Dear ChatGPT: How do dictatorships form?

Dictatorships typically form through a combination of political, social, economic, and historical factors that enable a single leader or a small group to seize and consolidate power. The process can vary depending on the context, but some common pathways to the formation of a dictatorship include:


Weak or Failed Institutions: In countries where democratic institutions are weak or ineffective, leaders can exploit the lack of checks and balances to centralize power. If the judiciary, legislature, or civil society is not strong enough to challenge the leader, a dictatorship can emerge.


Political Instability: Periods of instability, such as civil war, economic crises, or deep political divisions, can create a power vacuum. In such environments, an individual or group may claim to offer stability, often using populist rhetoric to gain support and then gradually eliminate political opposition.


Military Takeovers: A common route to dictatorship is through a military coup. When the military is dissatisfied with the civilian government or sees an opportunity to gain control, it may overthrow the government and assume power. Once in power, the military can establish authoritarian rule and suppress opposition.


Economic Crisis: Economic hardship, high unemployment, inflation, or social inequality can undermine public trust in existing governments. Leaders who promise radical solutions or strong leadership may take advantage of this discontent to gain support and seize control.


Consolidation of Power: Once in power, a potential dictator may use legal or extralegal means to consolidate authority. This can include manipulating elections, controlling the media, using state resources for personal gain, and silencing opposition through censorship, imprisonment, or violence.


Charismatic Leadership: Some dictators rise to power by appealing to the masses through charismatic leadership. They often present themselves as the only one capable of solving national problems and rally support by portraying themselves as a protector of national identity, values, or interests.


Ideological or Revolutionary Movements: Sometimes, dictatorships are the result of ideological movements that promise radical change. For instance, revolutionary leaders who initially rise to power with promises of justice or equality may ultimately establish authoritarian regimes once they achieve control, justifying their rule as necessary for the survival of the revolution.


International Factors: In some cases, external forces (e.g., foreign governments, international organizations, or global economic pressures) may influence the formation of dictatorships. This can include foreign backing for authoritarian leaders, support for coups, or economic conditions that favor dictatorial regimes.


Once a dictatorship is established, the dictator often maintains power through repression, manipulation of public opinion, control of the economy, and the elimination of political competition. The longevity of a dictatorship depends on its ability to manage or suppress opposition, maintain stability, and often, the ability to create a cult of personality.

From the NYT: Islam Karimov Dies at 78; Ruthlessly Ruled Uzbekistan for Decades

An example of an autocrat ruling a totalitarian system. One the US had to deal with from time to time due to the complexities of the middle east.

- Click here for the article.

Mr. Karimov rose through the ranks of the local Communist Party until the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev named him first secretary and effectively Uzbekistan’s chief in 1989. He won a presidential election after independence in 1991 and used Soviet methods to govern the country.

“He is the state and the state is him, and it has been that way for at least 25 years,” said Steve Swerdlow, the director of Central Asia research at Human Rights Watch.

. . . The immediate succession is expected to follow the Constitution, which mandates that the head of the Senate run the country for three months until new presidential elections can be organized. Mr. Karimov repeatedly manipulated elections or referendums to extend his rule well beyond the two terms mandated by the Constitution.
Such voting, which critics called fraudulent, always had a preordained conclusion. He won his latest presidential term in March 2015 with over 90 percent of the vote.

Mr. Karimov jailed or exiled his political opponents and muzzled the news media. Political prisoners were estimated to number in the thousands. Torture was rife. He brushed aside any criticism that managed to bubble up despite the oppression.Continue reading the main story

“I am one of those who is criticized for staying too long,” he said in 2014. “But I want to keep working. What’s wrong with that?”

An estimated one million Russians still live in Uzbekistan, though the population of more than 31 million is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. Mr. Karimov, who crushed an Islamic insurgency after surviving anassassination attempt by Islamic militants in 1999, was considered a bulwark against the spread of any jihadist threat in the region.

With him gone, there was some question whether the Islamic State or other groups might try to exploit the transition to re-emerge. “Whether or not the Islamic State sees a succession as an opportunity to create risks for the much-hated Russians remains an open question,” said Cliff Kupchan, an expert on Russia and chairman of the Eurasia Group, a risk advisory firm based in Washington.

