Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want ed Brown et al (2024)
In this book, we choose to investigate authoritarianism from the inside out in order to make distinctions that better explain when and how authoritarian institutions can manage their own activity, develop and pursue their own political interests, and exhibit a distinctive agency that warrants independent
consideration. We look within the sprawling body of the authoritarian state to better appreciate how its institutions operate and, further, to draw attention to the possibility that authoritarian institutions might serve themselves just as much as their political masters or public clienteles.
The point of departure in our project is conceptual. This introductory chapter explains why a new theoretical approach to authoritarian politics is not just warranted but necessary. Our task here is to examine why existing conceptions of authoritarianism so commonly seem to obscure the analysis of state institutions as autonomous entities, even though those entities can sometimes—but certainly not always—carry tremendous weight in policymaking and enforcement across the heterogeneous swathe of today’s authoritarian countries.
We begin first by developing our account of how authoritarianism operates in broad strokes—and, specifically, by outlining our argument on the conditions that allow state institutions (the operating machinery of authoritarian politics) to achieve real autonomy when performing their roles.
Second, we work to establish conceptual clarity by detailing how this book defines “authoritarianism” and “institutions,” as well as by highlighting how the ways in which we fall in line with existing definitions (and why) are just as intellectually provocative as the ways in which we diverge.
Third, we show why conducting institutional analysis in authoritarian systems has become so tricky and why there is a strong impulse (which we wish to resist but not fully abandon) to place much of the analytical spotlight on autocrats—as opposed to the institutions themselves.
Finally, we explore how forging a new path forward will require renewing our efforts—and recovering some older efforts—to tease out the boundaries and distinctions among rulers, regimes, and states in authoritarian settings.
How Does Authoritarianism Work—for Those Who Work It?
Much of the current interest in authoritarian politics has inherited an intellectual genealogy taken from the quirks and interests of a scholarly community that grew very interested in democracy, democratization, and transitions in the late twentieth century. Scholars have since developed some very good tools to understand how long authoritarianism lasts and what happens when it breaks down. But these tools do not always lend themselves to good answers when our question shifts from explaining regime change and persistence to asking how authoritarian governance operates most of the time—the quotidian life of authoritarian rule that occupies the attention of most such regimes and the people they rule the vast majority of the time.
The End of Violence Gary Slutkin (2026)
I am a scientist by training, an internal medicine and infectious disease physician and then an epidemiologist. I have spent a large portion of my career working to contain epidemic outbreaks in many areas of the world, from tuberculosis in San Francisco to cholera in Somalia to AIDS in Africa and Asia, and I have seen many diseases up close in city ERs, rural clinics, and makeshift field hospitals. I’ve had the opportunity to lead teams to stop the spread of disease in
refugee camps, villages, and cities and even helped design some strategies
for global containment at the World Health Organization.
And what I began to see that summer of Yummy’s killing in Chicago and what I can tell you now with certainty is this: Violence is a contagious disease. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that violence infects a population via the same rules and processes as other infectious diseases: Exposure leads to infection, which progresses to disease, which leads to transmission and further exposure. Violence is often thought of as a social disorder or a moral problem. Some people believe it is inherent in human nature, that it has always been with us and always will be. I do not see it that way at all. It makes sense that in trying to better understand violence, we would focus on the morality of those engaging in it or the social context that might make someone more likely to do so. But these discussions obscure the scientific reality that violence is a disease state, one that infects our brains and bodies, impairs and alters their functions, and spreads on exposure from one person to another. Like other infections, those who come into contact with violence are at risk of contracting it. And in the absence of the right care, those who contract it are at risk of progressing to severe disease. Current versions of the International Classification of Diseases include violence, and there are over a hundred studies showing that violence is contagious like TB, influenza, smallpox, polio, cholera, and COVID. It can spread just as rapidly and be just as devastating—if not more—for individuals, families, and communities. Like many diseases, it strikes every person and community differently and exacerbates existing inequalities. And all too often, it completely overwhelms attempts to contain it.
Underground – my life with SDS and the Weathermen Mark Rudd (2009)Just as the sub-title says, a rather self-indulgent account of a US youngman’s memoirGlobal Justice – a plan for equality and prosperity within planetary boundaries World Inequality
Lab (2026)
The Global Justice Report describes desirable future scenarios combining two key goals: socioeconomic equality (including full equality between countries, full gender equality in labour hours and pay, sharp compression of within country income and wealth scales, combined with fair access to education, health and political voice), and planetary habitability (aligning global resource use within ecological boundaries, including a limitation of global temperature rise below 2°C).
To avoid climate catastrophes, we show that sufficiency is required: a structural transformation of the economy involving shorter working hours, a lower material footprint, a shift from material-intensive sectors toward relatively immaterial sectors such as education and health, and major changes in food systems and land use. Rapid decarbonization of energy systems is also necessary, as is the sharp compression of income and wealth inequality. This compression is both a social justice objective and a condition for financing necessary climate investment and human capital expenditure and for sustaining political support from bottom- and middle-income classes in both the North and the South.
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