Authoritarian regimes

"O objetivo do curso é examinar a história política recente do Brasil, ressaltando, no contexto do regime ditatorial implantado após 1964, o processo de reestruturação do aparelho do Estado e a reconfiguração da cena política. Considerando as profundas mudanças operadas na estrutura econômica e nas relações de força entre as diferentes classes e grupos (políticos e ideológicos), o curso terá também como alvo privilegiado a dinâmica social, enfatizando as sucessivas crises de uma dada estrutura de poder até seu desaparecimento negociado, bem como as dificuldades para a constituição de uma nova ordem política de 1985 em diante.

O curso está organizado com base em aulas expositivas e seminários. Todos os apresentadores deverão entregar após o seminário um relatório sobre a atividade. Ao final do curso o estudante deverá elaborar um ensaio sobre tema livre, a partir dos assuntos tratados no curso. Para a avaliação será levada em conta a participação efetiva em sala, os comentários e um ensaio final a respeito de um dos itens do programa, a ser discutido com o professor.

OBS.: A (imensa) bibliografia complementar será referida em aula, a cada sessão."

This study examines democratic orientations and their determinants in post-Orange Ukraine from the perspective of a political culture theory. The research question is, to what extent is political culture in Ukraine supportive of democracy. This paper uses data from different waves of the Pew Global Attitudes surveys, the World Values Surveys, and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems surveys to examine public views towards democracy in Ukraine. The paper compares democratic values in Ukraine with those in Poland and Russia, two similar post-communist countries with differing political cultures and divergent trajectories of democratization. It also examines changes in the levels of pro-democratic attitudes in post-Orange Ukraine compared to the Orange and pre-Orange periods. Finally, this study implements multiple regression analysis of the determinants of democratic attitudes. The analysis shows limited effects of historical democratic legacies and Catholicism on pro-democracy views. With some exceptions, adherents of major parties do not differ significantly in terms of their degree of support for democracy. This study suggests that partially democratic and partially authoritarian political culture impedes the future prospects for consolidated democracy in Ukraine.

It is often assumed that the development of e-participation and e-government initiatives aimed at stimulating citizen participation in the political process and fostering more efficient governmental services harbors a great potential for improved control of corruption and government performance. Thus, it is often argued that e-participation is an efficient instrument for increasing transparency and quality of government in non-democratic and developing countries. However, this article argues that these assumptions should be questioned on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. The results of the empirical time-series cross-section analyses show that positive development in terms of e-participation in non-democratic countries does not lead to corresponding positive effects in terms of control of corruption and quality of government. Rather, in many cases the Internet offers political elites new opportunities in their quest for remaining in power.

This chapter assesses the potentials for and constraints upon progressive political change in Uzbekistan. Its first part establishes a point of reference by discussing the recent reinvigoration of elite theory as a result of studies of post-communist transformations in East Central Europe in the 1990s. It begins by distinguishing different approaches to the study of those transformations and how the “transformation” approach differs from the “transition” approach. It discusses the implications of the empirical findings in East Central Europe for the classics of elite theory from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then systematizes the differences between the “power elite” and “polyarchy” ideal-types, whereupon it establishes a middle ground between them that offers an empirical criterion representing a starting-point for assessing the degree of “de-authoritarization” (as distinct from “democratization”) of an authoritarian regime such as Uzbekistan’s. In order to flesh out certain auxiliary concepts necessary for applying the criterion, it gives an example of the applic a tion of that criterion to the Khrushchev era in the Soviet Union (1953–64). The Khrushchev example allows an explan a tion of how the criterion is implemented with the aid of three auxiliary concepts: (bottom-up) “mobilization of the public sphere”, (top-down) “conformance of civil society” and (middle-level) “consolidation of organized officialdom”. With this framework, the rest of the chapter looks at political change in Uzbekistan since 1983, the necessary starting-point for understanding the present situation. Two cycles of political change are evident. The first stretches from 1983 until 1989 and comprises three phases: consolidation, conformance and mobilization. The second cycle stretches from 1989 to the present and comprises phases of mobilization, conformance and consolidation in that order. What these phases represent is specified in terms of what they imply for the structural transformation of the political system (as an ensemble of elite, regime and community sectors) and for political articulation and its issue areas. The conclusion to the chapter summarizes the insights that arise and consequent prospects for political reform and de-authoritarization in Uzbekistan.

Heritage is becoming a significant element of the urban landscape of the post-socialist city. The emerging contested landscapes reflect new political identities and competition between different political actors for influence. In the 1990s, state-sovereignty movements in Russia's ethnic republics gave rise to urban projects aimed at expressing the ideas of nation building, ethnic and religious awareness and new interpretations of the past. The article explores the role of the state in creating heritage discourses and practices by using as a case study the ‘resurrection’ of the Kul-Sharif Mosque in the Kazan Kremlin in the period 1995–2005.

"In this collection, public intellectuals and civil society activists discuss Singapore's public rhetoric about liberalization and its association with the development of a creative economy, focusing on questions surrounding conservatism, national identity and values, civil society activism, and the societal role of the younger generation. Moved by Singapore's Renaissance City Report, released in 2000 amidst an uneasy mix of millennial celebration and pessimism arising from a prolonged economic downturn, the authors engage with the public rhetoric of Singapore's transformation into a forward-looking, critical, open, unconventional, diverse, participatory, and inclusive society. Edited by Kenneth Paul Tan. Contributors are Chng Nai Rui, Janadas Devan, Colin Goh, Suzaina Kadir, Terence Lee, Sylvia Lim, Edwin Pang, Kirpal Singh, Alvin Tan, Tan Chong Kee, Kenneth Paul Tan, and Joyceln Woo Yen Yen.

