Authoritarianism Archives - Page 3 of 4

Democracy in Hungary

The Alliance of State Autocracy and Neoliberal Capitalism

April 10, 2019 • by Attila Antal

Looking at the last few years in Hungary – overflowing as it is with hate against refugees, migrants, liberals, George Soros, leftists, homeless people, NGOs, public intellectuals, and the political opposition – we can easily recognize that the political system is as far from a democracy as it was during ...

Democracy

Authoritarian Parasitism in Turkey and Beyond

Erdogan and the rise of strongman politics

February 6, 2019 • by Utku Balaban

What makes this phenomenon perplexing is the fact that these governments come into power in countries that are anything but similar. For instance, the United States has a long-lasting political system backed by its strong institutions and semi-holy texts such as its Constitution. Hungary reframed its entire political regime after ...

Authoritarian Parasitism in Turkey and Beyond

Feature

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

10 Historic Lessons for the Age of Trump

October 8, 2018 • by Jürgen von Mahs

2018 marks the 85th anniversary of the birth of the perhaps the most strident authoritarian regime in Western history: Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power makes this year a good occasion to reflect on the lessons that can be learned from the fateful series of events that unfolded in Germany ...

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

Uncategorized

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The role of the pro-government media in Turkey, Part III

June 25, 2018 • by Can Mert Kökerer

In two previous posts on the political scene in Turkey (I and II), I explained and discussed the success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Erdogan through their adoption of a type of post-truth politics that has enabled them to remain in power since 2002. Building upon ...

Feature

This is Your America

Why Frederick Douglass Still Matters

June 15, 2018 • by Neil Roberts

I’m worried. Very worried. But don’t mistake my worrying for pessimism or, worse, nihilism. Rather, I worry because I see a nation, with its connection to a wider world, unraveling right in front of us. Daily attempts to shatter what constitutes citizenship contribute to this entropy. There’s no immediate solution ...

Feature

Authoritarianism and the Cultic Dynamic

Traumatic Narcissism in American Politics Today

June 8, 2018 • by Daniel Shaw

I spent thirteen years of my life, including all of my thirties, as a fervent devotee of an Indian guru. I lived communally and worked full-time in the guru’s organization, until one day, after a long process I now know was me slowly coming out of dissociation, it dawned on ...

Europe & Central Asia

A Revolution in the Polling Booths?

The new constitutional order in Orbán’s “illiberal” Hungary

March 5, 2018 • by Mátyás György Endrey

In line with these ambitions, Orbán was also quick to announce that he considered the new parliament to be “a constitutional assembly,” tasked with setting the solid foundations for the new system in the form of a new constitution, The Fundamental Law, coming into force on January 1, 2012. This ...

Feature

Recognizing Authority, Acknowledging Power

Concepts of control in Kojeve and Arendt, Part III

February 2, 2018 • by Eli Weiner

Below is the final segment of a three-part series adapted from a final paper for Sociology of Power and Authority at UVA. Having worked through the writings of both Kojève and Arendt, each of which endeavored to provide a thorough grounding in a comprehensive schematic of authority and power, it is ...

Politics

Recognizing Authority, Acknowledging Power

Concepts of control in Kojeve and Arendt, Part II

January 31, 2018 • by Eli Weiner

Below is the second segment of a three-part series adapted from a final paper for Sociology of Power and Authority at UVA. While Kojève offered us a fully formed taxonomy of authority, complete with four pure types of authority and their attendant legitimating theories, Hannah Arendt in her text On Violence, published ...

Politics

Recognizing Authority, Acknowledging Power

Concepts of control in Kojeve and Arendt, Part I

January 29, 2018 • by Eli Weiner

Below is the first segment of a three-part series adapted from a final paper for Sociology of Power and Authority at UVA. The specific characteristics of political authority, political power, and political violence have only grown more complex in the modern era, and the lessons offered by philosophers of the past ...

Politics

Sociology of Power and Authority

Fall 2017 at University of Virginia

January 23, 2018 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

The Sociology of Power and Authority was offered in Fall 2017 at the University of Virginia. It was an upper-division undergraduate seminar with 20 students, meeting for an hour and fifteen minutes twice a week. On the first day of the course, several students revealed, unprompted, that they had been ...

Feature

The Power of Affects in Democratic Politics

Manuel Puig’s ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ and the affective turn in democratic theory

January 8, 2018 • by Gustavo Hessmann Dalaqua

The so-called “affective turn” in political theory has recently propelled several scholars to cast aspersions on the deliberative model of democracy. [i] By affirming that democracy should be conceived solely as an exchange of arguments between “reasonable” persons guided by the ideal of “impartiality,” deliberative theorists such as Habermas and Rawls, it ...