In 1999, Mr. Karimov made his position toward radical Islam abundantly clear.
“I am prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic,” he told reporters. “If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head.”

For more:

- Human Rights Watch – Uzbekistan is a totalitarian regime.
- Human rights activists’ dismay as Uzbekistan autocrat clings to power.
- The Most Hated Woman in Uzbekistan Can Do Anything.

R.I.P. Lee Kuan Yew

The 91 year old ruler of Singapore was regarded as being responsible for transforming it from a poor corrupt country into an economic powerhouse, but he did so by restricting speech and jailing political opponents.

He was an autocrat - the pros and cons of which we cover in the early lectures in 2305 - which may have allowed him to direct the nation in the direction he choose, but apparently now raises concerns about what comes next. A nation based on one person's personality does not necessarily have the institutional structure that allows for ongoing stability.

For background:

- Wikipedia: Lee Kuan Yew.
- Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91.
- A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.
- Lee Kuan Yew Created The World's Least-Hated Authoritarian State.
- Singapore tries to imagine a future without its founder, Lee Kuan Yew.

Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

A peculiar take for our discussion of governing arrangements.

A recently published book argues that alcoholism in Russia has been promoted by the state - be it tsarist, communist, or whatever you choose to call it now - as a deliberate means of keeping the population in check and preserving autocracy.

Vodka has a political purpose. Its an interesting argument, because generally its held that nations like Russia tend to have populations that prefer iron-fisted autocratic rule, but seldom is there an explanation about why that's the case. According to this theory, the population doesn't really choose it at all. They are lulled into accepting autocratic -authoritarian rule. It's a twist on the bread and circuses that kept the Roman population entertained during the Roman Empire.

It was also a consistent source of revenue for the state.

- Click here for vodkapolitics.com.

- Here's a review of the book.

The work’s author, Mark Schrad, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, deftly weaves sociological data into a rather alarming portrait of a country brimming with binge drinkers. Presenting the book recently at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, Schrad cited World Health Organization data to show that Russians’ annual consumption of pure alcohol is roughly 15.7 liters per capita. Excluding children and abstainers, Schrad says that this figure boils down to the average Russian male drinker consuming two bottles of vodka and 13 beers per week.

Placing Russia in a broader context, Schrad suggested that Russia bucks geographic trends. Generally, as one travels northward, wine consumption turns to beer consumption. But Russians, who readily admit that wine and beer taste better, favor vodka since “it is something you do to get drunk. You down it as quickly as you can” since it tastes “horrible.”

Schrad contended that alcoholism is not “hard-wired” into Russian society. Instead, he argued that Russia’s problem with alcoholism is “an outcome of generations of autocratic government that has reaped the benefits of the intoxication of the population.”

Noting how Stalin tried to get his colleagues inebriated in order to manipulate them, Schrad argued that Russia’s rulers have applied this approach to their population for centuries. They see mass alcohol consumption as a means of keeping the population “discombobulated” and “off-balance” and “unable to mount a challenge to the government itself.”

Is autocracy on the rise?

For 2305 students (and to a lesser extent 2306) the concept of autocracy, oligarchy and democracy are important to internalize. Each is a way of organizing a governing system. They differ by where each places sovereign authority - with the one the few or the many. The slides touch the advantages and disadvantages of each and how each is subtly incorporated into each of the different branches.

One of the advantages of autocracy is its efficiency. One of the disadvantages of democracy is its inefficiency. When people are critical of democratic governments, its often because they reveal internal differences in how to combat a nation's problems, and leads some nations to prefer more autocratic means for organizing their governments.

This has become increasingly true since the 2008 economic crisis, which affected much more then just the United States. After the fall of communism in 1989, democracy flourished as more nations adopted democratic processes for their governments, sine the economic crisis, this has not been the case. Autocratic governments - with a single dominant ruler - have expanded. Some opportunities to expand democracies have stalled, or regressed - such as in Egypt and Thailand for example.

