Here are 100 books that Authoritarianism Goes Global fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a former economics professor and a member of the Australian Parliament. I’ve written over ten books on policy, politics, and economics. As someone who enjoys fresh ideas, believes in kindness over hate, loves democracy, and thrives on international engagement, I’m deeply concerned about the rise of populism and the risk that it spills into authoritarianism. Only by understanding the causes and consequences of populism can we help address the threat and shape a fairer, more prosperous, and safer world.
While some dictators grab power through violent coups, a surprising number of authoritarian leaders initially won power through the ballot box. Levitsky and Ziblatt’s book tells the story of authoritarian populists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, who won elections and then eroded democratic norms and institutions.
In many cases, populist authoritarians subvert democracy not by overtly breaking the law but by gradually weakening institutional checks and balances. Populists exploit societal divisions and erode democratic norms by portraying themselves as the true voice of the people while demonizing opponents as illegitimate.
'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before.
Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are…
I am a political science professor who has always been interested in authoritarian regimes, how they function, and how they control their citizens. In particular, I find it fascinating why citizens may genuinely adore and respect the (sometimes outrageous) autocrats that lead them, even though they rule with an iron fist. Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism in democracies also caught my attention. Terms like “slow-moving coups” and “insurrections” are being used when referring to democracies now. In some ways, this is shocking to me—but it’s motivated me to better understand how this happened—and the ways in which autocracies and democracies seem to be mimicking each other.
Legal scholars have offered a lot of insights into how democracies fall apart, but one of the more interesting books from constitutional scholars is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Using a case study of the US to illustrate, this book demonstrates how important constitutional design is in preventing democratic backsliding, as the book explains how would-be autocrats can take advantage of constitutions to flex their own power. And though the US constitution has often been heralded as a model document for new democracies to follow, somewhat surprisingly, it’s not ideal for maintaining a democracy; it actually suffers from two sins of being overly rigid on the one hand, and too vague in shaping the parameters of executive power on the other. This book is both a guide and a cautionary tale.
Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self-rule. In the United States, the tenure of Donald Trump has seemed decisive turning point for many. What kind of president intimidates jurors, calls the news media the "enemy of the American people," and seeks foreign assistance investigating domestic political rivals? Whatever one thinks of President Trump, many think the Constitution will safeguard us from lasting damage. But is that assumption justified? How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to…
Well before I trained as a scholar, I was an activist motivated by opposition to the Vietnam War and support for civil rights and social justice. Those commitments continued throughout my academic career and have now morphed into a resolve to write about recent threats to liberal order, democracy, and justice. The election results of 2016 – the triumph of “leave” in the Brexit vote and of Donald Trump in the Presidential election, forced me to rethink the history of things I have come to cherish – liberal order, democracy, and social and racial justice – how support for them has ebbed, and why they now require vigorous and informed defense.
Cultural Backlash is aimed at sorting out the roots of the recent rise of what the authors call authoritarian populism, which is much the same thing as plutocratic populism.
They locate its origins in a backlash against the social consequences and policies that grew from socio-economic shifts that began in the 1960s and 1970s.
These include, obviously enough, the sexual revolution and changing gender norms, the civil rights movement and the increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural character of modern societies, and the turn toward values that Inglehart, decades ago, termed post-materialist.
The book is distinguished by the vast amount of quantitative data it presents and deploys to illustrate its central argument.
Authoritarian populist parties have advanced in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Even small parties can still shift the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP's role in catalyzing Brexit. Drawing on new evidence, this book advances a general theory why the silent revolution in values triggered a backlash fuelling support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the US and Europe. The conclusion highlights the dangers of this development and what could be done to mitigate the risks to liberal democracy.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I am a political science professor who has always been interested in authoritarian regimes, how they function, and how they control their citizens. In particular, I find it fascinating why citizens may genuinely adore and respect the (sometimes outrageous) autocrats that lead them, even though they rule with an iron fist. Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism in democracies also caught my attention. Terms like “slow-moving coups” and “insurrections” are being used when referring to democracies now. In some ways, this is shocking to me—but it’s motivated me to better understand how this happened—and the ways in which autocracies and democracies seem to be mimicking each other.
For anyone interested in political psychology, this book explores the leader-follower relationship and more specifically, helps you understand why citizens might support autocrats and autocratic regimes. As many may find Karen Stenner’s book, The Authoritarian Dynamic, too academic, Robert Altemeyer’s book, The Authoritariansexplains in clear and plain language (and written in the first person) what drives right-wing (and to a lesser extent left-wing) authoritarian aggression. This book explores all the details of how authoritarians think—the unquestioning loyalty to authority, the proclivity towards fundamentalism, and the suspicion of outsiders and change, particularly societal change. Altemeyer, who is known for improving upon Theodor Adorno’s F-scale of authoritarianism, also highlights the difficulty that authoritarians have in thinking critically and living with nuance and complexity. This book explains why family reunions might be so difficult.
