Browsing by Subject "authoritarianism"

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Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-1999.
(Studies in Comparative International Development, 2001) Mainwaring, Scott; Brinks, Daniel M; Pérez-Liñán, Aníbal
This article is about how political regimes should generally be classified, and how Latin American regimes should be classified for the 1945-99 period. We make five general claims about regime classification. First, regime classification should rest on sound concepts and definitions. Second, it should be based on explicit and sensible coding and aggregation rules. Third, it necessarily involves some subjective judgments. Fourth, the debate about dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy creates a false dilemma. Neither democratic theory, nor coding requirements, nor the reality underlying democratic practice compel either a dichotomous or a continuous approach in all cases. Fifth, dichotomous measures of democracy fail to capture intermediate regime types, obscuring variation that is essential for studying political regimes. This general discussion provides the grounding for our trichotomous ordinal scale, which codes regimes as democratic, semi-democratic or authoritarian in nineteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 1999. Our trichotomous classification achieves greater differentiation than dichotomous classifications and yet avoids the need for massive information that a very fine-grained measure would require.
Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-2004
(Oxford University Press, 2007) Mainwaring, Scott; Brinks, Daniel M; Pérez-Liñán, Aníbal
Social Media and the Decline of Truth
(2019-12) Schweinfurth, Stewart
In media history, there exists a perpetual cycle in which humanity’s innovation of communication technology shapes world culture and political climate, eventually resulting in humanity’s delayed response to these changes. Using this framework, this paper addresses the recent innovations of the social media era and the spread of online communication in regards to their impact on behavioral conditioning, democracy, and generally how people process information. The discussion takes a nuanced stance between two popular ways of imagining social media’s effect on the world: arguing for both an oppressive, authoritarian reality, likened to Orwell’s 1984, and a senseless, over-stimulated one, likened to Huxley’s Brave New World. First, the paper addresses themes in human reasoning that have contributed to the success of social media as well as the ways social media exploits and reinforces certain aspects of human behavior. The discussion then turns to the politicization of social media and the ways society has used current media technology to shape political climates and additionally frame news, both internationally and domestically. Lastly, the paper addresses the deviance of social media platforms into problematic uses, including the empowerment of authoritarian regimes and the incitement of polarizing, extremist sentiments.