Semidemocracies Essay

Alexander B. Downes, “Regime Change Doesn’t Work.” Boston Review. Date Published Sep. 1, 2011. Date Accessed 5/18/16. Web.

In this essay, after defining some crucial concepts, such as peace, liberal and democratic governments, I’ll present arguments that support the idea that liberal democratic states are not inherently more peaceful then other states, but that they are, in fact,

While some might argue that dictators rely on repression to help them stay in power, does it actually increase the chances the survival of a dictatorship and does repression actually work? In this journal article, the author conducts an experiment to see if there’s a relationship between survival and repression. The writer also explores what type of repression is more effective, non-violent or violent repression. The writer states that while the use of repression can sometimes backfire and lead to the demise of the leader however from his research he also finds that the use of repression is actually beneficial for the leader because it decreases the likelihood of coups and any challengers that can harm the regime. So using repression is actually

Political Violence is violence outside of the state’s control. How the violence is created can develop from a variety of reasons. There are three main explanations for political violence. Institutional which is when the existing institutions may encourage violence or constrain human action, creating a violent backlash. Ideational when ideas may justify or promote the use of violence, and Individual when psychological or strategic factors may lead people to carry out violence. Throughout the world there are many examples of these incidents. Whether exhibited through revolution, terrorism, State-sponsored terrorism or guerrilla war, people act to get their goals achieved. In this essay I will explain how effective political violence is throughout

Democratic consolidation has failed to occur in many Third Wave democracies. Many authoritarian incumbents initiated transitions with the purpose of sustaining autocratic rule through partial liberalization, often exploiting the advantages of office to marginalize oppositions. Many transitions resulted in what Levitsky & Way (2010) called competitive authoritarian regimes and others labeled illiberal democracies (Diamond 2009; Zakaria, 1997, 2007) or semiauthoritarian (Ottaway, 2003), electoral authoritarian (Schedler, 2002, 2009), and hybrid (Diamond, 2002) regimes. These governments held elections and tolerated a limited opposition, but only within narrowly constrained political spaces defined by the incumbents (2016: 126).

While it is well known that democratic states are just as likely to go to war as their non-democratic counterparts and that no two major democracies have been involved in war, no one has been able to offer an explanation for why democracies are better suited for peace. Dixon attempts to offer his own narrowed explanation due to previous arguments being rendered invalid.

The summer of 1988, nearly a decade after the Iranian revolution with the war against Iraq coming to an end, the Iranian government committed an act of mass genocide, killing five thousand political prisoners overnight. The event is not particularly known due to the Iranian governments substantial efforts to make sure the news never covered the event. With what started as the Khomeini regime, has overtime grown into an empire equivalent to a religious dictatorship. The use of forceful power by the Iranian government to mask the events of the 1988 Massacre and the 2009 Green Movement has tarnished their reputation of being a credible regime.

The question assumes that there is a linear relationship between inequality and armed conflict; the rise of the former inevitably leads to the increase of the latter. However, in the absence of functioning communism or utopian egalitarianism, we need to concede that our world is full of inequalities, but not all parts of the world are equally ridden by conflict. Moreover, large N-studies of civil war, conducted over the past few years, all seem to conclude that inequality is not directly linked to the risk of civil war (Collier&Hoeffler, 2004: 563-595; Fearon & Laitin, 2003: 75-90; Hegre, Gissinger, Gleditsch, 2003: 251-276). Following this lead, I will argue for a non-linear link between inequality and conflict and for the multi-causality

Through the history of western civilization, there have been many recurring themes. One of the major themes throughout the history of this region would be political and social violence. Monarchies and other forms of government have historically struggled with being able to successfully and efficiently control their territories and societies. Various forms of governments have been used in order to find the most effective type of government for their individual countries. One main issue for these government systems was the problem of ensuring that everyone is happy and satisfied with the amount of liberties and rights being provided to them. If the general population is not happy with how they are being treated by their ruler or by the upper

As society and the nations therein progress, more threats to democracy and the liberties it protects arise. Autocracies continue to try to strangle the essence of freedom from the nations they overtake and go as far as to thwart protests that oppose their oppressive regimes, creating a sense of bleakness and making people of these nations feel powerless. With this comes the question of whether democracy will even prevail.

The use of violence to repress and monitor was a common theme used by dictators to ‘control’ their peoples. This was uncommon in democracies, for example the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not have his own personal guard, answerable only to himself; it was Churchill who was scrutinized by the people, the reverse of the situation pertaining in both Germany and the Soviet Union. Totalitarianism endangers the stability of a nation as there will be “growing internal unrest due to the excesses of terrorism, the denial of rights and the inability of large segments of the population to participate in public affairs ”. It was these basic democratic principles which were absent throughout the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century; as a single man’s ideology was allowed to develop unrestricted, with little input from either a strong government or the general public.

The data of results was drawn at the municipality level, but each municipality has different population that vary largely from 284 to 7,362,782 (see table 1), thus, only looking at the relationship at each municipality level could possibly bias the estimation because of the variation across municipality level. Therefore, by looking at the rebel violence characteristics per capita could give more precise results, since it rescales the rebel violence same per capita for every municipalities. The relationship between rebel violence per capita level and per municipal level on the voting behavior gives the same answer, this further strengthens the results shown

Authoritarian regimes remain in power using many different methods including public manipulation, strategic stacking and reward to their officials and institutions, and violent response to opposition. These examples allow for corruption that Pei (2009) describes as a, “vital governing tool for authoritarian regimes.” Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2011) note that:

The fall of Berlin Wall, as a symbolic event, opened the way of democracy to many post-Soviet states and enhanced the third wave of democracy according to Samuel Huntington (Huntington 2012). Even though the institutions and practices of democracy are accepted by many, not all countries embraced democracy as an ideal. Instead, they used democratic processes to increase their authoritarianism. This attitude by was studied by many scholars and named in several terms. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argued a widely accepted concept for this kind of hybrid regimes, which is called “competitive authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way 2010) especially in the case of Russia and Peru. But rejecting democracy via elections and democratic practices has been

The summer of 1988, nearly a decade after the Iranian revolution with the war against Iraq coming to an end, the Iranian government committed an act of mass genocide, killing five thousand political prisoners overnight. The event is not particularly known due to the Iranian government’s substantial efforts to make sure the news never covered the event. With what started as the Khomeini regime, has over time grown into an empire equivalent to a religious dictatorship. The use of forceful power by the Iranian government to mask the events of the 1988 Massacre and the 2009 Green Movement has tarnished their reputation of being a credible regime.