The Authoritarians summarizes the research of Dr. Robert Altemeyer, whose professional career has focused on the study of the Authoritarian Personality, and development of the Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personality and ideological variable widely studied in political, social, and personality psychology.
The foreword is provided by John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel and New York Times best-selling author.
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in western Sonoma County, California, surrounded by forests, rivers, and the Pacific Ocean. Yet this idyllic setting was shaken by the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Vietnam War; civil rights riots; Nixon and Watergate; the Pentagon Papers; Weather Underground bombings; Patti Hearst with a machine gun; and four students killed at Kent State. These events led me to major in Politics at UC Santa Cruz and become an investigative journalist. I soon realized the U.S. is built not only on equal rights and freedom but also on systemic disparity, injustice, and violence.
Kendzior released Hiding in Plain Sight in 2020, just prior to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by Trump followers. The book quickly became a bestseller and an essential reference for anyone wanting to make sense of the increasingly authoritarian strain of American politics in general, and the Trump administration in particular.
In 2012, Kendzior earned her PhD by studying authoritarian regimes that grew out of the states of the former Soviet Union. She brought that knowledge home and, in 2016, applied it to predict Trump’s unlikely electoral victory. Hiding in Plain Sight tracks Trump’s ascent through the history of America’s consolidation of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands and through the corruption inevitably associated with such inequity.
The book explores Trump’s tutelage under his reactionary mentor Roy Cohn, his rise in popularity through reality TV, his failed business dealings, and his ability to tap…
The rise of Donald Trump may have shocked Americans, but it should not have surprised them. His anti-democratic movement is the culmination of a decades-long breakdown of U.S. institutions. The same blindness to U.S. decline - particularly the loss of economic stability for the majority of the population and opportunity-hoarding by the few - is reflected in an unwillingness to accept that authoritarianism can indeed thrive in the so-called "home of the free".
As Americans struggle to reconcile the gulf between a flagrant aspiring autocrat and the democratic precepts they had been told were sacred and immutable, the inherent fragility…
I am an intercultural educationalist, having many years of direct Prime Ministers, Culture Ministers, Ambassador of Nepal to the UK/Ireland/Malta, experts, and grassroots community organizations relationships with Nepal and Nepali diasporas (UK and Ireland) regarding research, reports, and major intercultural projects, as well as a published writer on Nepali culture and editor and lead content contributor for internationally respected online Nepal culture information resources (see Nepali Cultural Heritage and Foods of Nepal). An active member of the decolonization movement, I have provided live BBC TV News interviews on the UK Government–Gurkha dispute and led the enablement of a historically important Nepal–England football match.
I was privileged to read Dr O’Brien’s book at his personal invitation before its formal launch. This arose from a shared interest in past/historical through to current threats to the achievements of inclusive, prejudice-free values, freedom of thought and expression, and respecting liberal values in parliamentary democracies.
Through ground-breaking research and masterly thought-provoking analysis of findings, this book evaluates the threats posed by totalitarian and authoritarian non-inclusive ideologies, political forces, and their justifiers and apologists.
It also examines the crucial role of supportive, disingenuous yet effective propaganda—from today's "fake news" (Trumpian, Brexit, anti-Trans, etc.) to state forces manipulating populist sentiments—enabling brutal and ethically unacceptable phenomena such as colonialism/neo-colonialism, 20th-century Nazism, Stalinism, and current menaces.
Authoritarian nationalism is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere. Freedom is endangered in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, militant Islam threatens peace, stability, and liberty. The US has recently faced an existential crisis, with the rise of populism and the unprecedented polarization of Left and Right. Brexit has endangered the integrity of the EU, which has hitherto operated as a defender of peace and freedom. At the same time, threats have arisen in the West to the traditional value of free speech.
With the fall of the Soviet Union decades ago, liberal capitalism seemed to be consolidating on…
An avid reader from an early age, what has moved me most were the characters who faced adversity and fought to overcome it. In my 30s, I lost my way, followed a guru, and took almost a decade to realize I was in a cult. Psychotherapy helped me get out and led me to become a psychotherapist. The books I've recommended have encouraged and inspired me to heal and to grow, to build a good, strong, healthy life–even though I fell more than once and didn't know for sure if I could get back up. I hope these books will inspire you as they inspired me.
