100 books like Authoritarianism Goes Global

If you are still wondering how democracies fall apart, How Democracies Die, is one of the more accessibly written accounts of how, where, and why democracy is in danger. The book explains why democracies are no longer ending with a coup, but rather with a steady and slow erosion of democratic institutions. Chock-full of examples, this book highlights what the institutional guardrails are in a democracy and how these safeguards are weakened by leaders and other elected representatives (like Donald Trump, Recip Erdoğan, and Viktor Orbán, etc.), who hold little regard for democratic norms and are willing to engage in a scorched earth style of politics just to maintain power. I like that this was written for a wide audience.

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.

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.  

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 Authoritarians explains 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.  

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.

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.

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. 

Juan Linz (1926-2013) was one of the most insightful political analysts of the past hundred years. He was especially noted for his studies of how democracies can degenerate into authoritarianism and on the characteristics and types of authoritarian and totalitarian rule. The greater part of this work first appeared in 1975 (in a multi-volume Handbook of Political Science), but with its publication as a separate book a quarter of a century later, Linz added almost fifty pages of valuable ‘Further Reflections’. Authoritarian systems embrace a wide variety of non-democratic polities, among them absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, ‘sultanistic’ regimes, and theocracies. Totalitarianism is a still more extreme case of concentration of power, ‘a regime form’, as Linz puts it, ‘for completely organizing political life and society’. It is underpinned by an all-encompassing ideology justifying total control today with the promise of utopia tomorrow (though tomorrow never comes). Linz’s erudite analysis is… show more.

Anyone who aspires to an understanding of Latin American democracy must read the work of Guillermo O’Donnell, who almost single-handedly set the terms of the key debates over a period of thirty to forty years; and the only possible reason for this not being my 1st pick is that it is a collection of essays, not a monograph. O’Donnell was a passionate scholar, and both his passionate engagement and meticulous scholarship are amply illustrated in the discussions here of the vicissitudes and possibilities of democracy in Latin America, his wide survey encompassing everything from democratic struggles against authoritarian regimes to the flaws arising in the new democracies from defective institutionalism and extreme social inequalities. Read and admire.

I like this book because it is based on a qualitative investigation into the politics of authoritarian states. It contends that political outcomes in dictatorships are mostly the result of relations between leaders and elites, and the internal structures that influence the dynamics of these relations. The book analyses the differences between several authoritarian regimes and their political ramifications. Process in personalist, military, one-party, monarchical, and semi-authoritarian regimes are examined. The book explains what dictatorship entails and how authoritarian politics function.