CHAPTER SIX: AUTHORITARIAN RULE

6.1 Nine of the 45 largest states by population still ruled by authoritarian means, including China, Vietnam, Egypt and Iran. Control of oil (p. 99).

6.2 Characteristics of authoritarian rule: lack of a succession procedure, limited institutionalization, political vulnerability, economic stagnation. Reliance on the military, patronage and the media to maintain the ruling elite (pp. 99-103).

6.3 Personal despots based on the leader’s retinue. Also known as sultanism. Emerges in a few small, agricultural post-colonial countries. Examples include Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Duvalier in Haiti (pp. 103-04).

6.4 Monarchs as ruling families in the Gulf States. Basis in traditional authority and patronage. Selection of monarch by clan council, not primogeniture, enhances competence (pp. 104-05).

6.5 Political parties as ruling force in communist states. Unequalled penetration of society. Governed about one in three of the world’s population at their peak in the 1970s and 1980s. The contrast between Marx’s ideals and the authoritarian reality. Lenin’s notion of the vanguard party. Economic planning as a dead-end once industrialization achieved. Continued economic growth sustains China and Vietnam as purely nominal communist states, fuelled in part by corruption. Few non-communist cases of party rule: Singapore as an example (pp. 105-12).

6.6 The president (the office, not just the person) as the dominant force in a few authoritarian regimes. The example of Uzbekistan (pp. 112-13).

6.7 Military government as a common form of rule in developing countries, 1960s-1980s. Superpower support as a factor encouraging coups. The limited impact of many such governments. The retreat of the generals in the 1980s and 1990s but the difficult legacy of many post-military regimes (pp. 113-15).

6.8 Rule by religious leaders as a rare form of authoritarian rule. Iran as a conservative, contested theocracy (pp. 115-16).

<< back to Chapter notes list