The Social Roots of Authoritarianism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19972649 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Natalia Forrat (Lecturer in the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies, University of Michigan's International Institute, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-24 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | Social Roots of Authoritarianism (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oso/9780197790359.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4403734886 |
| Open Library | OL52214020M |
| ISBN | 9780197790359 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Why are some authoritarian regimes highly competitive and others highly unified? Do they function differently? And what does it mean for our understanding of democracy and democratization? The Social Roots of Authoritarianism unpacks the grassroots mechanisms maintaining unity-based and division-based authoritarianisms. It argues that they develop in societies with opposite visions: the state as team leader or the state as outsider. Depending on which vision of the state is dominant in society, autocrats must use different tools to consolidate their regimes or risk pushback. The book demonstrates the grassroots mechanisms of authoritarian power comparing four Russian regions with opposite patterns of electoral performance—the Rostov region, the Kemerovo region, the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Republic of Altai. In two of them, public organizations formed centralized political machines and blended civic and political functions amplified by the teamwork logic. In the other two, clientelistic political machines ruled by the utility maximization logic dominated. The book uses the understanding of how unity-based authoritarianism works to shed new light on the history of state–society relations in Russia, focusing on the conflict between the ideal of a just state and the reality of a repressive state. The theory of unity- and division-based authoritarianisms developed in the book implies that these types of authoritarian regimes miss the opposite elements of democracy, and that democratization depends on cultivating these missing institutions over time
Authoritarianism · Political science · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |