- Vote, submit, and answer questions for the exam. Voting ends Friday (when I have to submit the exam to the faculty; but you can answer questions until the end of the term and beyond, and then use the voting feature to push to the top questions you might want answered).
- In Belarus, the president doesn't even pay lip service to freedom and democracy. This is rare!
- Russia's growing opposition. Oppositions tend to wax and wane, though.
- The piece on "Why China Will Democratize" that I recommended in the post below.
- Ruthlessness inside the Chinese communist party: the dismissal of Bo Xilai as an example of the politics of small-coalition regimes. But was corruption and ambition the real problem with Bo Xilai? An alternative view.
- Reflections on the coup in Mali.
- The uselessness of the Death Star for domestic politics in the Empire (Star Wars).
- What it's like to watch Chavez's "Alo Presidente." Interesting reflections from an American.
- How election monitoring can have unintended harmful consequences. Also, how the WTO can help countries democratize.
- Me on Levitsky and Way's big book on competitive authoritarianism: the logic of democratization. Jay Ulfelder on competitive authoritarianism in Armenia.
- The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (movie).
For more pathological links, see here.
Great links! The Death Star one is very clever. I thought the starwars analogy worked well for discussing ideas from this course (security, dictator's dilemma, rebellion...). I guess it figures that political science academics would be sci fi fans.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was just reading the piece on "Why China Will Democratise" and want to make sure I understand the "performance legitimacy" hypothesis. Is it basically the idea that if a non-democratic country's economy is growing/doing well, the population will be satisfied, and so the government will be safe from revolution/demand for democratisation and so "legitimised"? Reminds me of our discussion about Singapore in the benevolent autocrats lectures.
Hi Meredith - the "performance legitimacy" idea is precisely what you mean: when governments are producing economic growth, the population will be satisfied and consider them to be "legitimate;" they will thus be less likely to rebel. The authors of the piece argue that there is less support for this thesis than it appears; they note that many authoritarian countries (Brazil, South Korea) democratized even while economic growth was high. The problem in part is that economic development has two different effects in authoritarian countries: first, it might lead people to become satisfied; but second, it might also lead them to feel confident enough to demand a say in the distribution of benefits.
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