Week 5: Deadlines, Themes, Required and Recommended Readings, Censorship, Etc.

Hi all,

The class begins the fourth week of the term with 79 points. There have been a number of violations of the censorship regulations, lack of coverage of all the recommended readings (what happened to McNulty on Zaire, or to Haber on Authoritarian Government?), and anyway we are entering the most repressive period in this class (all the reading about repression and surveillance and cults of personality), so I'm pre-emptively taking off points. Maybe they can be made up later - who knows!

The list of banned words is now classified. It will only be released to appropriately trusted people. The list is subject to change without notice. Censorship may strike this next week without prior warning.

Now for the good news:

Sasha posted a very good summary of the previous lecture here. There will be more summaries in the slides for the next lectures.

There will be a document on Dropbox later (Tuesday probably) and on the blog with more specific instructions about what each tutorial group is expected to turn in for the regime classification exercise by 23 August.

We have fallen somewhat behind, unfortunately. So we're a bit out of sync with the readings. Thus, for the fourth set of explanatory blog posts/reading reviews (due this week) you may write on any of the readings below, or any of the recommended readings for last week that were not already covered (Mc Nulty and Haber). According to my trusty spreadsheet, the following people must post their explanatory blog posts on Tuesday before the lecture (ids ending in 3):

First name	Last name
Ivan	A
Megan	B
Ella	C
Ian	C
Edward	C
Robert	D
Alannah	E
James	G
Cassandra	H
Franz	H
George	L
Ella	N
Nicola	R
Liam	R
Thomas	R
Carlos	W

And the following people must submit their explanatory blog posts on Thursday before the lecture (ids ending in 6):

First name	Last name
Daniel	D
Avital	J
Deborah	M
Shaun	P
Markus	S
Elisapeci	W

Last week, the key readings introduced a way of thinking about rulers that emphasized their need to negotiate with “insiders” who control important resources. And as we shall see on Tuesday, the way in which they negotiate with insiders, as well as the number of insiders and the security of their position, may have important economic consequences. But this does not mean that rulers do not worry about “outsiders”! Rulers in fact use many mechanisms of control to prevent revolts by “outsiders” - people not in the winning coalition. One of the key points to note here is that many of these mechanisms do not rely on extreme violence, or even getting people to believe fully in the regime's ideology - power can work without belief and overt violence. The theme for the second part of this week is thus "repression, surveillance, and ritual," which we'll continue into the next week.

The essential readings are:

• Wedeen, Lisa. 1998. “Acting : Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria.” Comparative Studies in Society and History no. 40 (03):503-523. (http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FCSS%2FCSS40_03%2FS0010417598001388a.pdf&code=d44755071be97bd6559d97c60a9e146d, also on Blackboard). This is really great! It's about cults of personality and how they work as instruments of control.
• Sebestyen, Victor. 2010. Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire: Knopf Doubleday. Chapter 16 (on the Ceausescu regime; not on Blackboard, but the book is available at Vicbooks and on 2hr reserve). You may also take a look at some of the chapters on the GDR (e.g., chapter 1). This is more narrative and less analytical.
• Pfaff, Steven. 2001. “The Limits of Coercive Surveillance: Social and Penal Control in the German Democratic Republic.” Punishment Society no. 3 (3):381-407. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1462474501003003003, also on Blackboard). This is a more analytical piece on how the SED in the GDR used surveillance to control the population, and the limits of such surveillance - in particular, why people don't always believe what they are told (don't I know that!).
• Demick, Barbara. 2009. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea: Spiegel & Grau. Read chapter 6, “Twilight of the God” (On Blackboard, and the book is also on reserve) - or the more of the book if you can. (It's really excellent). This is narrative - about the ordinary lives of people in NK, as told by people who have managed to leave the country. (Check out the New Focus International website for more stories of people who've managed to leave NK in English)

• King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review no. 107:326-343. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003055413000014, also on Blackboard) This is a bit more technical in parts, but it's an analysis of how Chinese censorship operates (hint - not quite like it does in this class).

Recommended readings:

• Havel, Vaclav (1992). “The Power of the Powerless” In Open Letters, pp. 125-153. New York: Vintage Books (not in coursenotes, http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML). Havel was a Czechoslovak dissident who eventually (after the Velvet revolution) became president of Czechoslovakia. This was written from prison - it's a prescient analysis, and the “greengrocer parable” is really important.
• I have a working paper on cults of personality, “A Model of Cults of Personality” (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2301392 and http://www.academia.edu/4205457/A_Model_of_Cults_of_Personality) that I will be presenting at the 2013 American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago (during the midterm break). It incorporates some material that has appeared on many posts on cults of personality in my blog (except I have pictures on my blog, and a more informal style); you can check these out here: http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/cult%20of%20personality

For further reading, see also articles with these tags: http://www.citeulike.org/group/13886/tag/cult_of_personality and http://www.citeulike.org/group/13886/tag/mechanisms_of_control; you can also choose papers from there if you're interested.

Remember that an explanatory blog post/reading review needs to do a bit more than just summarize the reading - try to put it in context by doing some additional research, or discuss how it relates to one of the theories in the course, or engage its argument critically. 

Have a great weekend!