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The Equatoguinean dictatorship under Teodoro Obiang Nguema has spanned forty-four years, making him the longest-serving current head of state. Since his entry to power through a 1979 coup, Obiang has evolved in his style of governance. First ruling through a military junta, then a single-party regime, and finally competitive authoritarianism. Across these eras, he has relied on a cadre of supporting elites to occupy top spots in the state administration. Has his strategy of retaining and dismissing these top elites evolved with his broader style of governance? What features has he looked for over time to signal loyalty? We explore these questions using original individual-level data on all ruling elites in Equatorial Guinea from 1979 to 2023. Drawing on a suite of biographical variables, we find evidence that certain professional and personal traits have made elites less likely to be dismissed at different eras of Obiang's rule. However, co-regionality has been an enduring preference in his elite strategy, suggesting his preference for friends from "back home." These findings demonstrate how elite strategies of dictators move beyond the ethnocentric and evolve alongside broader regime characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents trends in democracy, autocracy, and regime transformation using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset version 14. We offer five main findings. First, the average level of democracy as measured by the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) continues to decline and has reached the 1985-level when looking at the population-weighted averages. Second, 42 countries are in ongoing episodes of autocratization, and 18 countries are in ongoing episodes of democratization in 2023. Third, we are the first to show that out of the 42 autocratizing countries, 19 are "Bell-turn" autocratizers, while nine out of the 18 democratizers are "U-turns." Fourth, we unpack the familiar analysis of the three waves of autocratization and democratization by dividing these into the newly discovered stand-alone episodes of autocratization versus Bell-turn episodes, as well as stand-alone episodes of democratization versus U-turn episodes. This analysis suggests that regime volatility has increased in recent years, as a larger share of both autocratization and democratization are made up of Bell-turns and U-turns, respectively. Fifth, out of the 60 countries holding national elections this year, 31 countries are in some degree of decline in democracy, while only three are improving on democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, almost 50% of dictatorships included multiple parties in their government. Existing research has not studied this systematically, and generally considers granting outsiders access to ministerial cabinets a risky and costly strategy. This article provides evidence of authoritarian multiparty governments (AMGs) being a global and increasingly common phenomena. We argue that AMGs are a power-sharing strategy whereby autocrats co-opt outsiders through cabinet appointments to divide the opposition and consolidate their rule. Using individual-level data on ministers' partisan affiliation in autocracies worldwide, we show that AMGs positively correlate with ethnic divides, civil war, and "democratic" institutions, and we use new measures of power sharing to demonstrate that coalition partners often exert a real influence through their ministerial mandates. Our findings suggest that AMG is an overlooked survival strategy for autocrats and highlight the need to focus more on the organization and composition of the political executive in autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MENA uprisings broke, at least temporarily, the thrones of several long-time autocracies, under the pressure of massive popular protests. Yet, trajectories of Islamists were not uniform across post-uprising political terrains. Unlike the case in Egypt and Tunisia, where they were initially included with significant electoral gains after 2011, Islamists were faced with immense challenges diminishing their popular base and limiting their political opportunities in Algeria and Sudan after 2019. This article argues that their pre-uprising political records, along with post-uprising regime continuity, define much of these trajectories across cases. Through the comparative focus on Islamists in post-2019 Algeria and Sudan, three key factors which are believed to contribute to their current political decline will be discussed: rebels' persistent effort to exclude them, Islamists' own political engagement and survival of the pre-2019 regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chile, a long and oppressive military regime (1973–1990) dismantled emergent initiatives for the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric care, imposing a neoliberal constitution that opened public services to market forces and limited the state's role in health and social care. After being associated with communism and socialism, community-based mental health work was banned, and socialist psychiatrists were silenced through torture or exile. However, some therapeutic initiatives persisted, such as the "Protected Commune" (PC) initiative within the El Peral psychiatric asylum. The PC attempted to mimic a real town inside the asylum's gated perimeter. It featured an ecumenical chapel, a school, and various "council" departments like recreation, education, waste, economy, and health. Paths received names, wards became districts, and patients and workers were assigned new, democratic roles, all while the authoritarian regime entirely controlled the "outside" world. The initiative ceased with the return of democracy in 1990. Deemed an eccentric and negligible episode, the PC is often seen as an interruption to the radical community-based experiences of the pre-dictatorial era. Drawing on archival research and oral history interviews with participants, this paper examines how the PC harnessed the notion of community to navigate the complex socio-political landscape of the dictatorship. Differing from established accounts of the political