This is a follow-up to Snyder's book On Tyranny, which I read when a friend gave me the graphic novel version. That one was great, this one really blew me away. My 1-year-old mother and her family escaped from Ukraine in 1919 after a pogrom in their village killed 1600 other Jews.
In America, my grandparents, free from persecution, worked hard, and the country that took them in gave my mother and her brothers opportunities that, in turn, gave me and my children more and more opportunities. Snyder, a Yale historian, knows Eastern European history inside out. He's a close observer of how tyranny is brought down and how freedom is constructed. Freedom has never been more fragile in the U.S. and around the world as authoritarianism and autocracies rise. I wish Snyder's book could be taught to every child and every adult in America today.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A brilliant exploration of freedom—what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival—by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny
“A rigorous and visionary argument . . . Buy or borrow this book, read it, take it to heart.”—The Guardian
Timothy Snyder has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working…
I am a historian of modern Germany at Vanderbilt University and have followed this field for more than thirty years. After a bit of respite, interest in Imperial Germany is suddenly chic again, as 2021 Germany looks back on the past 150 years of its unification in 1871. These five books, all published since 2000, are major recent contributions to the history of Imperial Germany’s prewar period; they also raise questions about the extent to which this conflict-ridden era represents a distant if imperfect mirror for our own contentious times.
People learn democracy by practicing it. The Germans practiced and practiced, and eventually got better at it. This is the main argument of Margaret Lavinia Anderson’s stunning book. Scrutinizing hundreds of contested elections, Anderson shows how Germans gradually reformed their authoritarian structures without significant constitutional reform. She demonstrates that the grassroots struggle for more democracy brought voters out of their narrow communities and helped form a wider civic culture. Alas, however, practice did not make perfect, and Germany was not saved from its own aggressive militarism.
What happens when manhood suffrage, a radically egalitarian institution, gets introduced into a deeply hierarchical society? In her sweeping history of Imperial Germany's electoral culture, Anderson shows how the sudden opportunity to "practice" democracy in 1867 opened up a free space in the land of Kaisers, generals, and Junkers. Originally designed to make voters susceptible to manipulation by the authorities, the suffrage's unintended consequence was to enmesh its participants in ever more democratic procedures and practices. The result was the growth of an increasingly democratic culture in the decades before 1914. Explicit comparisons with Britain, France, and America give us…
I was born in Israel, but spent my formative years in Iran, a country rich in culture, superstition, and a history that is nothing short of an author’s dream. I also joined a large, colorful family, whose members possessed their own quirks and habits, which my future fictional characters inherited in one or another of my novels. Although the Iran I knew during the reign of the Shah was quite different than the Iran I had to flee at the onset of the Islamic revolution and the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini, her history remains ever timely, and never ceases to captivate me.
The grandson of an eminent ayatollah and the son of an Iranian diplomat, Hooman Majd offers perspective on Iran's complex and misunderstood culture through an insightful tour of Iranian culture, introducing fascinating characters from all walks of life, including zealous government officials, tough female cab drivers, and open-minded, reformist ayatollahs. It's an Iran that will surprise readers and challenge Western stereotypes.
Hooman Majd, acclaimed journalist and New York-residing grandson of an Ayatollah, has a unique perspective on his Iranian homeland. In this vivid, warm and humorous insider's account, he opens our eyes to an Iran that few people see, meeting opium-smoking clerics, women cab drivers and sartorially challenged presidential officials, among others.
Revealing a country where both t-shirt wearing teenagers and religious martyrs express pride in their Persian origins, that is deeply religious yet highly cosmopolitan, authoritarian yet reformist, this is the one book you should read to understand Iran and Iranians today.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
I fell in love with historical novels as a kid after I began reading books by French authors Alexandre Dumas, the father and the son. I was the kind of kid who read for days and even nights to finish a story. Books moved me, inspired me, and gave me the strength and wisdom that I have today. I cannot imagine a world without them.
A Mountain of Crumbs is a memoir by Elena Gorokhovoa, a Russian girl, who grew up under the Soviet Union. Even though a religious ideology imposed more restrictions on women in Iran, I found Gorokhova’s vivid descriptions of her life and struggles similar to mine. It reminded me that authoritarian regimes are all similar in nature: controlling and overbearing. They nurture a controlling culture too. People, unknowingly, become a mirror image of the regime, just like Gorokhova’s mother.
Elena Gorokhova’s A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a Soviet girl who discovers the truths adults are hiding from her and the lies her homeland lives by.
Elena’s country is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars, but a nation struggling to retain its power and its pride. Born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, Elena finds her passion in the complexity of the English language—but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s such a passion verges on the subversive. Elena is controlled by the state the same way she…