The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism (Oxford Studies in Democratization) - Tapa dura

"The literature on authoritarianism has witnessed a remarkable renaissance over the last ten to fifteen years and few scholars can claim a more fundamental impact than Andreas Schedler... Schedler's new book, The Politics of Uncertainty, presents a comprehensive framing of his theoretical insights and a wide-ranging empirical exploration of the electoral dynamics within autocracies... Schedler also calls on scholars of autocratic politics to focus more deeply on the role of citizen beliefs, to improve the available cross-national data on autocratic elections, and to investigate the many historical examples of manipulated elections prior to the 1970s. Such scholars would do well to embrace Schedler's theoretical insights on autocracy and to build on the many suggestive and intriguing empirical findings in this book." -- The Review of Politics

Dictatorship is not what it was once. Military and single-party regimes have been withering away. Today, most dictators organize multiparty elections. The Politics of Uncertainty presents an analytical framework and empirical data that allow us to understand the distinctive political dynamics of these new electoral authoritarian regimes. It argues that all autocracies suffer from institutional uncertainties: their hold on power is never secure. They also suffer from informational uncertainties: they can never know for sure how secure they are. The author identifies these uncertainties as the central axes of regimes conflicts under dictatorship. The Politics of Uncertainty comprises the struggle between rulers and dissidents over these twin uncertainties. In electoral autocracies, it unfolds primarily as competition over electoral uncertainty. The study of electoral authoritarianism is a vibrant growth industry in political science and this book is required reading for all students of elections, authoritarianism, and democratization.

Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.