Chapter 4 explores the nature of anti-Ben Ali politics from afar. It focusses on the field of homeland politics by investigating the modalities, frames and repertoires of action used by activists who fought the authoritarian regime. The chapter highlights the ambivalent logic underlying the use of human rights, which became the main frame of contention for the various actors. For pro-regime actors, the human rights frame was paradoxically a way of legitimising the regime abroad; for Islamists, the activation of a discourse on human rights appeared as a way of circumventing the distrust to which they were habitually subjected in France; and for leftists, human rights stood as a rallying point, because fighting the Ben Ali regime during this period meant embracing the Islamists as a matter of necessity, as they were main victims of repression. The chapter goes on to investigate two further lines of cleavage that are crucial to the full understanding of long-distance Tunisian opposition politics. These lines offer a framework that determined means of action in terms of relationships with the Islamists and the degree of rupture with the Tunisian authoritarian regime.

The introduction provides the contextual and theoretical foundations of the book. It introduces the main argument that the Kazakh Spring is not a movement but a field of political possibilities capable of changing the established political value system. The Kazakh Spring has different actors and ideas connected by the common sense of solidarity and the urge for democratization. The book argues that the Kazakh Spring frames democratization hrough the radical remaking of the rules of the game that define the political in Kazakhstan. This means a consistent demand for the change of formal institutions that the regime has monopolized to sustain its powers and durability, namely, the laws, elections, and bodies of the state such as parliament, local municipal bodies, and public offices, but also free and independent media.

In Constitutional Identity, Gary Jacobsohn highlights the tension both within constitutional systems and between constitutions and societal norms (culture). In this essay, we explore the first tension and glance at the second. One objective of the essay is to enumerate a set of “disharmonies” that appear with some frequency within constitutions and, employing historical data, identify the constitutional systems that contain them. Appealing to formal logic, we develop a taxonomy that helps us understand the kinds of disharmonies on display; a taxonomy that points to their sources. The essay thus generalizes Jacobsohn’s notion of disharmony and extends his insights from a small set of cases that begin with the letter “I” to a larger set.

This chapter argues that irony in language emerges as an exquisite form of social work, through the operations of opposition, expectation violation, and contrast. Among all the different and varied figurative forms, irony may be particularly well suited in helping us form a sense-of-self that aligns with other people’s expectations, connect with other people, and manage our positions in social networks and hierarchies. Verbal irony’s oppositionality can lead to an expression of a violation of expectations on a speaker’s part through various methods (e.g., echo, pretense, allusional pretense, salience, contrast). But irony does more by providing speakers with a way to express their attitudes about different situations (e.g., agreeing or disagreeing with some other person’s attitude). Hearing irony may also help people form attitudes about the ironic speakers (e.g., finding the use of sarcasm as funny, clever, boorish). Thinking of irony as social work highlights the utility of this figure in delicately dealing with a wide range of interpersonal circumstances in everyday life.

The paper examines the origins of the distinction between physis, “nature,” and nomos, “norm,” and the uses made of it during the period of the Sophists. The two terms did not originally lend themselves to being contrasted, but the contrast becomes natural in light of two mid-fifth-century developments: a growing interest in the different customs of different societies and a proliferation of accounts of the origins of human civilization. While the contrast is employed by others, such as Herodotus and the medical writers, it is the Sophists themselves, above all, who exploit it for sociological and philosophical purposes. Some, such as Protagoras, see nomos as building on physis – that is, on tendencies in human nature; others see an opposition between the two, and suggest that we would be better off ignoring nomos and attending to what our natures dictate. The contrast is also applied to religion, which some Sophists treat as nomos.

This chapter introduces a conception of rule that takes resistance rather than obedience as the constitutive element of rule. Based on an eclectic reading of different theories of rule, we argue that there is no rule without resistance. Even though rule might aim at suppressing resistance or might take such a subtle shape that it hardly encounters resistance, conceptually, rule is bound to resistance. Without a minimum of opposition, a recourse to rule would not be necessary. Even legitimate rule, which Weber calls authority, is legitimate only to a certain degree. As a consequence, not only obedience and the will to comply, but also dissent and the will to resist are part of rule. This chapter therefore sheds light on the relational dimension of rule, by analyzing the dynamic relationship between (forms of) rule and (forms of) resistance at the global level. To this end, we distinguish between two forms of resistance – opposition and dissidence – in order to show how resistance and rule implicate and influence each other. To demonstrate this relationship, we discuss four illustrative case studies on state and non-state forms of resistance and how they indicate and influence different forms of rule.

This chapter is dedicated to the role of the potential opposition in autocracies. It deals with the various forms of repressing dissent and how autocratic incumbents keep the opposition at bay. Like the previous and the subsequent chapters, it condenses in a first step our current knowledge about the topic, carving out the lessons learned for the conceptualization of the over-politicizing and de-politicizing logics. It introduces the broad distinction between soft and hard forms of repression. While the former violates civil liberties and political rights, the latter infringes upon the person’s integrity rights. It is argued that over-politicizing autocracies seek to justify even the usage of hard repression by inflating a friend-foe distinction and declaring an internal foe. In contrast, de-politicizing regimes avoid using this type of repression, as it risks breaking the silent autocratic contract between the passivated people and the regime that is supposed to materially deliver.

