Can Cuba Change? Tensions in the Regime

Bibliographic Data

ID6286584
AuthorsEusebio Mujal-Leon, Eusebio Mujal‐león (corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume20
Issue1
Pages20-35
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of democracy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-5736 • E-ISSN: 1086-3214
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jod.0.0049
OpenAlexW2028633632
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited5

Relative to other twentieth-century totalitarian experiments, the Cuban regime has developed a special mix of control, mobilization, and harassment. Since the crushing of internal opposition in the 1960s, the regime has created a system of “vertical” controls that concentrate power in the hands of the state and “disempower” and “direct” society, while in the process diminishing alternative or horizontal information flows, contacts, organizations, and solidarity networks. Over the past fifteen years, the regime has moved from full totalitarianism to a more transitional “charismatic post-totalitarianism.” Since Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006, the trend toward posttotalitarianism has deepened, and the pending question now is whether the Cuban regime will “mature” into this phase, or move toward another regime type. Although the transfer of power from Fidel to Raúl has been relatively uneventful, potential divisions within the ruling elite, especially between the military and the Party, are likely to emerge before too long

Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Fell · Mobilization · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Regime change · Sociology · Solidarity · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Cuban History and Society · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Geology

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