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The Dundas Despotism
This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date biography of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811) and his son Robert, 2nd Viscount Melville (1771-1851). Aided by other members of their family, they ruled Scotland from the 1770s to the 1830s in a period of government later dubbed 'the Dundas Despotism'. Using a mass of new primary and secondary material culled from England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States, Michael Fry here challenges the traditional view that theirs was a corrupt and authoritarian regime. He shows that both father and son sought to achieve good government within the accepted political conventions of the age, and that many of the principles they set out to apply were owed directly to Scottish Enlightenment ideas. The Dundases were also of fundamental importance in drawing Scotland more fully into the United Kingdom and enabling the Union of 1707 to work. This is a sparkling reassessment of a crucial period of Scottish, British and imperial history. The Dundas Despotism was previously published by Edinburgh University Press.
Despotism on Demand
Despotism on Demand draws attention to the impact of flexible scheduling on managerial power and workplace control. When we understand paid work as a power relationship, argues Alex J. Wood, we see how the spread of precarious scheduling constitutes flexible despotism; a novel regime of control within the workplace. Wood believes that flexible despotism represents a new domain of inequality, in which the postindustrial working class increasingly suffers a scheduling nightmare. By investigating two of the largest retailers in the world he uncovers how control in the contemporary "flexible firm" is achieved through the insidious combination of "flexible discipline" and "schedule gifts." Flexible discipline provides managers with an arbitrary means by which to punish workers, but flexible scheduling also requires workers to actively win favor with managers in order to receive "schedule gifts": more or better hours. Wood concludes that the centrality of precarious scheduling to control means that for those at the bottom of the postindustrial labor market the future of work will increasingly be one of flexible despotism.
The Nature of Despotism
The tyrants discussed in The Nature of Despotism share common backgrounds, behaviours and motivations that, when viewed together, can be seen as forming the character of the despot. From more predictable origins, such as violent, miserable childhoods, to those that seem more surprising, such as frustrated artistic impulses, each aspect of despotic cause and effect is examined in detail.
The Despot's Accomplice
Brian Klaas of the London School of Economics believes in the transformative power of democracy. In this comprehensive book, he offers prescriptions for Western powers seeking to spread political freedom and critiques many of the halfhearted pro-democracy efforts of recent decades. The United States' recent misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan chastened many who once espoused nation-building. But Klaas argues ceasing to promote democracy is a mistake. In addition to offering insights and examples gleaned from his global travels to investigate pseudo-democracies, Klaas also explores America itself, taking the US tradition of gerrymandering to task. At times, Klaas's crusade seems a bit too idealistic, but, ultimately, he makes a passionate and persuasive case for trying to expand democracy's shrinking reach.
The New Despotism
Ours is a post-political society that cannot imagine radical change; a ‘one dimensional’ society in which politics is reduced to economic concerns. Paradoxically, however, everybody today is subjected to the imperative of regular radical change. Populations have grown accustomed to the idea that one constantly needs to adapt to radical transformations, modify one’s life strategy in tune with the demands of the market on the one hand and the politics of security on the other. Indeed, the idea that there are unquestionable authorities, the idea of ‘despotism’, no longer refers to exceptional circumstances in which politics is suspended but rather seems to have become normalized as part of daily life. This book aims to articulate the genealogy of the despotism-economy-voluntary servitude nexus focusing on their different constellations in the prism of social theory and political philosophy. As it traces the genealogy of this nexus its concern is the field of formation, intervention and intelligibility that arises when and as the three concepts encounter one another.
The Spirit of Despotism
How was the social and cultural life of Britain affected by the fear that the French Revolution would spread across the channel? In this brilliant, engagingly written, and profusely illustrated book, John Barrell, well-known for his studies of the history, literature, and art of the period, argues that the conflict between the ancien regime in Britain and the emerging democratic movement was so fundamental that it could not be contained within what had previously been thought of as the 'normal' arena of politics. Activities and spaces which had previously been regarded as 'outside' politics suddenly no longer seemed to be so, and the fear of revolution produced a culture of surveillance and ...
Lineages of Despotism and Development
Traditionally, social scientists have assumed that past imperialism hinders the future development prospects of colonized nations. Challenging this widespread belief, Matthew Lange argues in Lineages of Despotism and Development that countries once under direct British imperial control have developed more successfully than those that were ruled indirectly. Combining statistical analysis with in-depth case studies of former British colonies, this volume argues that direct rule promoted cogent and coherent states with high levels of bureaucratization and inclusiveness, which contributed to implementing development policy during late colonialism and independence. On the other hand, Lange finds that indirect British rule created patrimonial, weak states that preyed on their own populations. Firmly grounded in the tradition of comparative-historical analysis while offering fresh insight into the colonial roots of uneven development, Lineages of Despotism and Development will interest economists, sociologists, and political scientists alike.
The Spirit of Despotism
Hone's reissue of a work that favored governmental reform. Cf. Bowden cited above, pp. 366-368.
Foundations of Despotism
This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo’s exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes. The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime’s mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation’s large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants’ free access to land during a period of economic growth, the regime secured peasant support as well as backing from certain elite sectors. This book thus elucidates for the first time the hidden foundations of the Trujillo regime.
