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The rule of law in the Arab world : courts in Egypt and the Gulf
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ISBN: 9780521590266 9780521030687 9780511583278 0521590264 Year: 2006 Volume: 6 Publisher: Cambridge Cambridge University Press


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Autocrats can't always get what they want : state institutions and autonomy under authoritarianism
Authors: --- --- ---
ISBN: 9780472904600 0472904604 Year: 2024 Publisher: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press,

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Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world--even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain authoritarian rule as a function of the interests or needs of the ruler or regime can be misleading. Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want argues that to understand how authoritarian systems work we need to look not only at the interests and intentions of those at the top, but also at the inner workings of the various parts of the state. Courts, elections, security force structure, and intelligence gathering are seen as structured and geared toward helping maintain the regime. Yet authoritarian regimes do not all operate the same way in the day-to-day and year-to-year tumble of politics. In Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want, the authors find that when state bodies form strong institutional patterns and forge links with key allies both inside the state and outside of it, they can define interests and missions that are different from those at the top of the regime. By focusing on three such structures (parliaments, constitutional courts, and official religious institutions), the book shows that the degree of autonomy realized by a particular part of the state rests on how thoroughly it is institutionalized and how strong its links are with constituencies. Instead of viewing authoritarian governance as something that reduces politics to rulers' whims and opposition movements, the authors show how it operates--and how much what we call "authoritarianism" varies.


Book
Autocrats can't always get what they want : state institutions and autonomy under authoritarianism
Authors: --- --- ---
ISBN: 0472904604 0472056972 0472076973 Year: 2024 Publisher: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press,

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Bookmark

Abstract

Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world--even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain authoritarian rule as a function of the interests or needs of the ruler or regime can be misleading. Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want argues that to understand how authoritarian systems work we need to look not only at the interests and intentions of those at the top, but also at the inner workings of the various parts of the state. Courts, elections, security force structure, and intelligence gathering are seen as structured and geared toward helping maintain the regime. Yet authoritarian regimes do not all operate the same way in the day-to-day and year-to-year tumble of politics. In Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want, the authors find that when state bodies form strong institutional patterns and forge links with key allies both inside the state and outside of it, they can define interests and missions that are different from those at the top of the regime. By focusing on three such structures (parliaments, constitutional courts, and official religious institutions), the book shows that the degree of autonomy realized by a particular part of the state rests on how thoroughly it is institutionalized and how strong its links are with constituencies. Instead of viewing authoritarian governance as something that reduces politics to rulers' whims and opposition movements, the authors show how it operates--and how much what we call "authoritarianism" varies.

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