of Political Representation in China’s Local Congresses

Can authoritarian regimes provide meaningful representation to their citizens? Political representation has been primarily considered and discussed in liberal-democratic settings. However, why do authoritarian rulers care about representation? How can authoritarian rulers engender representation in their relationship with the ruled? China presents an ideal case to examine these questions in light of the party regime’s strong claims to represent its people and the recent reforms in utilizing mobilizational means to generate representation. Drawing on first-hand data collected from thirteen fieldwork sites across eastern, middle and western regions of China, this article outlines a mobilizational model of political representation under non-liberal environments by unpacking the dynamics, process, and logic of congressional representation in China. The findings of this article suggest that the Chinese party regime is strongly motivated to employ mobilizational means to engineer congress representation in the context of declining use of electoral accountability. Although it still meets with shortcomings and challenges, the mass-line mobilizational pattern of representation is instrumentalized by the ruling party for regime-sustaining purposes, therefore creating the potential for a form of representative authoritarianism to emerge in China.

As Darkness Deepens: The Right to be Forgotten in the Context of Authoritarian Constitutionalism

AbstractThere is no point in denying the significance of the Right to be forgotten for the state of judicial dialogue in Europe. It vindicates the position of the BVerfG as a court deserving international recognition for advancing the law in the crucial field of data protection. Nevertheless, restricting the scope of analysis to the narrow context of judicial dialogue misses the wider context of the rise of authoritarian constitutionalism in certain EU Member States. In this respect, it is of the highest significance that the decisions on the Right to be forgotten effectively eliminate the imagined normative hierarchy between domestic and EU law that provided the basis for the BVerfG’s jurisprudence ever since Solange I and Maastricht. Moreover, by reasserting the primacy of EU law, the BVerfG strengthens the position of embattled judges in Poland facing disciplinary action for implementing the primacy of EU law. The concern shown by some members of the First Senate for the situation in Poland corroborates this reading.

Hermann Heller’de Otoriter Liberalizm ve Demokratik Devlet Biçimi

This study examines Hermann Heller’s ideas on authoritarian liberalism and the form of the democratic state, which continue to be relevant for current discussions on the rise of authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Heller conceives democracy as popular sovereignty. Accordingly, the principle of popular sovereignty imposes a certain form to a state, which is nothing other than the constitutional state. He inseparably binds the organizational features of constitutional state (such as the rule of statutory law and separation of powers) to popular sovereignty, so that one side cannot be effectively realized in the absence of the other. On the other hand, he makes a sound and theoretically backed examination of what the authoritarian state actually is. In this way, Heller develops solid arguments against the efforts to reconcile authoritarian form of the state with popular sovereignty. Heller addresses conventional concepts such as parliamentarism, democratic authority, and the constitutional state, which are often considered outmoded or obsolete. While he clarifies the meaning of these concepts and analyzes their connection with the state organs, he defends and graces them as well.

Poverty Removal Measures of Amartya Sen and the Smithian Dilemma

La historia de la civilización humana hasta ahora conocida ha sido marcada con logros gloriosos e injusticias abyectas caracterizadas por la pobreza, la desigualdad y las privaciones. La explicación más coherente de la pobreza y la injusticia se encuentra en las obras de Karl Marx y Frederick Engels. Ellos asociaron la pobreza y la injusticia con la propiedad privada, la división del trabajo, el intercambio, la competencia, la familia y el Estado. Amartya Sen ha considerado la democracia pluralista como la forma más deseable de gobierno que podría garantizar el crecimiento con justicia social junto con la libertad humana. Aunque son mejores que las formas autoritarias de gobierno en muchos aspectos, las democracias basadas en partidos políticos están sobrecargadas con una corrupción generalizada basada en la alianza criminal-sindical-política. Sen enfatiza el papel de los medios de comunicación y la conciencia de la gente común para romper este círculo vicioso y hacer que los políticos, los gobiernos, trabajen de manera deseable.Lamentablemente, esta nota optimista de Sen se ha topado con un serio obstáculo señalado por Adam Smith hace mucho tiempo. Según Smith, una psicosis común a la mayoría de las personas, cualesquiera que sean sus propias posiciones, es que admiran a los poderosos y a los ricos (cualesquiera que sean los medios de sus logros) en lugar de los realmente dignos, a saber: El honesto y virtuoso que no ha logrado el poder y la riqueza. Esto, de hecho, ha explicado una perspectiva sombría para la raza humana.

Beyond Sham: The North Korean Constitution

The Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is often dismissed as a valid legal instrument within the larger framework of the North Korean legal system. This is an unsurprising outcome given the portrayal of North Korea as a totalitarian dictatorship, documented human rights abuses, and the lack of access to the country's lawmaking processes. It is also a foreseeable result if comparisons are made to liberal democratic constitutions where rights guarantees and judicial review are defining elements. However, the North Korean Constitution deserves more nuanced scrutiny in light of evolving research on socialist and authoritarian constitutionalism in Asia. This article argues that the DPRK Constitution should be included more substantively within the analytical frameworks of Asian, socialist, and authoritarian constitutionalism by virtue of how it functions to nation-build, legitimate institutional leadership, signal ideological shifts, regulate society on collectivist, duty-based principles, and guide economic reforms for development and modernization.

Hybrid regimes of the Western Balkans: Reflection of a global geopolitical struggle

The new global order has yet to be fully established. The process reflects not only a geopolitical struggle but also a set of competitive political models. While it is possible to determine more than two dominant models, it is a contest between the two forms of democracy - liberal and illiberal. A one-party state, or a Chinese model, is an economic model used for geopolitical purposes while Muslim political model, strongly contested within the Muslim world, is restricted to areas dominated by the population of this faith. Some of its forms are reflected in the form of authoritarianism as developed in Turkey. The faith, therefore, is of lesser significance. The regimes in the Western Balkans have been developed and are based on two models of democracy. The resulting hybrid regimes are analysed in the global context of the powerstruggle and ideological contest. The question is whether the hybrid regimes of the Western Balkans are the result of dysfunctional local democracy or whether the search for global stability is resulting in a model of competitive authoritarianism which provides for global security but also supports the regime's desire to remain unchanged in perpetuity? This development might be supportive of international security but is an utterly destabilising factor for societies in the Western Balkans and a substantial obstacle to the development of liberal democracy.