uses of psychiatry under authoritarianism, the study positions the PC as a prism for understanding the contradictory ways in which the idea of 'community' has been able to transcend radically opposed social and political regimes, becoming a core feature in the vocabulary of mental health reform, despite its ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the work of the Argentine political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell (1936–2011), one of Latin America's leading intellectual figures of the twentieth century. While previous analyses have concentrated on his legacy in the social sciences, this study offers an intellectual history of O'Donnell's ideas on democracy and inequality. It traces O'Donnell's shifting perspectives, from a structuralist view of global centre-periphery relationships to an emphasis on individual agency concerning inequalities. The article presents, first, an analysis of his early work, in particular his conceptualization of the "Bureaucratic-Authoritarian" State, which was connected to a specific view of inequality characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s. Second, the article focuses on his second major work, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, in relation to the most important political event in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, namely the various transitions from dictatorship to democracy. Thirdly, the article examines in detail O'Donnell's ideas on the quality of democracy, the state, and inequality in Latin America in the 1990s and 2000s. By exploring O'Donnell's intellectual journey chronologically, the article illuminates the shifts and continuities in his work, thereby highlighting the evolving perspectives on inequality of one of Latin America's foremost intellectuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carl Schmitt is the most important anti-liberal political theorist of the European interwar period (1918-1939). His theories on the state of exception, dictatorship, and his criticism of parliamentary democracy are very well known. However, what remains unknown to this day is how his ideas had a remarkable influence on the ideologues of the Francoist state between 1939 and 1942. During these years, a debate developed among Francoist jurists about whether Francisco Franco was a "sovereign dictator," that is, a dictator legitimized by popular consent, or rather a new kind of "monarch" that emerged in the context of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This paper aims to explain how two ideological factions formed in Francoist Spain. The "Decisionist Francoism" of Juan Beneyto Pérez, Francisco Elías de Tejada, and Luis Legaz Lacambra held that Franco emerged as a reaction to the process of "legalization" triggered by liberalism in Spain. The "Weberian Francoism" of Francisco Javier Conde held that Franco was a charismatic and traditional leader whose position emerged in response to the Civil War. I explain how three concepts of Schmitt's anti-iberalism inspired Francoist theorists: political theology, dictatorship, and the rejection of parliamentary democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1972 and 1986, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines headed an autocratic system that allowed him to rule with little to no accountability. Some 36 years after FM (as he is popularly called) and family were driven from power into exile in Hawaii, his son, Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos, Jr., was overwhelmingly elected President in the May 2022 general elections. This turnaround seemed puzzling to many, but others saw a long-term deliberate process of rehabilitation after the family returned to the Philippines. Our paper explores how Filipinos remembered FM in the years after his ouster. What drives the memory of dictatorship in the Philippines? Using time series data on public opinion about FM post-ouster, we find that a generally positive appreciation of Marcos as former president had crystallised early on across nearly all the major variables of age, sex, education, location and ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romania, following Nicolae Ceau ºescu’s rise to power in 1965, a period of temporary relaxation ensued, during which the dictator made gestures that were previously unimaginable until the mid-1970s. However, after the announcement of the “small cultural revolution” in 1972, all aspects of culture were subordinated to the one-man dictatorship, and opportunities gradually diminished. By the 1960s, the foundations of socialist culture had already been established, signifying a cultural landscape directed, financed, and controlled by a single-party state. Despite these constraints, questions arise: how did ordinary people survive the reign of terror during communism? How did they entertain themselves, outsmart the system, and access cultural and educational opportunities? This study aims to provide answers, highlighting several examples from the “treasury of small joys”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan faces immense challenges. It has, in recent decades, become a target of hybrid aggression by the People's Republic of China, with the Taiwan Strait a flashpoint that could trigger catastrophic large-scale wars. PRC incursions into Taiwan air and sea space and grey zone harassment happen almost on a daily basis. Taiwan stands as a beacon of democracy and a mirror of transformation from dictatorship to a free society. Despite the severe disadvantages it faces, it has become a pivotal player in global technology supply chains. It manufactures more than 64 per cent of the world's semiconductors and 92 per cent of the most advanced chips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the intricate evolution of Chilean Pentecostals from apolitical and socially detached citizens to ardent supporters of the country's dictatorship. The aim is to challenge prevailing historical assumptions that explain the transformation through factors exogenous to the movement as well as long-held interpretations of their eschatological dispositions. It looks to revisit their early theological commitments and millennial