Competitive Authoritarianism And Political Authoritarianism

Those who are in power are not accountable to constituencies and public policy does not derive from social consent. Within sociology and political science, particularly within comparative politics, authoritarianism has been understood as a modern type of political regime. Therefore, the concept focuses on the way of accessing, exercising, and organizing power, on the nature of the belief system, and the role of citizens in the political

Similar to the societal explanation, the cognitive explanation for the effects of the resource curse suggests that the wealth from resource abundance causes countries to be riskier with their money. Instead of investing in multiple sectors and foreign bonds, African countries tend to indulge in the wealth and focus solely upon it with no consideration of sustainability or possible busts. Since policymakers become shortsighted, they do not realize that that their economy is falling apart until it is too late.

In America, our government is a democracy, but its not this way in all countries. In places like China, there government is a communist, very different from our own. There are many other governments, including Absolute Monarchy, Dictatorship, and Totalitarianism. These can all be put into one government name, Authoritarianism which is very different from our own.

Authoritarianism is a form of government in which the leader or leaders have exclusive power concerning matters of the state. Although these

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way fashionably unveil the major features of this new political regime. As clearly explained by the authors, Competitive Authoritarianism is a hybrid regime combining elements of Liberal Democracy and Authoritarian rule, and, for this reason, many political philosophers like Fukuyama look upon it as a “transitional diminished democracy” (Levitsky). However, political philosophers like Gat and Levitsky, supported by other scholars including Roger Owen, argue that Competitive Authoritarian regimes are promptly consolidating their political power in those country-areas where Liberal Democracy is weakening like in Ukraine and Turkey, or it failed in some African countries and the Middle East. In sight of this speculative research, Competitive Authoritarianism is the current challenge to Liberal Democracy, therefore it minimizes the chance of being considered a transitional political regime.

Democracy has become the most widespread political form of government during the past decade, after the fall of all its alternatives. During the second part of the 20th century, the 3 main enemies of democracy, namely communism, fascism and Nazism, lost most of their power and influence. However, democracy is still only to be found in less than half of this world's countries. China with a fifth of the total population "had never experienced a democratic government" and Russia still doesn't have a well established democracy. By adopting a democratic perspective, 3 types of governments emerge, non-democratic, new democracies, and old democracies, and all have a different challenge to overcome: either to become democratic, to "consolidate"

This economic modernization in the Middle East, could only be a short term success which does not guarantee the successful and stable economic development of oil rich states and the region as a whole in the long term. The Middle East, despite its vast reserves of oil, is still considered a developing region due to the high reliance on oil revenues and rather weak production sector of the economy as well as due to some political factors such as lack of democracy, corruption, reluctance to the reforms and other issues. There are various reasons as to why the Middle East is still considered a developing region despite its oil wealth. Natural resource revenues have also been linked to slow economic growth rates, inequality, and poverty. One culprit may be "Dutch disease," which was discussed earlier. Other factors may include the volatility associated with commodity prices, which can have especially negative impacts on weak-state economies; and the underdevelopment of agricultural and manufacturing sectors during boom periods in resource-based economies. And even when oil abundance produces high growth, it often benefits only a few corrupt elites rather than translating into higher living standards for most of the population. Corruption is one of the economic deficiencies which can weaken economic growth and development; thus it is considered as an important impediment to economic growth and political stability, particularly in developing countries. The dependence on a

In this writing prompt we were asked to compare the Authoritarian government to our own Democracy. First things first an Authoritarian is One individual having all the power. A Democracy is a group of people who represent the country. Now, let's get into the differences.

The first similarity this essay would point to is both Adorno et al.’s and Altemeyer sought to measure and score authoritarianism personality characteristics. Adorno et al. Had pursued this by creating many scales which would measure anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism and politico-economic conservatism also he also produced his F-Scale to measure fascism (Brace et al. p28-31. 2012). But yet, critics of the F-Scale discovered flaws in the scale construction, noting that all the statements on the scale ran in the same direction which could result in acquiescence response bias (Brace et al. p39. 2012). In addition, Robert Rosenthal noted that confirmatory bias could have affected the interviews, because the administration of double blind procedures was not taken.

It has been perceived that a country with natural resources is wealthy economically but others view it as a societal spell. Discovery for natural resources might either lead to a blessing or a curse due to uneven growth rate of countries with abundant resources (Tsui K. K. 2011 and Larsen E. R. 2005). Some countries tend to grow economically quicker than others. Oil discoveries may generate confidence in economic growth at the same time could have undesirable consequences to a democracy.

In these systems, the regimes possess some of these characteristics but have found ways to manipulate the system to consolidate their power. “Rather than openly violating democratic rules (for example, by banning or repressing the opposition and the media), incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and other state agencies to ‘legally’ harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior from critics” . While it is apparent that these regimes are not fully democratic, it would be unfair to label them as fully authoritarian either. Unlike traditional totalitarian governments, the persistence of true democratic institutions in competitive authoritarian regimes allows the opposition to contest, weaken and occasionally even defeat autocratic incumbents. While these situations are generally uncommon, these situations are possible in competitive authoritarianism due to four independent means, the electoral arena, the legislature, the judiciary and the media. These four branches are virtually independent of the executive control however, unlike in democracies, the competitive authoritarian regimes use its power to undermine their independence. “In regards to the electoral arena, large-scale abuses of state power, biased media coverage, harassment of opposition candidates and activists are widespread, legislatures tend to be relatively weak, the

While natural resources have played an important role in creating wealth and powering development, recent research shows an inverse correlation between the abundance of natural resources and growth and development. This has been true of many of the economies in Latin America, Africa and the Arab world, regions characterized by high levels of natural resources endowments, be they minerals, oil or timber. The inverse correlation between endowment and wealth creation—dubbed as the natural resource curse hypothesis—has been the subject of intense study and has yielded valuable insights into political economy issues.

However, a regime is no longer democratic the moment it violates at least one of the norms that make elections democratic, hence the name electoral authoritarianism. Furthermore, there are intrinsic powers of representative institutions in driving the dynamic of stability and change in such regimes. Thus, there is motivation for rulers to manipulate them and gain electoral legitimacy without bearing the risks of democratic uncertainty. The manipulative tactics used by authoritarians to repress are assumed to render electoral authoritarian regimes more resilient. The article also assumes the manipulation of representative institutions to create imperfectly informed citizens are identified as more authoritarian than

Since the initiation of the Third Wave of Democracy, several countries have attempted to form a democratic system of governs. We take note that not all have succeeded. At the dawn of this era, democracy was being applied to countries with no prior history of a governing body that was place by the people for the people hence success of such a system could not be guaranteed because of the innumerous variables that existed in each country. People being the highlighted factor of variance, it may become easier to understand how countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria, both countries prior to the Wave had no local governing machinery. Pakistan further endured a partition from India which resulted in not only an instant religious and

Under an authoritarian regime, specifically a dictatorship, the ruler has the political and executive power to persecute an individual or group for political reasons, which demonstrates a form of political oppression.