Autocracies as “Organized Certainty”?

Summary

The Introduction outlines the main arguments of the book. While democracies can be aptly characterized as systems of “ruled open-endedness, or organized uncertainty” (Przeworski), autocratic rule attempts to do the opposite by trying to square the circle and organize certainty. Autocracies fear surprises and do everything they can to rule out chance. They want to control what the people think, and they want to repress dissent and co-opt potentially deviant elites. Yet, they face trade-offs and hard budget constraints. Against this backdrop, the two-logics theory is introduced. The theory argues that certain configurations of forms of legitimation, repression, and co-optation go together better than others, resulting in an ove-rpoliticizing or a de-politicization logic. While the former aims at mobilization, the latter aims at political apathy. The Introduction also familiarizes the reader with the empirical material that the book draws upon. It analyzes forty-five autocratic regime episodes in East Asia, ranging from 1945 to 2008.