concerns, complicating scholarly claims that the movement reflected a clear premillennialist orientation which has been held up to explain their enduring reluctance to enter the political sphere prior to the 1973 military coup. By examining early Pentecostal publications, this article reveals a religious movement shaped by pneumatological expressions, Methodist beliefs and local autonomy. Contrary to normative interpretations, it argues that Chilean Pentecostals' longstanding unwillingness to engage in political change was not a forgone conclusion rooted in their theological commitments. Political engagement was always a possibility rather than a clear deviation. This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Chilean Pentecostalism, shedding light on the complex interplay of theology, historical context and scholarly interpretations that have shaped our understanding of the movement's political trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the return to democracy in Argentina, the definition of new roles and missions for the armed forces became imperative in order to establish civilian authority over the military and contribute to the consolidation of the democratic regime. After seven years of military dictatorship (1976–1983), the transformation of repressive and war-prone armed forces into law-abiding and peaceful ones was needed to achieve three key political goals: To strengthen the newly restored yet weak rule of law, to rebuild the country's battered international image, and to help professionalise an ill-reputed military. This article argues that since the return to democracy in 1983, successive governments have pursued these goals by linking issues traditionally falling within the military and security realm to the country's external agenda. Building upon the defence diplomacy literature – that is, the use of defence and military cooperation as a diplomatic tool – the article develops a conceptual framework to apply to the Argentine case, focussing on how defence diplomacy is developed in three stages which we conceptualise as inward-looking, outward-looking, and symmetrical military-to-military relations. Overall, we contend that defence diplomacy – though still a recent and weakly systematised concept in the field – is a useful tool which should be taken into account when analysing the democratic transitions and the pursued civilian control over the armed forces in Global South countries like Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What explains variation in the inclusion of women in authoritarian cabinets? We theorize that leaders of electoral autocracies are affected by changing international norms of democracy and women's rights to appoint women ministers. We propose two hypotheses. First, increasing dependence on aid from democratic donors encourages leaders of electoral autocracies to appoint more women ministers. Second, electoral autocrats uprooting democratic traits appoint more women ministers to minimize the reputational costs of their autocratization. Using data from authoritarian regimes in 38 African countries between 1973 and 2013, we find that increases in aid from democracies are associated with modest increases in women's share of cabinet seats. As our theory suggests, this relationship holds only in electoral autocracies in more recent years when norms of gender equality have been strongest. Conversely, we find no evidence that autocratization periods are associated with increases in women's cabinet share. Additionally, we show that supply-side factors and the politics of multi-ethnic coalition building appear to explain differences in women's cabinet seat share in autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the introduction of Chinese poetry in Catalonia before the Franco dictatorship, highlighting the influence of figures such as Sinibald de Mas i Sans and Ernest Fenollosa. Catalan translators such as Apel·les Mestres, Josep Carner, Josep Maria López-Picó, and Marià Manent are mentioned, who adapted Chinese poems to the Catalan poetic style, paying attention to meter and rhyme. The Bernat Metge Foundation played an important role in the dissemination of classical literature and Chinese poetry in Catalonia. [Extracted from the article]

George Bernard Shaw's political comedies, The Apple Cart and On the Rocks, explore loopholes of representative democracy and Shaw's prospect for reformative dictatorship as an alternative. The Apple Cart reveals the political apathy of English people with all good social welfare in the late twentieth century, which naturally leads to the parliamentary politics controlled by powerful conglomerates. In On the Rocks, representative democracy fails to address extreme unemployment, and the reform plan of the prime minister, Sir Arthur, faces opposition from both the labor class and the conservative. Therefore, Shaw hints at the temporary necessity for reformative dictatorship within constitutional limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the dictatorship in Chile, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, a small number of publications openly published prodemocracy critiques. APSI magazine was one of them. This teaching tool shows how to read for criticisms of Pinochet in an overground magazine that could not always overtly criticize the sitting regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the primary goals of Franco's education policy was to train the working class in the doctrinal principles of the regime. Labour Universities were one of the education institutions created for this purpose; there were three for women (Zaragoza, Cáceres and Huesca). This article focuses on analysing the purposes sought by these macro-institutions when training working-class women, using diverse primary sources: documentary, audiovisual, archive and legal. Findings indicate that Women's Labour Universities aimed to provide specialised vocational training and also to impose the doctrine of the ideological principles advocated by the regime in relation to the model of women. However, these goals were somewhat incompatible as providing women with vocational training promoted their emancipation, contrary to the female ideal