Here are links to recent news items that have documented, studied  and commented on that trend

- The Autocracy Challenge.
- New Freedom House Report Shows Autocracies Deeply Entrenched.
- Democracy Can Still Deliver.
- The Democratic Alternative from the South.
- How Militaries Rule.

Robert Kagan, an astute foreign policy commentator, suggests that this trend - accompanied by a rise in isolationism in the United States - does not bode well for a stable world.

- click here for Superpowers Don't Get to Retire.

Many Americans and their political leaders in both parties, including President Obama, have either forgotten or rejected the assumptions that undergirded American foreign policy for the past seven decades. In particular, American foreign policy may be moving away from the sense of global responsibility that equated American interests with the interests of many others around the world and back toward the defense of narrower, more parochial national interests. This is sometimes called “isolationism,” but that is not the right word. It may be more correctly described as a search for normalcy. At the core of American unease is a desire to shed the unusual burdens of responsibility that previous generations of Americans took on in World War II and throughout the cold war and to return to being a more normal kind of nation, more attuned to its own needs and less to those of the wider world.

If this is indeed what a majority of Americans seek today, then the current period of retrenchment will not be a temporary pause before an inevitable return to global activism. It will mark a new phase in the evolution of America’s foreign policy. And because America’s role in shaping the world order has been so unusually powerful and pervasive, it will also begin a new phase in the international system, one that promises not to be marginally different but radically different from what we have known these past 70 years. Unless Americans can be led back to an understanding of their enlightened self-interest, to see again how their fate is entangled with that of the world, then the prospects for a peaceful twenty-first century in which Americans and American principles can thrive will be bleak.

In additional to clarifying the material in the section labelled "defining key terms," this material should help you with the section on foreign policy.

Is democracy in long-run decline?

This theme should sound familiar if you've been paying attention to the opening slides in the class - the one's that touch on the pros and cons of democracy, oligarchy and autocracy. Democracies are inefficient, slow, and prone to conflict and autocracies are efficient, but subject to arbitrary rule.

NYT commentator David Brooks thinks that many of the problems we face - especially as compared to autocratic governments he calls "the guardian state" - are because of the consequences of democracy. We might benefit from less democracy - at least at the national level.

- Click here for the article.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

The events of the past several years have exposed democracy’s structural flaws. Democracies tend to have a tough time with long-range planning. Voters tend to want more government services than they are willing to pay for. The system of checks and balances can slide into paralysis, as more interest groups acquire veto power over legislation.

. . . A new charismatic rival is gaining strength: the Guardian State. In their book, Micklethwait and Wooldridge do an outstanding job of describing Asia’s modernizing autocracies. In some ways, these governments look more progressive than the Western model; in some ways, more conservative.

In places like Singapore and China, the best students are ruthlessly culled for government service. The technocratic elites play a bigger role in designing economic life. The safety net is smaller and less forgiving. In Singapore, 90 percent of what you get out of the key pension is what you put in. Work is rewarded. People are expected to look after their own.

These Guardian States have some disadvantages compared with Western democracies. They are more corrupt. Because the systems are top-down, local government tends to be worse. But they have advantages. They are better at long-range thinking and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback and don’t face NIMBY-style impediments.

. . . So how should Western democracies respond to this competition? What’s needed is not so much a vision of the proper role for the state as a strategy to make democracy dynamic again.

The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or donor faction. Unrepresentative groups have disproportionate power in primary elections.

The quickest way around all this is to use elite Simpson-Bowles-type commissions to push populist reforms.

The process of change would be unapologetically elitist. Gather small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms — on immigration, entitlement reform, a social mobility agenda, etc. — and then rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through.

Sounds like the a rehash of those age old arguments. And ironically, what he is describing is similar the systems the framers of the Constitution envisioned, where the mass public had very little input in the formation of national laws, but much more on the state and local level - at least among those that were able to participate politically.

A commentator at the Washington Post isn't buying it. Our problems are more due to rules that interfere with the proper workings of our institutions.

- Click here for the article.

