Introduction
Authoritarianism as a concept has experienced an upswing in attention over the past few years, driven at least partially by the devolution of multiple democracies from proto-democratic models of government to more authoritarian models. Vladimir Putin in Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have stood out as particularly high-profile examples of authoritarian leaders who have worked to distort the democratic dimensions of their governments to prevent the appearance of serious rivals to their rule, alter the political systems in which they operate to enable their protracted reign, and generally embed themselves as uncontestable rulers. After years of increasing democratization and liberalization of political systems across the world, these cases have helped to reignite interest in authoritarianism, its characteristics, and its security implications. Within the United States, the election and tenure to date of Donald Trump to President have raised questions – rightly or...
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Further Reading
Frantz, E. (2018). Authoritarianism: What everyone needs to know. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. New York: Penguin Random House.
Sunstein, C. (Ed.). (2018). Can it happen here? Authoritarianism in America. New York: Harper Collins.
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Grice, F. (2019). Authoritarianism. In: Romaniuk, S., Thapa, M., Marton, P. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_167-1
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