Source: Carnegie
DEMOCRACY CHALLENGED
The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism
 |
Marina Ottaway | |
| Price: $21.95 | Price: $44.00 | |
| Paperback, 276 pp. | Cloth, 276 pp. | |
| ISBN: 0-87003-195-3 | ISBN: 0-87003-196-1 | |
| Pub. Date: Jan. 2003 | ||
| Order the book from Carnegie's distributor. | ||
Table of Contents
Introduction
(PDF)
Index
About the Book
During the 1990s, international democracy promotion efforts led to the establishment
of numerous regimes that cannot be easily classified as either authoritarian
or democratic. They display characteristics of each—in short they are semi-authoritarian
regimes.
These regimes pose a considerable challenge to U.S. policy makers because the superficial stability of many semi-authoritarian regimes usually masks severe problems that need to be solved lest they lead to a future crisis. Additionally, these regimes call into question some of the ideas about democratic transitions that underpin the democracy promotion strategies of the United States and other Western countries.
Despite their growing importance, semi-authoritarian regimes have not received systematic attention. Marina Ottaway examines five countries (Egypt, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Croatia, and Senegal) that display the distinctive features of semi-authoritarianism and the special challenge each poses to policy makers. She explains why the dominant approach to democracy promotion isn't effective in these countries and concludes by suggesting alternative policies.
Issues covered include:
o Methods to retain power
o Ethnic and economic divisions
o State formation problems
o Political elites
About the Author
Marina Ottaway is senior associate in the Democracy
and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment. She is the coauthor of
Democratic
Mirage in the Middle East (Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief No. 20),
the coeditor of Funding
Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, and the author of
Africa's
New Leaders: Democracy or State Reconstruction?.