Democratic self-doubt is nothing new. In the 1930s, Americans worried that, unlike fascist states that could "get things done," our government was too sclerotic to get us out of the Depression. In the 1960s, we worried that communist states that were rapidly industrializing and sending satellites into space were leaving us behind. And today, we're worried that one-party capitalism is more effective than multi-party capitalism. These authoritarian states, Brooks tells us, "are better at long-range planning and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback." You can see the future if you go to Shanghai — and it works, at least at breathtaking catch-up growth.

Well, not really. These paeans to government of, by and for the elite ignore China as it actually exists. Their air is unbreathable. Their high-speed railways are unsafe andshoddily made. And their government's credit-driven stimulus might have inflated a monster housing bubble that's now popping. Not exactly examples of superior long-range planning.

The truth, as boring as it may be, is that Winston Churchill was right: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, James Robinson and Pascual Restrepo have a new paper that finds that countries that switch to democracy have about 20 percent higher GDP per capita 30 years later. That seems to be because greater civil liberties lead to governments that reform more economically and invest more in education and health care — in short, that are more responsive to the people.

. . . Our problem isn't too much democracy. It's too little. The filibuster means you need a Senate super-majority to get anything done. The Hastert rule — which, remember, is more of a guideline — keeps bills that have majority support from even coming up for consideration. We could get immigration reform and tax reform and every other kind of reform we need done — first among them ones that help the long-term unemployed — if we didn't have these parliamentary rules that enable obstructionism.
Now, calling for the end of the filibuster isn't as thought leader-y as calling for Simpson-Bowles forever, but it might actually, you know, work.

What is the Fed doing to pump up the economy and why?

More from Wonkblog:

The Fed is doing two things right now to stimulate the economy. One is holding their interest rates pretty much at 0%. The other is buying $85 billion in housing and treasury bonds each month in order to try and pump money into the economy.

At some point, the Fed intends to begin backing off these policies. But they only want to do it once the economy is strong enough, and even then, they want to do it slowly, so the economy has time to adjust.

To put it differently, rather than cut off their support, they want to "taper" it.

We will discuss both the Federal Reserve and monetary policy on 2305 in a few weeks. Monetary policy refers to - according to Wikipedia -

". . . the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment.

Here's a secondary definition:

Monetary policy is the process by which the government, central bank, or monetary authority of a country controls (i) the supply of money, (ii) availability of money, and (iii) cost of money or rate of interest to attain a set of objectives oriented towards the growth and stability of the economy.

The setting of interest rates is a standard part of the fed's toolkit, the purchasing of bonds is not. The purchasing of the bonds has a fancy name: quantitative easing. It means:

. . . an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the national economy when standard monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying specified amounts of financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus increasing the monetary base. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds in order to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.

The big news this week is that the Fed decided not to cut back on the amount of bonds it is purchasing - that is what "the taper" refers to.

Why? Here's one answer: Because Congress is horrible.

Which fits a theme in 2305 so far - 2306 too, sort of. One of the major differences between the design of the legislative and executive branches in the US Constitution is that Congress' design lends itself to stalemate and dysfunction. This is due to its democratic nature, which is why Congress has done an awful job handling the economy.

The executive has more of an autocratic design, and many of its agencies - the Federal Reserve included - are designed to be able to act swiftly to address problems they have been designated to address. For that reason the Federal Reserve has been in a much better position to grow the economy than Congress. Its the nature of the beast.

Will democracy take root in the Middle East?

The Dish flags a few studies that suggest it will not.

Both 2305 and 2306 begins with a look at why these introductory classes are required and I try to make the point that it has a lot to do with the notion that an educated and engaged population is more likely to sustain a democratic republic than one that is not. Keeping a republic is one thing, establishing one is another, and it is much more difficult to accomplish.

A special discipline within political science focuses on the factors that allow for nations to democratize. Writing in Reason (a libertarian magazine that some of you might find worth a look, at least since we will be discussing libertarianism soon enough) Robert Bailey digests the research and sees four principle factors that help determine whether a specific country may be a proper candidate for democratization.

The lack of these factors leads the authors to predict that the countries that recently went through the Arab Spring will likely slip back into autocracy.