Excerpt:
At a public forum held on 13 December 2003 at the National University of Singapore, a young lady in the 300-strong audience revealed that she had considered starting up a socio-political discussion website, but stopped herself from doing so for fear of the consequences of her actions. When asked by sociologist Kwok Kian-Woon what she thought would have happened to her had she gone ahead with her plans, she hesitated to give an answer, and eventually suggested in a tentative way that she feared the possibility of being arrested in the middle of the night.
The forum was organized for interested people and public intellectuals to explore critically the various meanings of widely perceived changes in Singapore's political system, practice, and culture. Words like `change', `renewal', and `remaking' appear to have found a comfortable place in Singapore's public discourse, in which the most dazzling metaphor has been the `renaissance city', a reference to a `rebirth' of culture and the arts, the economy, and the physical city itself. And clearly, anyone who returns to Singapore today after being away for just 10 years or more will immediately perceive the extent to which the country has transformed physically and culturally. The big question, though, has been whether these sorts of cultural, economic, and lifestyle developments and aspirations would also include more fundamental political changes. Or put another way, can there be a `new society' without `new politics'?

The `old politics' is a politics of apprehension - a ghostly kind of fear that, in a menacing way, haunts the minds of Singaporeans like the young lady at the forum who censored herself after dreaming up a plan to contribute meaningfully to society. But she was not alone in thinking this way. Even seasoned feminist and social activist Constance Singam, who was present at the forum, sympathized with the young lady and related passionately how she, too, had been warned by well-meaning people that her own actions were being closely monitored by the government. Several panellists at the forum, including Kwok, Cherian George (the author of Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation, a collection of critically reflective essays on Singapore politics), and Sylvia Lim (chairman of the opposition Workers' Party and author of Chapter 14 in this book) argued that this sort of apprehension in Singapore had taken on a life of its own - it was irrational, merely perceptual, and quite detached from reality. Nevertheless, it continued to cripple any attempts to mature as a political society. In fact, as some of the authors in this book argue, the crippling effect of apprehension extends well into any attempts - political or non-political - to revitalize society, culture, and economy, a development that needs to happen if Singapore is, at least according to official rhetoric, to meet the complex and highly global challenges of the twenty-first century.

The chapters in this book were written by public intellectuals from a wide range of backgrounds who had been invited to respond to the vision articulated so eloquently in the Renaissance City Report released amidst an uneasy mix of millennial celebration and pessimism from a prolonged economic downturn.

'Renaissance Singapore will be creative, vibrant and imbued with a keen sense of aesthetics. Our industries are supported with a creative culture that keeps them competitive in the global economy. The Renaissance Singaporean has an adventurous spirit, an inquiring and creative mind and a strong passion for life. Culture and the arts animate our city and our society consists of active citizens who build on our Asian heritage to strengthen the Singapore Heartbeat through expressing their Singapore stories in culture and the arts.'

In practice, what lies within, beneath, and beyond this renaissance city vision is anything but clear. And this is particularly so where politics is concerned. Today, notwithstanding the visitor's casual observation of how much Singapore seems to have changed, is there anything really new about Singapore's society, its culture, and especially its politics? To realize the vision of Singapore as a renaissance city, would a radically `new' kind of politics be necessary? What should `new politics' look like? Is the government ready for it? Are the majority of Singaporeans ready for it? What are its prospects?... (pp. 1-3)"

"Grzymala-Busse has written an excellent book (awarded the
Gabriel Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative
Politics) on the unexpected regeneration of the communist
successor parties in East Central Europe. She seeks to explain why the discredited political actors of the ancien régime, widely despised by their own citizens,
could not only survive the collapse of the old order, but also succeed in conditions of democracy. The main hypothesis is that the practices of the authoritarian regimes led to different configurations of elite political resources consisting in portable
skills and usable past, which in turn determined their organizational and programmatic choices. Utilizing an elite driven
approach she establishes a causal relation between the choice of party transformation strategies and the communist parties’
regeneration operationalized in terms of responsive appeals, electoral support and coalition potentials "

""THE NOTORIOUS ORANGE REVOLUTION FOLLOWING THE 2004 presidential race in Ukraine has
been probably the most momentous political event in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The victory of popular protests against a deeply corrupted state and rigged elections has raised high expectations of a redirection of the flow of political developments in a country that was widely perceived as leaning towards authoritarianism.

The presidential race pitted two different alternatives against each other: the outgoing premier Yanukovych, a politician with a criminal record backed by Moscow, and the sitting government promising status quo; and Yushchenko, leader of the grand opposition, ‘Our Ukraine’, which promised change. The revolution, named after the campaign colours of the opposition, was a massive protest against the manufactured victory of the government candidate in the second round of elections on 21 November, and culminated with the victory of the opposition candidate in the repeat elections on 26 December. Numerous studies have tried to make sense of this fascinating ‘watershed’ in Ukrainian politics as well as its repercussions for the fate of the
competitive authoritarian regimes rising out of the ashes of communism. This third volume of the six-part series on ‘Aspects of the Orange Revolution’ seeks to ‘widen the variety of approaches towards explaining the emergence, cause and results’ of this landmark event for both Ukraine and other authoritarian regimes (p. 7).""