Gandhi states that a 'minimalist definition is advantageous since it avoids blurring the boundaries between regime type and other political phenomena; political entities or aspects of the state and thus allows analytical clarity' This is a fair statement, and a minimalist definition does set dictatorship apart from other regimes, However I ask myself, who exactly is this simplistic definition meant for? Is it for the sake of having a simplistic definition in which to loosely refer to when classifying states? I'm just not sure. I think dictatorships are such dense subjects that vary so greatly across the board that a minimalist definition is inept at correctly defining it.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Minimalist Definition?
This whole concept of a minimalist definition of dictatorship, I find to be somewhat illogical; however from what i have read, i seem to be able to find more advantages to it than disadvantages. Personally I believe it is far to narrow to just focus on the presence of elections in distinguishing dictatorship from democracy. I do realize that Gandhi amongst others isn't saying that the distinction between political regimes is that black and white; however it seems to me that even stating a minimalist definition is bizaare. The dictatorships that exist and have existed in the past are all vastly different and whilst they have commonality; their differences far outweigh their similarities.
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I agree that the defintion of dictatorship is an extremely hard thing to define. It seems like we all know when a regime is a dictatorship, but we cannot describe why we think that, or how we came to that conclusions, and what similarities all dictatorships have. I don't know whether it is just pulling a strings to constantly decline the fact that some regimes are dictatorships, but it seems there are far more hybrid regimes in the past then full dictatorships or democracies. As has been said in lectures, the more you put into a definition, the less dictatorships or democracies there will be. With more conditions that have to be met, it becames harder and harder to meet them.
ReplyDeleteRuby, I'm not sure why having a minimalist definition of dictatorship prevents you from acknowledging that there are many kinds of dictatorships. Gandhi just says they have one thing in common - no competitive elections - but they have many things that are different as well. Indeed, Gandhi talks about three different kinds of dictatorship - single party regimes, monarchies, and military regimes. These are different from each other, but they all have in common the fact that they don't have competitive elections.
ReplyDeleteWhy focus on that? Well, because, as Gandhi explains, not having competitive elections may affect the behavior of rulers; if there is no easy way of getting rid of a ruler, they may be expected to rule differently (and indeed they do).
The world is vast and complicated, but it is not made comprehensible by using vast and complicated maps - simplification is often a virtue!
SamG, why not simply note the one similarity many seem to have - i.e., no free and fair elections? If we think of this as a continuum, there's no great problem in accomodating hybrid regimes as well...
ReplyDeleteA minimalist definition does not tell you ll you need to know about a regime, only the minimum you should know!
Perhaps that is the exact reason for a minimalist definition, if one dictator can get away with crimes against human rights with the argument of well we are not technically dictatorial then less international states and organizations will challenge their legitimacy. If a minimalist definition gives groups such as the UN the ability to say yes it is a dictatorship and unlikely the people will be able to force a regime change then the UN have that much more incentive to step in if need be.
ReplyDeleteSorry i was obviously typing while you wrote that Xavier.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the concept of a dictatorship is cetainly difficult to define. I also agree with Xavier regardless of what you define dictatorship as there will still be other categories existing. In assessing a defintion of a dictatorship it is worthwhile remebering that the reason a scholar has defined it that way is because they deliberately wish to include or consequently exclude certain regimes. It is therefore impossible to have an all encompassing defintion of a dictatorship.
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