Feb 10

What is democracy’s main rival right now?

- Authoritarianism
- Personalized political power; weak institutional and legal constraints
- Lacking a monopoly on power, lacing a controlling ideology
- Constraints on civil society. Limit free and fair elections
- Basic goa:
- Maintaining their own power, rather than realizing a visionary dream (ex.
Communist utopia)
- Require obedience and even apathy among their subjects, not loyalty, must less
fanatical mobilization
- Often permit some degree of personal freedom, but only to an extent consistent
the maintenance of power

How do authoritarians differ from totalitarians?

-

What is “competitive authoritarianism”?

- Hybrid of authoritarianism and totalitarianism
- Term implies the existence of meaningly functional democartic institutions along with
widespread incumbent abuse
- Produce elections that are to a certain extent free, but are unfair
- Ex. Turkey
- Have to compete with power with political rivals
- There is real, but limited competition
- Turkey, hati, hundorius, nigeria, etc.

What are the world’s major authoritarian states?

- China russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela
- Vladimer Putin, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Nicoloas Maduro, ayatollah
Khamenei, Xi Jingping
- These rulers have removed constitutional safeguards, monopolize news media, and rules
by means of law rather than being constrained by the rule of law

What is a personalistic rule? What are some examples?

- Personalized power
- Ex. Xi jinping
- In the middle of the 20th century, China was governed by mao zedong, he ruled
through error for communist ideals
 - Had modernization programs
- Died 1976
- Period of decentralization after the death of mao zedong
- Establishing term limits, leaders stepped down after 2 terms
- Armies were controlled by generals through patron client relationship,
- changed when xi jinping went into power
- Began to concentrate power in his own hands
- He eliminated 2 term limit, sent singla xi wanted to stay beyond 2
term, be the permanent leader of the country
- He controls people's liberation army and police
- Xi jinping purged rivals, sent 42 members of central committee to prison, and
punished party members for lacking respect for the party
- 1.4 million ppl, portental rivals were purged
- He has established a national supervisory committee to impose his views on elites
(doctors, professors, etc.)

What are some expressions of the authoritarian attempt to contain democracy?

- Containment/ resistance of democracy
- There is a global rivalry between democracy and authoritarianism
- Democracy is a shared enemy
- Creation if “Anti-Western International)
- Ex. the Shanghai cooperation between china, iran, and russia organization aimed
at eliminating western influence of the economy
- Ex. Vladimir Putin’s military resistance to the West and to NATO (Putin re-
elected as Russian President in 2011)
- Ex. Aid for developing countries in the middle east
- Militarism and patriotism needs an external enemy, that has been the west
- When there are western sanctions on iran. It is difficult b/ anti westenr powers support
iran
- China, russia has continued to provide aid to countries in the middle east and
africa
- Ex. China’s Unified trading commercial network expanding connectivity over
land and sea among its chosen powers
- One authoritarian power aids each other across the globe

Are the world’s authoritarians united by techniques of censorship and propaganda? How?
- Russia: Unified Register of Prohibited information, RT news agency, Facebook
- RT news is news presented in a skewed form to criticize the west
- The west has failed to live up to its own norms
- China: Cyber administration
- Wechat tracks dissidence
 - Outlawed discussion on universal right, historical problems of the communist
party in school classrooms
- IRAN: Supreme Council of the Cuutrak Revolution
- Controls messaging in weakly sermons played over the radio
- Iran offically bans fb and instagram and has hired jihadist to fight ciritism over
the regeime
- AN APPARENT ALTERNATIVE TO THE WEST, IN CASE ANYONE SUCH AS
VITOR ORBAN IS PAYING ATTENTION

What are Socrates’ criticisms of tyranny in Plato’s Republic?

- Criticizes the tyrant for
- Stirring up wars to make himself indispensable
- Vlad Putin
- Warfare inspires nationalism and patriotism and raises the leader
- Executing political rivals
- Jixing ping’s purge
- Plundering their own people
- The house of song in saudi arabia
- He is 7bil $ in oil while half of his country lives below poverty lines

Are the authoritarian regimes as strong as they may seem? What sorts of internal problems do
they face?
- Authroiantain weakness
- Chinese communist party financial corruption
- General Xu Caihou, he had tons of cash in his basement, stored gold bars
and jewelry
- Economic success has enriched the communist elite but that elite is not
responsible for economic growth
- It is responsible for corruption and economic slowdown
- The lack of meritocracy, briarbey flowing up to this general
- Dampens enthusiasm for achievement

In particular, are there cracks in the legitimacy of the regime in Iran?

- Iran’s struggle with power and legitimacy
- Iran is a theocracy, interpreted by clerics
- As a result, god does not depend on popular legitimacy
- When ayatollah Khamene took over, many iranians went into exile, coincided
with many killing
- ayatollah Khamene controls 90bil US dollars in special accounts (oil)
- Ditacts university and school curriculum
- Oversees public hangings
 - Clerics have been challenging his rule, using scripture
- Church and state in the scripture does not know if it should be separate or
if church should rule state
- Weakness is the rigidity in interpretation of religion that is required to support the
regime
- Women have become increasingly prominent
- They have stopped complying with clothing restrictions
- Women seeking independence
- Backlash has been acid attacks on women who do not follow guidelines
- There is an underground culture of book readings, art exhibits
- Mirco agressions against the mirco repudiations against the islam rebublic

What is the “authoritarians dilemma”?

- Andre Nathan’56s account of the “Authrorian’s Dilemma”
- In order to benefit from the legitimacy enhancing effects of regime performance,
authorian regimes pursue economic growth and social modernization
- The more the success in their modernizing mission, the more the undermine the
prevalence of traditional social values
- More they believe in freedom of speech and limits on government authority
- U must modernize in order to keep everyone’s favor
- The more u modernize the more educated ppl become, the more dissonance u
have

How did the Arab Spring begin?

- How did democracy fare, how can we explain its successes and failures?
- Does political science provide quasi scientific univerally scientific laws or is it more of a
humanistic discipline that does not providing universal laws
- Arab Spring was sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December
2010 in Sidi Bouzid
- following Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of police corruption
and ill treatment.

What is MENA?
- English-language acronym referring to the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan, which corresponds to the Greater Middle East.

Where did regime change occur in the MENA, at least initially?

- The world should not look at the arab spring as a single phenomenon
- Libya fell apart b/c they did not have a proper state in place
- Tenisia need to heal class divisions, the army is not as important
- Egypt needs to revamp relationship between army and political institutions
 - If washington hopes to fulfill its promises to support the rights of arab citizens, it needs to
understand the historical context of this uprising

Where did protest movements prove unsuccessful?

What two basic sources of power do authoritarians need, according to Brownlee et al.?

How can we understand the contrast between the arguments of Brownlee et al. and those of Lisa
Anderson?

What do these disagreements tell us about Political Science as a discipline?

- What is the likelihood of democractic success in middle eastern west africa
- Skepticism iss misguided,
- Yes all countries have their own histories but so do every region
- There is no reason to expect the arab world to be an exception to the rule of political
development
- Every demoractic transition has had difficulties and the charge that democracy is
dysfunctional

How should we understand the disagreement between Berman and Way?

- The similarities and differences with 1989 suggest that more autocrats will hang on 2001
- Those countries which do witness authoritarian collapse will be less likely to
democratize

What do these disagreements tell us about Political Science as a discipline?