eBook - ePub
Random Dictatorships
Unpredictability of Authoritarian Politics in Eurasia
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
Post-Soviet Eurasia continues to puzzle observers, defying expectations of experts. Most Russia watchers failed to predict the full-scale invasion against Ukraine in 2022, and this failure triggered intensive debates and multiple rounds of self-reflection. Random Dictatorships: Unpredictability of Authoritarian Politics in Eurasia argues that the supposedly unexpected turns of Eurasian politics are a manifestation of a deeper phenomenon – researchers' limited ability to predict the policymaking in authoritarian regimes in general. Alexander Libman identifies three main factors making authoritarian politics difficult to predict: mistakes of authoritarian leaders, untransparent competition of elite factions, and omnipresent secrecy cultivated by autocrats. While scholars oscillate between two visions of authoritarian regimes – their presentation as highly rational and capable to adapt and as highly inefficient and doomed to poor performance – Libman suggests that many autocracies alternate between these two extremes in a difficult-to-predict fashion. The book explores three important cases from the post-Soviet Eurasia, when autocracies of this region defied expectations of external observers – Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Bloody January in Kazakhstan in 2022 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It discusses the reasons for the apparent unpredictability of autocracies in each of these cases, and identifies implications for how authoritarian regimes should be studied.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Introduction
- 1 The Autocrats’ Goals
- 2 Mistakes
- 3 Secrecy
- 4 Informal Coalitions
- 5 Sovietology and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
- 6 Annexation of Crimea
- 7 Bloody January in Kazakhstan
- 8 Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion to Ukraine
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
- About the Author
- Copyright Page
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Yes, you can access Random Dictatorships by Alexander Libman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Fascism & Totalitarianism. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.