mainly advocated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past decade or so, we have been worrying about democratic backsliding – movement toward autocratic rule in nations that we thought were stably democratic. Our attention to backsliding may have distracted us, though, from another important phenomenon – front-sliding, so to speak. If backsliding is a move from democracy toward autocracy, frontsliding is a move from autocracy to democracy. Professors Dan Slater and Joseph Wong's important book From Development to Democracy offers an elegant argument that sometimes autocrats themselves initiate movement toward democracy even when they are not facing imminent collapse. They show how dominant political parties in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan gave up a seeming guarantee of remaining in power through continuing repression in order to remain in power through reasonably free and fair elections instead. Their argument, which I outline in Part ii, is that sometimes democracy occurs because the dominant party is strong rather than weak and on the verge of collapse. That opens up the possibility of similar frontsliding transformations in other authoritarian, autocratic, or quasi-autocratic nations, including Singapore and, most intriguingly, China. I examine this possibility in Part iii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, significant academic attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of democratic backsliding, understood as a creeping assault on the rule of law and the fairness of elections, combined with efforts to capture the judicial system and state agencies to subjugate them to the executive power. At the same time, however, there has been a parallel political development affecting hybrid and authoritarian regimes that has been more consequential yet largely neglected. Identified in this essay as dictatorial drift, this process implies the transition from "soft" forms of authoritarian rule to hardcore authoritarian policies, characterized by the emergence of unconstrained leaders with dictatorial ambitions; an extreme concentration of executive power; the marginalization of parliaments and the elimination of political opposition; the end of competitive elections; a takeover or destruction of the judiciary, independent media, and autonomous civil society organizations; and worsening political repressions. This essay documents such drift as a global phenomenon and probes its causes and consequences. The essay notes the exhaustion of mechanisms that constrained shifts towards dictatorship in the past and highlight how autocratic hegemonies today drive regime change in much the same way as Western liberal democracies once did in the early post–Cold War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to outline the ideal that the Franco dictatorship pursued for the case of rural women and analyze its evolution during the almost forty years that the dictatorship lasted. For this purpose, we have analyzed the official curricula of the female agrarian training schools, where the women who were to be 'models' for the peasant women were trained. The press and reports from the Ministry of Agriculture and women's magazines of the time were consulted. We conclude that this specific education sought to turn them into housewives by erasing the traces of their peasant identity and that this process entailed the creation of a space that could be called 'home' and the assignment to them of specific tasks within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media are under increasing pressure by states to adopt a regime-friendly editorial line in many countries globally, raising the importance of understanding the conditions of successful and failed media capture. Unfortunately, the standard measurement of media capture – annual expert surveys – neither distinguishes between outlets nor offers the needed resolution to assess, e.g., the immediate impact of a new gag law. To remedy these shortcomings, we develop a computational measurement of media capture based on a comparison of nominally independent outlets and regime-owned outlets regarding media agenda and tone when referring to the regime. By relying on two unsupervised measurement methods – topic modelling and sentiment classification – the new method can assess the loss of editorial independence at the level of individual outlets on a monthly or even weekly basis. The methodology is validated by applying it to recent data from Nicaragua. There the two-pronged approach shows how outlets respond differently to regime pressure. While there still are limitations to consider, if further editorial aspects of media capture such as issue framing are added to the methodology, it has the potential of transforming the future study of media capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a proxy for issue salience via studying congruence between parties' organizational structure and the policies they promote to their voters. This charter-manifesto congruence, i.e. institutionalizing the same democratic innovations at the intra-party level and advocating for their adoption at the national level, is particularly useful to demarcate party profiles in dominant party systems and electoral autocracies. To demonstrate how such congruence can be measured, we analyse the credibility of the commitments made by opposition parties in Hungary to a variety of democratic innovations. Drawing on novel survey data, we further substantiate our argument by showing high support for these innovations among party members and voters. The analysis identifies gender quotas as the most congruent innovation. Our longitudinal research design also reveals a recent breakthrough of e-democracy in party manifestos. We then discuss how preferences for various innovations are potentially shaped by membership size, party founders' political socialization or organizational learning. At the normative level, the analysis suggests that some forms of democratic innovations are better suited for intra-party organizations than for party manifestos. These implications might be relevant for those committed to promoting deliberation, gender equality and (re-)engagement of the youth in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the experience of political exile in Chile during the dictatorship through the narratives of women. The role of the Araucaria magazine in maintaining communication between exiles and those who stayed in the country is highlighted. The importance of including women's narratives to have a more complete understanding of exile and to deconstruct its analysis is emphasized. It is concluded that it is necessary to continue exploring and contrasting masculine discourses in order to open the discussion of exile to new interpretations. [Extracted from the article]