Youth, or more precisely, fertility rates: The younger the population, the less likely a nation might transition into a democracy. The older the population, the lower the fertility rate. Why does this matter? Because fertility rates are taken to be an indication of the amount of control people have over their lives. Older people are better able to challenger autocratic structures and support their replacement with democratic ones. The median ages in the middle east are far lower than those in the US and Western Europe.

This thought sticks out. Gender matter as well: Democratic countries with large populations of young males are more likely to become dictatorships than those with smaller populations.

History: None of the middle eastern nations at issue has experience as democracies. Since the 1960s, the middle east has become more autocratic. There is no experience of self rule nor memory of working within institutions that allow for representation.

Income: The wealthier the nation, the more likely they will become democratic, and then sustain that democratic system. Studies suggest that $6,000 per capita income is the threshold. Above that line democracies take hold and are sustained, beneath it they do not and are not. None of the nations at issue have incomes above that level.

Complexity: This is a fancy term that refers to the "range of social, political, and economic interests" that exist in a nation. The fewer the interests, the easier it is for one person and his supporters to impose their will on a population by establishing an autocratic government. Complex societies are more difficult to control.

The author also suggest that this is related to the level of violence that occurred in a revolution against an autocracy. The greater level of violence, the greater chance that social institutions have been destroyed, which creates an easier opportunity for an autocratic system to develop. Opposing forces have been eliminated.

This might be worth a class discussion - you call.

Saddam's purge

This illustrates thee importance of the part of the Constitution that secures the legislature from arrests, which would be carried out by the executive branch of course. This actually shows Saddam's purge of the Baath Party - but the concept is the same.

Other examples certainly exist, but this one gets the point across.

Ethnic violence breaks out in Myanmar

Regrettably, this is not unprecedented. Riots are breaking out in Myanmar after its military rulers loosened their grip on power. 

The story is common: An autocratic, totalitarian regime relinquishes power and society tumbles into chaos. Long standing tensions that had been repressed under the previous regime are then free to flourish. What had been a peaceful repressed society becomes a violent free society.

Helps us understand why some populations favor dictatorial rule. This helps explain the framers' concerns over the "excesses of democracy." 

Two Stories Regarding Autocracy

For this week's 2301 introduction:

- Russia's civilization model? It's autocracy. A scholar reacts to Vladimir Putin's claim that his attempt to expand power have been beneficial to Russia. 

- Hungary's Rush Towards Autocracy. "Its right-wing nationalist government has launched an assault on its democratic system of government. Using a two-thirds majority in parliament, it has pushed through a new constitution as well as a series of fundamental laws that give the ruling party sweeping powers over the judiciary, the media, churches and the central bank. With the new charter and laws taking effect Jan. 1, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban now more resembles the autocratic regimes of Russia and Belarus than fellow E.U. democracies."

Is the end of autocracy at hand?

The UN secretary argued as much:

“The old way, the old order, is crumbling – one-man rule and the perpetuation of family dynasties ... monopolies of wealth and power ... the silencing of the media ... the deprivation of fundamental freedoms that are the birthright of every man, woman and child on this planet. To all of this, the people say: enough!”
Is this true? And if it is, what forces are driving this? Is the shift permanent? Might we see a backlash at some point and a re-emergence of autocracies in the future? For 2301, remember that we will be touching on the idea that governing systems go through cycles. Is this simply a stage in the cycle?

From the Monkey Cage: How Much do Individuals Matter in Politics?

From one of my favorite websites, a question pertinent to this week's topic. Do individuals "ever really have [influence] over the evolution of politics in a country, a region, or even the whole global political systems?"

The question is asked as a result of the recent deaths of Vaclav Havel as well as Kim Jong-Il. The former was president over a democratic republic (albeit a recently created one) while the latter ruled a totalitarian autocracy. The story ponders the influence of individuals in each system and points out what this contrast tells us about what well designed institutions do for a republic - they make it stable.

The arbitrary nature of rule in North Korea makes it far more prone to instability (I suppose by definition) while rule by duly established institutions have procedures within them to ensure that decisions will be more or less stable. They can be subject to change, but not rapid, destabilizing change.

This is a central point I try to make clear in the course material. Well constructed institutions placed in a proper relationship with each other (a relationship that has worked itself out over time) are central not only to the preservation of liberty, but to the establishment of a stable society that leads to prosperity.

