Constructing Autocracy

Author : Matthew B. Roller
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400824095
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Constructing Autocracy written by Matthew B. Roller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rome's transition from a republican system of government to an imperial regime comprised more than a century of civil upheaval and rapid institutional change. Yet the establishment of a ruling dynasty, centered around a single leader, came as a cultural and political shock to Rome's aristocracy, who had shared power in the previous political order. How did the imperial regime manage to establish itself and how did the Roman elites from the time of Julius Caesar to Nero make sense of it? In this compelling book, Matthew Roller reveals a "dialogical" process at work, in which writers and philosophers vigorously negotiated and contested the nature and scope of the emperor’s authority, despite the consensus that he was the ultimate authority figure in Roman society. Roller seeks evidence for this "thinking out" of the new order in a wide range of republican and imperial authors, with an emphasis on Lucan and Seneca the Younger. He shows how elites assessed the impact of the imperial system on traditional aristocratic ethics and examines how several longstanding authority relationships in Roman society--those of master to slave, father to son, and gift-creditor to gift-debtor--became competing models for how the emperor did or should relate to his aristocratic subjects. By revealing this ideological activity to be not merely reactive but also constitutive of the new order, Roller contributes to ongoing debates about the character of the Roman imperial system and about the "politics" of literature.

Author : Matthew B. Roller
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691171416
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Constructing Autocracy written by Matthew B. Roller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rome's transition from a republican system of government to an imperial regime comprised more than a century of civil upheaval and rapid institutional change. Yet the establishment of a ruling dynasty, centered around a single leader, came as a cultural and political shock to Rome's aristocracy, who had shared power in the previous political order. How did the imperial regime manage to establish itself and how did the Roman elites from the time of Julius Caesar to Nero make sense of it? In this compelling book, Matthew Roller reveals a "dialogical" process at work, in which writers and philosophers vigorously negotiated and contested the nature and scope of the emperor’s authority, despite the consensus that he was the ultimate authority figure in Roman society. Roller seeks evidence for this "thinking out" of the new order in a wide range of republican and imperial authors, with an emphasis on Lucan and Seneca the Younger. He shows how elites assessed the impact of the imperial system on traditional aristocratic ethics and examines how several longstanding authority relationships in Roman society--those of master to slave, father to son, and gift-creditor to gift-debtor--became competing models for how the emperor did or should relate to his aristocratic subjects. By revealing this ideological activity to be not merely reactive but also constitutive of the new order, Roller contributes to ongoing debates about the character of the Roman imperial system and about the "politics" of literature.

Author : Rory Truex
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107172438
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Autocracy Work written by Rory Truex and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses original data from China's National People's Congress to challenge conceptions of representation, authoritarianism, and the political system.

Author : Masha Gessen
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593332245
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

Author : Daniel Treisman
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815732449
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Autocracy written by Daniel Treisman and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption, fake news, and the "informational autocracy" sustaining Putin in power After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat—at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia's leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a "competitive authoritarian" regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites. The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia's presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an “informational autocracy,” which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia’s foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin’s domestic regime—along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime's challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership’s own capabilities.

Author : Alexander Dukalskis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197520138
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making the World Safe for Dictatorship written by Alexander Dukalskis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making the World Safe for Dictatorship is about how authoritarian states manage their image abroad using both "promotional" tactics of persuasion and "obstructive" tactics of repression. All states attempt to manage their global image to some degree, but authoritarian states in the post-Cold War era have special incentives to do so given the predominance of democracy as an international norm. Alexander Dukalskis looks at the tactics that authoritarian states use for image management and the ways in which their strategies vary from one state to another. Moreover, Dukalskis looks at the degree to which some authoritarian states succeed in using image management to enhance their internal and external security, and, in turn, to make their world safe for dictatorship.

Author : David Stasavage
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228973
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Decline and Rise of Democracy written by David Stasavage and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer--democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished--and when and why they declined--can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future."--

Author : Victor N. Shaw
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527560953
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Autocracy to Democracy to Technocracy written by Victor N. Shaw and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores human polity with respect to its nature, context, and evolution. Specifically, it examines how individual wills translate into political ideologies, investigates what social forces converge to shape governmental operations, and probes whether human polity progresses in focus from individual wills to group interests to social integrations. The book entertains five hypotheses. The first is commonsensical: where there are people there is politics. The second is analogous: humans govern themselves socially in a way that is comparable to how a body regulates itself physically. The third is rational: humans set rules, organize activities, and establish institutions upon facts, following reasons, for the purpose of effectiveness and efficiency. The fourth is random: human affairs take place haphazardly under specific circumstances while they overall exhibit general patterns and trends. The final hypothesis is inevitable: human governance evolves from autocracy to democracy to technocracy. The book presents systematic information about human polity, its form, content, operation, impact, and evolution. It sheds light on multivariate interactions among human wills, rights, and obligations, political thoughts, actions, and mechanisms, and social structures, processes, and order maintenances. Pragmatically, it offers invaluable insights into individuals as agents, groupings as agencies, and polity as structuration across the human sphere.

Author : Anthony A. Barrett
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691233942
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rome Is Burning written by Anthony A. Barrett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nero became Emperor in A.D 54. On the evening of July 18, 64 A. D., it seems that a lamp was left unextinguished in a stall still heaped with piles of combustible material. Whether this was accidental or deliberate we cannot now determine, and normally it would not have led to anything that would have attracted even local attention. But there was a gusty wind that night, and the flickering flame was fanned onto the flammable wares. The ensuing fire quickly spread. Before the onlookers could absorb what was happening one of the most catastrophic disasters ever to be endured by Rome was already underway. It was a disaster that brought death and misery to thousands. In Nero and the Great Fire of Rome, Anthony Barrett draws on new textual interpretations and the latest archaeological evidence, to tell the story of this pivotal moment in Rome's history and its lasting significance. Barrett argues that the Great Fire, which destroyed much of the city, changed the course of Roman History. The fire led to the collapse of Nero's regime, and his disorderly exit brought an end to Rome's first imperial dynasty, transforming from thereto, the way that emperors were selected. It also led to the first systematic persecution of the Christians, who were blamed for the blaze. Barrett provides the first comprehensive study of this dramatic event, which remains a fascination of the public imagination, and continues to be a persistent theme in the art and literature of popular culture today"--

Author : Timothy Frye
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521734622
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Building States and Markets After Communism written by Timothy Frye and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-07 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how democracy influences state-building and market-building in 25 post-communist countries from 1990 to 2004.