Research on propaganda often focuses on strategies that autocrats can use to persuade skeptical citizens. I outline a different function of propaganda—reinforcing regime support and building trust through identity-consistent messages. Such affirmation propaganda results in more positive perceptions of propaganda outlets and skepticism about independent media. I test this argument using three studies in Russia. In two randomized experiments, I demonstrate that pro-regime citizens trust reports from state media more than reports from independent media; however, state media lose trust if they send more critical messages. Additional survey evidence suggests that regime supporters often find state media accurate despite recognizing the pro-government bias of these outlets. My analysis suggests that autocrats are more constrained by public opinion than previously thought. It also helps to better understand the role of persuasion and censorship in authoritarian regimes, and it highlights that independent media have limited power to challenge authoritarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the structure of probabilistic voting rules that are ordinal Bayesian incentive compatible (OBIC) with respect to independently distributed prior beliefs that can be considered generic (Majumdar and Sen (2004)). We first identify a class of priors, such that for each prior in that class there exists a probabilistic voting rule that puts a positive probability weight on "compromise" candidates. The class of priors include generic priors. Next, we consider a class of randomized voting rules that have a "finite range". For this class of rules, we identify an appropriate generic condition on priors such that, any rule in this class is OBIC with respect to a prior satisfying the generic condition if and only if the rule is a random dictatorship. • The paper studies random social choice rules under the incomplete information framework. • The compromise property ensures that a RSCF selects a common second-ranked alternative. • The paper provides priors so that unanimous OBIC rules satisfying the compromise property exist. • For almost all priors, only the random dictatorship is unanimous and OBIC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Machiavelli's chapters on the Decemvirate (D 1.35, 1.40-45) advance an internal critique of the juridical discourse of sovereignty. I first contextualize these chapters in relation to several of Machiavelli's potential sources, including Livy's Ab urbe condita, Dionysius of Halicarnassus's Roman Antiquities, and the antiquarian writings of Andrea Fiocchi and Giulio Pomponio Leto. I then analyze Machiavelli's claim that the decemvirs held "absolute authority" (autorità assoluta)—an authority that was unconstrained by either laws or countervailing magistrates. I proceed to argue that Machiavelli's account of the decemvirs' election contains a web of allusions to the lex regia, the "royal law" by which the Roman people were thought to have conveyed their sovereign power to an emperor. By modeling the decemvirs' election on the lex regia, Machiavelli reveals the political limitations of the doctrine of popular sovereignty; moreover, he illustrates that even free and fair elections can easily give rise to tyranny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most analyses of business power focus on the ability of firms to mobilise resources to influence policy or regulation. When examined through this lens, however, the case of Argentine Credit Unions (CUs) seems puzzling. Emerging from the margins of the economy, CUs withstood regulatory pressures from politically-connected banks, building an informal nationwide credit network with its own payment instruments and clearing services. A military dictatorship eventually restricted their informal operations, but subsequently granted them the right to offer services that had been hitherto monopolised by commercial banks. To explain this outcome, this article draws on a broader definition of power. Businesses' ability to influence policy and regulation not only stems from their capacity to mobilise resources (instrumental power) but also from the socioeconomic impact of their activity (structural power). Argentine CUs' endeavour shows that both dimensions of power are closely intertwined and highly dependent on contingent contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Iluminuras is the property of Revista Iluminuras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The experience of particular types of migration political exile and diaspora are mainly portrayed from the refugee's perspective focusing on the travel process itself or the problems of integration. Despite the interest in this theme emerging only recently its global persistence and relevance are already considerable and are depicted in relation to different contexts by authors such as Judith Kerr Peter Sís and Uri Shulevitz to name a few. This article thus analyzes the depiction of exile as depicted in two Portuguese illustrated children's books portraying the exile experience during the dictatorial regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses highlights of a lecture presented by Princeton University professor Kim Lane Scheppele, at the 25th Annual Grotius Lecture held on March 29, 2023. Topics include democracy through international law, constitutionalism, human rights, rule of law, post-communist transitions, right to democratic governance, autocracies, and inter-American system and European regional system for the protection of democratic infrastructure.