The Death of Kim Jong-Il

The death of North Korea's leader at the beginning of 2301 is actually fortunate since it allows us put to put a few items on this week's agenda in context. (For background click on Kim Jong-Il and North Korea.)

First, North Korea is organized as an autocratic - totalitarian state, meaning that one person possesses sovereign authority (and that it is by definition a tyrannical system - there is no limit on the power of the leader), and there is no individual freedom allowed - the lives of the people are organized according to the whims of the state. As you should figure out from the class material, autocratic systems are noteworthy for their arbitrary nature, and Kim Jong-Il was famously unpredictable - and apparently clever at negotiating.

Being a totalitarian state of the first order, North Korea has one of the worst human rights records in the world (these two tend to go hand in hand). As is common in such states, it is very poor and the per capita GDP is among the lowest in the world. The CIA Factbook places it 160th about of 193 countries, while it places South Korea 31st. the fact that these two nations are essentially the same except for their political systems has allowed for comparisons of the two systems. This illustrates a point made in the class material that free societies tend to be wealthier then repressive ones. Keeping the population poor is actually a good idea if one want to stay in power. Countries become wealthy because they allow their people to develop their talents and apply their ingenuity to problem solving. While this may lead to greater wealth, it also tend to incubate political opponents, not a good thing is one wishes to stay in charge.

We might want to consider what makes a society repressive. How can a population be effectively controlled? North Korea does so externally and internally. External controls are imposed when anyone who seems likely to be a dissident is punished. The nation (which is very secretive) has a system of prisons where political prisoners (itself an interesting species of criminal) and their families are sent. This is old fashioned coercion. But the more effective way to control people seems to be by doing so internally, controlling how they think (Orwell's thought control). Korea has an extensive apparatus designed to create support for their leader (of course, in a sense, we do too, but more on this later). One of the words used to describe this process is propaganda, but it can be deeper and more pernicious. The people of North Korea were born and raised thinking that all that they have is due to the beneficence of Kim Jong-Il. They may not be able to formulate thoughts that his rule was unjust and they should not be forced to live under coercive rule. This leads to an additional point worth pondering as we continue.

I spend a good amount of time in the introductory material detailing the idea that American government rests on the consent of the governed. This is the alternative to rule by coercion, and it is based on the idea that rational people are not willing to consent to be ruled by an autocratic dictator, but is this really true? One of the news items that came out when the death was announced was the public weeping and wailing that occurred across the nation when people learned he had died. We in the west tend to think these were faked, or perhaps coerced. It may very well be that these are genuine however, and the nation's attempt to control how people think and feel has been successful to the point that they willingly consent to a governing that system that we can hardly imagine accepting.

- Some useful links via The Dish.

A few thoughts to consider, I welcome your comments and input.

From Andrew Sullivan: Qaddafi: Just "Too Nice" To Survive

Why do autocratic rulers survive longer than democratic rulers?

More Autocracy for Russia?

The Washington Post reports on Putin's return to the country's presidency:

Looking ahead to an era of uncertainty and economic troubles, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev told Russia on Saturday that they intend to swap jobs, putting the country on an authoritarian path for years to come.

In theory, the switch requires voters’ approval next March, but in practice not much stands in the way, with opposition parties hobbled and Putin’s party dominant.

The move will put Putin back in the presidency after a four-year absence. The two six-year terms he would be allowed under the constitution would take him to 2024, when he will turn 72. Always the stronger of the two, Putin saw the weak Medvedev he nurtured as not up to the job of guiding Russia through a difficult stretch.

. . . Putin sees himself as the indispensable man, but his return to the presidency will be unlikely to change Russia’s essential approach here or abroad — because he has always been in charge. It may send a signal to bureaucrats across the country that the liberal niceties no longer need to be given notice. But more than anything, it is a commitment to preserving as much of the status quo — corrupt, crony politics — as possible.

Putin’s return was widely expected, though it deeply disappointed those who have hoped against hope for a more democratic Russia.

From Reason: Does Disease Cause Autocracy?

