UNIT 2: REVOLUTIONARY, TOTALITARIAN, AND

AUTHORITARIAN SOCIETIES

2012 – Freedom Hse. Data

WHAT NON-DEMOCRACY IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

What are the essential features?•A small group of individuals controls the state•Government is not responsible directly or indirectly to the people•Groups external to the power elite are not allowed to meaningfully contest power•The public has little or no role in actually electing government•Individual and civic freedoms are restricted

WHAT NON-DEMOCRACY IS AND WHAT IT IS NOTWhat is NOTessential to non-democratic regimes (i.e., non-democs vary on these)?•They remake society around nondemocratic ideologies and control all private space•There is an absence of well-organized elections where the votes are counted correctly; people don’t participate in elections•Ban on all political activity and especially any opposition parties •An unpopular set of leaders that must use high levels of violence against lots of people to stay in power (corporatism & clientelism)•The military or a dictator is in control of all power; leaders are not rotated or removable•No capitalist economy or rule of law; have high levels corruption•They always adopt policies to make society more unequal (populists)•They are aggressive enemies to liberal democracies like the United States•They are something that every established democracy should fear becoming if the wrong people gain power (Only in Venezuela)

WHAT CAUSES REVOLUTIONS?•What is Karl Marx’s theory of revolution?•How did VI Lenin modify it? •What can social psychology tell us about revolution? (relative deprivation, cognitive dissonance, & j-curves)•When do elites and the intl. community allow revolution? Failed societies, war (Theda Skocpol)•Why do some conservatives, like Samuel Huntington, see democratization as a cause of revolution. Is there any evidence to support his views? Russia, China, and Iran

THE END OF IDEOLOGY (AND THUS REVOLUTIONS)?

What is convergence theory? Is the history of utopian revolution over? Is the age of democratic revolution beginning?

Why is deprivation is increasingly visible even as the developing world is finding prosperity

•Wider rich-poor gaps within countries?•Global communications and revolutionary organization•Mass consumption and perceived deprivation

How might globalization and democratization strengthen revolutionaries?

•Traditional hierarchies threatened•Accelerated urbanization•Self-determination & the number of weak states