Albania endured a brutal communist dictatorship for over 45 years, which had severe effects on the rights of tens of thousands of people and the country's social fabric. The regime employed criminal tactics and justified violence and manipulation in the pursuit and retention of power through the ideology of "class war" and "the dictatorship of the proletariat.". The paper is based on an analytical research method that aims to highlight social awareness as one of the main features of transitional "legal approaches" designed to bring justice and reveal the truth about the bitter communist past. The main focus of the study is to assess whether the outcomes of transitional justice in Albania have reached society, particularly the young generation. In addition to using the doctrinal research method, the article employs an empirical approach by administering a questionnaire to evaluate students' perceptions of their awareness of the communist past. The study concludes that knowledge about the past is still relatively low among youngsters, and it suggests that the state should take more proactive and coercive measures, such as utilizing textbooks and organizing extracurricular activities, to reach the new generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Milton Friedman's mid‐1970s involvement with Pinochet's Chile has generated much controversy, the claim that James M. Buchanan was similarly eager to provide Pinochet's military dictatorship with early 1980s policy advice is increasingly reported as an established fact in the vast scholarly literature on neoliberalism. This article invokes a wealth of previously ignored primary source material that sheds significant new light on Buchanan's early 1980s involvement with Chile. In particular, we evaluate whether Buchanan's May 1980 visit to Chile was an integral part of the Pinochet junta's late 1970s and early 1980s efforts to draft a new constitution. Similarly, we evaluate whether Buchanan's ideas had any significant influence on the views of Pedro Ibáñez and Carlos Cáceres (the most anti‐democratic members of Pinochet's Council of State and the primary hosts of Buchanan's May 1980 visit to Chile). Finally, we shed important new light on Buchanan's participation in the highly controversial late 1981 Mont Pèlerin Society meeting in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines humanist anecdotes about the turbulent times of the mid-twentieth century by F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová. It provides a comparative reading of Weiskopf's Elend und Größe unserer Tage. Anekdoten 1933–1947 (1950) and Reinerová's "Tragischer Irrtum und richtige Diagnose" (published in Mandelduft, 1998). The anecdotal form of these texts harks back to the popular Enlightenment (Volksaufklärung) anecdotes of Heinrich von Kleist and Johann Peter Hebel, published in 1810–1811 during the Napoleonic Wars. The anecdote as a literary form is particularly well suited to the representation of wartime and political repression. While Weiskopf's anecdotes explore cruelty and heroism under the Nazi dictatorship, Reinerová's autobiographical text juxtaposes crisis points in her own life—her time as a political prisoner in France in 1939 and in Czechoslovakia in 1952–1953; her return to Prague as her family's sole survivor; and her periodic cancer treatment from 1948 onwards. Reinerová describes how the kindness of ordinary people, and her own optimism and resilience, helped her through the worst times. Her lived experience gives her authority as a storyteller in Walter Benjamin's sense. Both authors contrast human extremes—the good and the bad—yet both remain optimistic about the human capacity for good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past decade or so, we have been worrying about democratic backsliding – movement toward autocratic rule in nations that we thought were stably democratic. Our attention to backsliding may have distracted us, though, from another important phenomenon – front-sliding, so to speak. If backsliding is a move from democracy toward autocracy, frontsliding is a move from autocracy to democracy. Professors Dan Slater and Joseph Wong's important book From Development to Democracy offers an elegant argument that sometimes autocrats themselves initiate movement toward democracy even when they are not facing imminent collapse. They show how dominant political parties in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan gave up a seeming guarantee of remaining in power through continuing repression in order to remain in power through reasonably free and fair elections instead. Their argument, which I outline in Part ii, is that sometimes democracy occurs because the dominant party is strong rather than weak and on the verge of collapse. That opens up the possibility of similar frontsliding transformations in other authoritarian, autocratic, or quasi-autocratic nations, including Singapore and, most intriguingly, China. I examine this possibility in Part iii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that institutions affect the levels of corruption in a country. We take these arguments a step further and examine whether it is the presence of inclusive institutions and/or the credible and consistent implementation of institutions