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Through an analysis of the recent political history of Tanzania and Uganda, Wealth, Power, and Authoritarian Institutions offers a novel explanation of why authoritarian parties and legislatures vary in strength, and why this variation matters. Michaela Collord elaborates a view of authoritarian political institutions as both reflecting and magnifying elite power dynamics. While there are many sources of elite power, the book centres on material power. It outlines how diverse trajectories of state-led capitalist development engender differing patterns of wealth accumulation and elite contestation across regimes. These differences, in turn, influence institutional landscapes. Where accumulati...
Through an analysis of the recent political history of Tanzania and Uganda, Wealth, Power, and Authoritarian Institutions offers a novel explanation of why authoritarian parties and legislatures vary in strength, and why this variation matters. Michaela Collord elaborates a view of authoritarian political institutions as both reflecting and magnifying elite power dynamics. While there are many sources of elite power, the book centres on material power. It outlines how diverse trajectories of state-led capitalist development engender differing patterns of wealth accumulation and elite contestation across regimes. These differences, in turn, influence institutional landscapes. Where accumulati...
Offers new research on the vital importance of institutions, such as presidential term-limits in the African democratisation processes.
Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world—even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain authoritarian rule as a function of the interests or needs of the ruler or regime can be misleading. Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want argues that to understand how authoritarian systems work we need to look not only at the interests and intentions of those at the top, but also at the inner workings of the various parts of the state. Courts, elections, security force structure, and intelligence gathering are seen as structured and geared toward helping maintain the regime. Yet authoritarian regime...
This book provides the first cross-regional study of an increasingly important form of politics: coalitional presidentialism. Drawing on original research of minority presidents in the democratising and hybrid regimes of Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia, and Ukraine, it seeks to understand how presidents who lack single party legislative majorities build and manage cross-party support in legislative assemblies. It develops a framework for analysing this phenomenon, and blends data from MP surveys, detailed case studies, and wider legislative and political contexts, to analyse systematically the tools that presidents deploy to manage their coalitions. The authors ...
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of Africa's history of democracy, grappling with important questions facing Africa today.
Based on a wealth of new primary data, this book offers the first account of the internal regime factors that ultimately caused the fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's long dictatorship in Tunisia during the Arab Uprisings. Anne Wolf's account challenges studies that focus on the role of mass mobilization alone, and demonstrates that in the last decade of Ben Ali's presidency, dissent within his ruling party - the Constitutional Democratic Rally - mounted to such an extent that followers began challenging their own powerbroker. The culmination of this was a secret coup d'état staged by regime figures against Ben Ali in January 2011, an event that has not previously been uncovered. Wolf proposes a new theory of power and contention within ruling parties in authoritarian regimes to explain how dictators seek to fortify their rule and foster party-political stability, but also when, why, and how they succumb to internal contention and with what effect.
Tracing Dar es Salaam's rise and fall as an epicentre of Third World revolution, George Roberts explores the connections between the global Cold War, African liberation struggles, and Tanzania's efforts to build a socialist state. Roberts introduces a vibrant cast of politicians, guerrilla leaders, diplomats, journalists, and intellectuals whose trajectories collided in the city. In its cosmopolitan and rumour-filled hotel bars, embassy receptions, and newspaper offices, they grappled with challenges of remaking a world after empire. Yet Dar es Salaam's role on the frontline of the African revolution and its provocative stance towards global geopolitics came at considerable cost. Roberts explains how Tanzania's strident anti-imperialism ultimately drove an authoritarian turn in its socialist project and tighter control over the city's public sphere. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
A radical new approach to understanding Africa's elections: explaining why politicians, bureaucrats and voters so frequently break electoral rules.
A novel, far-reaching analysis of contemporary history and politics in East Africa, focusing on the crisis in the region's postcolonial political order.