Pluralism By Default: Weak Autocrats And The Rise Of Competitive Politics

Focusing on regime trajectories across three countries in the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), Lucan Way argues that democratic political competition has often been grounded less in well-designed institutions or emerging civil society, and more in the failure of authoritarianism. In many cases, pluralism has persisted because autocrats have been too weak to steal elections, repress opposition, or keep allies in line. Attention to the dynamics of this pluralism by default" reveals an important but largely unrecognized contradiction in the transition process in many countries - namely, that the same factors that facilitate democratic and semi-democratic political competition may also thwart the development of stable, well-functioning democratic institutions. Weak states and parties - factors typically seen as sources of democratic failure - can also undermine efforts to crack down on political opposition and concentrate political control"--

• | Author: Lucan Way
• | Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• | Publication Date: Jan 29, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 274 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Political science
• | ISBN-10: 1421418126
• | ISBN-13: 9781421418124