that matter, as regards corruption. We use a novel approach to theoretically conceptualise and empirically operationalise institutions along two analytically distinct dimensions: the nature of the institutions (the de jure dimension), and the extent to which they are credibly and consistently implemented over time (the de facto dimension), using a panel dataset for 148 countries covering 2012 to 2018. We find that formal institutions are most effective in reducing corruption when the rules are credibly and consistently implemented. Furthermore, this effect appears to operate differently at different levels of national income. The nature of the formal institutions appears important across income levels, but particularly so at the upper middle income level, while the credible and consistent implementation of these institutions is primarily influential at upper middle income levels. We explain why this may be the case and elaborate on the policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractRöpke is considered one of the most prominent Ordoliberal economists. The objective of this work is to analyse the dissemination of Röpke’s works, within Spain, through diverse institutions: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, Revista de Occidente, Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, CSIC and Fundación Villalonga. Most of these works appeared between 1946 and 1963. From 1976, after the Franco Dictatorship, some of his books were reissued. Grouped by topics, the main lines of argument exposed by Röpke are perceived as: Monetary Policy, Social Policy, International and European Economic Order, and the performance of small and medium-sized companies, within the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will explain how Argentina developed a strong commitment to international criminal justice to address the crimes of the last dictatorship (1976–1983) that transcended the local dimension and shaped the field globally. In particular, the article will focus on three specific dimensions: the disputes surrounding the concept of 'dirty war' in relation to the crimes committed in the 1970s and how its legal conceptualisation has evolved over time; how domestic courts have applied international and domestic criminal law to judge these crimes and how this has changed over time; and, finally, what was the role of human rights organisations in fostering the accountability process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Israel global, Latin America and the current debate on anti-Semitism" in the magazine WeltTrends deals with the role of Israel in Latin America from the 1970s to the present day. It discusses the political analysis of the Gaza war and the debate on anti-Semitism. Israel is seen as a proxy for the USA, especially in terms of arms deliveries to Latin American dictatorships. The close connection between Israel and the Jewish communities in Latin America is also addressed. The political and geopolitical role of Israel in Latin America is critically examined. [Extracted from the article]

In October 2018, the election of an extreme right-wing politician as president of Brazil laid bare the histories of antidemocratic practices that guided the policies and rhetoric of the newly elected government. Black, poor, Indigenous, Northeastern, and LGBTQIA+ people were positioned as threats to the stability of the nuclear family and public safety that the government claimed it would protect. The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 also put into stark view the antidemocratic practices and the blatant disregard for life in Brazil, which was particularly acute for people who had been marked as a threat. "Beatriz Nascimento and the Erotics of the Quilombo in Times of Peril" revisits the work of Beatriz Nascimento, a Black Brazilian thinker and scholar who lived through the repressive and antidemocratic period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Nascimento's work offers perspective to the current extreme right-wing project and underscores the significance of Black scholars' interventions when the lives of marginalized people are at stake. Specifically, her concept of the quilombo (maroon communities) uncovers the histories, relations of power, and the possibilities of social relations for Brazilians living in precarity that antidemocratic governments have attempted to diminish and erase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its effort to adapt to the changes witnessed in the Arab world during what is known as the Arab Spring, Political science has developed new research mechanisms to describe and analyze such phenomena. The deep connection with the Arab environment has led for the reassessment of concepts with regards to their new meanings, and for approaches to be adapted to this unique context. The study thus seeks to highlight the necessity of establishing an Arab school of political science that addresses these concepts and develop approaches suited to the Arab context, avoiding inappropriate application of research tools that were developed in different environments that are no longer suitable for the distinct political, social, economic, and research characteristics of the Arab world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]