
Bridling Dictators
Rules and Authoritarian Politics
Graeme Gill(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 20. November 2021
Book
Hardback
394 pages
978-0-19-284968-7 (ISBN)
Description
Galtieri, Lukashenka, and Putin are some of the dictators whose untrammelled personal power has been seen as typical of the dog-eat-dog nature of leadership in authoritarian political systems. This book provides an innovative argument that, rather than being characterised by permanent insecurity, fear, and arbitrariness, the leadership of dictatorships is actually governed by a series of rules. The rules are identified, and their operation is shown in a range of different types of authoritarian regime. The operation of the rules is explained in ten different countries across five different regime types: the Soviet Union and China as communist single party regimes; Argentina, Brazil, and Chile as military regimes; electoral authoritarian Malaysia and Mexico; personalist dictatorships in Belarus and Russia; and the Gulf monarchies. Through close analysis of the way leadership functions in these different countries, the book shows how the rules have worked in different institutional settings. It also shows how the power distribution in authoritarian oligarchies is related to the rules. The book transforms our understanding of how authoritarian systems work.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
748 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-284968-7 (9780192849687)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2021
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€75.49
Available for download

E-Book
11/2021
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€75.49
Available for download
Person
Graeme Gill is Professor Emeritus of Government and Public Administration at the University of Sydney. Over the course of a distinguished career he has published a number of monographs including Building an Authoritarian Polity: Russia in Post-Soviet Times (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Author
Professor Emeritus of Government and Public AdministrationProfessor Emeritus of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney
Content
1: On Authoritarian Leadership
2: Operational Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
3: Relational Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
4: Constitutive Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
5: Rules and Military Regimes
6: Rules and Dominant Party Regimes
7: Rules, and Personal, and Monarchical Regimes
8: Rules and Regime Institutions
9: Rules and Power Disposition in the Oligarchy
Conclusion: Rules and Autocracy
2: Operational Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
3: Relational Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
4: Constitutive Rules and Communist Single Party Regimes
5: Rules and Military Regimes
6: Rules and Dominant Party Regimes
7: Rules, and Personal, and Monarchical Regimes
8: Rules and Regime Institutions
9: Rules and Power Disposition in the Oligarchy
Conclusion: Rules and Autocracy