New studies say reducing infection rates promotes liberalization:

Greater wealth strongly correlates with property rights, the rule of law, education, the liberation of women, a free press, and social tolerance. The enduring puzzle for political scientists is how the social processes that produce freedom and wealth get started in the first place.

Many political theorists have linked liberal democracy to the rise of wealth and the establishment of a large middle class. “Growing resources are conducive to the rise of emancipative values that emphasize self-expression,” write political scientists Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and Christian Welzel of Jacobs University in their contribution to the 2009 book Democratization, “and these values are conducive to the collective actions that lead to democratization.”

That same year, a group of researchers led by the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs noted in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that a billion people live on less than a dollar per day and “are roughly as poor today as their ancestors were thousands of years ago.” Sachs and his colleagues suggest that heavy disease burdens create persistent poverty traps from which poor people cannot extricate themselves. High disease rates lower their economic productivity so they can’t afford to improve sanitation and medical care, which in turn leaves them vulnerable to more disease.

In a 2008 article for Biological Reviews, two University of New Mexico biologists buttressed the disease thesis with their “parasite hypothesis of democratization.” The researchers, Randy Thornhill and Corey Fincher, argue that disease not only keeps people poor but makes them illiberal. Thornhill and Fincher tested this hypothesis “using publicly available data measuring democratization, collectivism, individualism, gender egalitarianism, property rights, sexual restrictiveness, and parasite prevalence across many countries of the world.” The lower the disease burden, they found, the more likely a society is to be liberal.

Guatemala Wants Autocracy to Fight Drug Cartles

This seems to be a good example of a point made in 2301: people are willing to support autocratic strong governments if the alternative is chaos and violence.

Narcissistic Autocrats

Here's something for both 2301 and 2302 to chew on as we review basic terms and observe the pros and cons of different governing systems. Autocracy tends to be efficient - it can get things done - but is also arbitrary - there are no rules which guide its actions. The autocrat is unpredictable.

Add to that the tendency of autocrats to be narcissistic:

There is a school of thought in politics and international relations which holds that all the bluster from dictators under pressure is propaganda, in the sense that the leaders themselves realize it’s untrue. They are just trying to demoralize their opponents and rally their friends by intentionally overstating how well things are going. In their hearts, autocrats know the jig is up and that means a window for a negotiated settlement with them has opened.

That school of thought is usually wrong.

If you take a human being — particularly a male one — and for most or all of his life give him every material comfort while others are starving, encourage him to believe that other people are his inferior, and nurture a sense of entitlement in him through word and deed (e.g., letting him watch or participate in torture sessions), you will often produce what we shrinks call a malignant narcissist (or “A classic Cleckley psychopath” for those of my colleagues who may be scoring at home). I don’t mean “narcissist” in the colloquial sense of someone who worries too much about his looks and is a bit self-involved, I mean someone who literally believes that other human beings are merely objects for his self-gratification, and, that the usual constraints of human existence (e.g., everyone dies, no one gets everything he wants) do not apply to him.
A nice analysis of human nature and a great compliment to some of the material we will dig through during the first couple of weeks of class.

Authoritarianism in Equatorial New Guinea

For 2301, as we get comfortable with the various systems of government that exist around the world, here's an example of an authoritarian system: Equatorial New Guinea. The NYT points out that we have a tendency to work with authoritarian regimes depending on how doing so affects our strategic interests:

Officially and unofficially, Americans do business with one of the undisputed human rights global bad boys, Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s fourth biggest oil exporter. Its widely criticized record on basic freedoms has offered little barrier to broad engagement by the United States, commercially or diplomatically.

American oil companies have billions of dollars invested here. One American diplomat, using language that makes human rights advocates fume, praised the “mellowing, benign leadership” of the dictator in power for more than 30 years, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in 2009 cables released by WikiLeaks. And a leading American military contractor with strong Pentagon ties has a multimillion-dollar contract to protect his shores and help train his forces.

The country is an example of a common occurrence: oil wealthy nations that are also among the world's poorest. Somehow the resources flow into the hands of the leadership and do little to address the needs of the poor. 2301's might also want to note that the current leader of the country was overwhelmingly reelected last year.