Zimbabwe’s 1995 general election was conducted in the context of a ferocious debate on the country’s controversial constitution and a disastrous economic structural adjustment programme (ESAP). Zanu PF had already won a parliamentary majority well before votes were cast. It had the advantage of having thirty presidentially appointed MPs and fifty-five of its sitting MPs stood unopposed. The national voters’ register remained in a complete shambles. A weak and divided political opposition seemed to be a permanent feature in the country. Zanu PF neither accepted nor tolerated political opponents, believing it had entitlement to be in power forever. Zanu PF participation in the anti-colonial liberation war was a major justification for supressing political opposition parties. Zanu PF’s mindset was, by hook or crook, de jure or de facto bent on achieving a one-party state. The hallmarks of the 1995 elections were the controversial constitution, weak opposition, Zanu PF’s manipulation, and bending and breaking of election rules, including its lack of political will to develop a viable voters’ roll. The economic structural adjustment programme had already ruined peoples’ livelihoods by the mid-1990s. The source of violence emanated from Zanu PF’s non-acceptance and intolerance of competitive election contests, including within its own leadership selection processes.

The Unity Accord sealed between Mugabe and Nkomo and their supporters in 1987 not only drastically reduced violence against the Ndebele, but it also ended dissident activity generating a totally different election framework in the 1990 elections. Twenty seats reserved for whites were abolished. In 1989, Edgar Tekere, a former Zanu PF party stalwart disenchanted by Mugabe’s leadership style formed the urban-based Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM). ZUM and independent candidates from within Zanu PF were not evidence of a gradual decline in elite cohesion. Zanu PF’s political stranglehold in the country directed violence at civil society. Pent-up intolerance of political opposition draped in a dictatorship outfit replaced ethnic conflict in driving violence. From the dominant power politics analysis, a social narrative approach shows the resilience of ethnicity, nationalism, loyalty, legitimacy and unity as explanatory factors for violence. However, Zanu PF also used paramilitary organisations to maintain or regain control and the abuse of legislative and judicial powers to stay in power. The 1990 general elections took place from 28 to 30 March, with many unresolved teething problems, including persistent division and weakness in the opposition. Five parties competed in the election; ZUM, the UANC, NDU, Zanu-Ndonga and Zanu PF.

This chapter investigates the political effects and means of royal heirs in constitutional systems. It asks how they contributed politically to the process of monarchical persistence in the Long Nineteenth Century and concentrates in particular on instances where they were opposed to the course championed by their predecessors and on the process of generating ‘soft power’ for their dynasties by committing themselves to visibility, mobility and ‘civic publicness’.

Chapter 1 answers the question of what citizens perceptions of the school closure policy are and how these attitudes vary by race. It reveals that African Americans and Latinx citizens – the majority of those affected by the policy – have highly negative attitudes toward public school closures. Whites express the most supportive attitudes toward closure, despite rare experiences with the policy. To explain these disparities, it highlights how African Americans and Latinx shared experiences with previous education policies and shared status as minorities contribute to the development of a shared target identity. Their identification as shared targets result in similar assessments of the closure policy, regardless of whether they are directly affected by it. Whites, in contrast, adopt a viewpoint akin to the purveyors of the policy. These findings have implications for understanding the challenges associated with working across racial lines, toward improved race relations and thus democratic progress.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this book, the erosion of democracy has become pervasive. Countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have seen the rise of executives with hegemonic aspirations. The threat of antisystemic populist outsiders has even spread to developed democracies in Europe and North America. In this chapter, I assess the theory outlined in the book in some of these cases. Doing so allows me to evaluate if, when, and how does the argument of this book work outside Colombia and Venezuela.

In this chapter, I develop a theory that focuses on the opposition’s strategic choices to fight the erosion of democracy. I define democratic erosion as a type of regime transition that happens over time, giving the opposition ample opportunity to respond, even after a leader willing to circumvent democracy has attained power. The strategies the opposition chooses and the goals it uses them for, I argue, are critical to understanding why some executives with hegemonic aspirations successfully erode democracy and others do not.

Up until the 1990s, Venezuela was one of the longest-running and most stable uninterrupted liberal democracies in Latin America. Today, it is an authoritarian regime. In nineteen years, Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, managed to destroy the system of checks and balances, end free and fair elections, and terminate political rights and civil liberties. The government has delayed and canceled elections, circumvented the authority of the elected legislature, imprisoned political opponents without trial, used lethal force against protesters, and banned opposition parties. How is it that Venezuela, historically one of the most robust democracies in the region, turned into the second most authoritarian country in Latin America?

In the previous chapter, I showed how the Venezuelan opposition’s strategic choices helped Hugo Chávez erode democracy. In this chapter, I develop the other part of my argument by highlighting the role of the Colombian opposition in preventing democratic erosion. Between 2002 and 2010, Alvaro Uribe tried to erode democracy in Colombia. Like Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) in Venezuela, he introduced several reforms that sought to reduce the checks on the executive and extend his time in office beyond a second term. He was polarizing, and willing to push as far as he could to increase the powers of the presidency and stay in office beyond a second term. His government harassed opposition members, journalists, and members of the courts and worked in tandem with illegal armed actors to systemically undermine those who criticized the president. Contrary to Chávez, however, Uribe was not able to turn Colombia’s democracy into a competitive authoritarian regime. Despite his attempts to undermine the independence of the courts and the fairness of elections, Colombia’s constitutional order remained fairly strong, and Uribe had to step down after his second term.

In the past two decades, several democracies have slipped into democratic recession. Faced with economic or security crises, democratically elected executives in Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa have used their popularity to push for legislation – particularly constitutional amendments – that, over time, destroys systems of checks and balances, hinders free and fair elections, and erodes political rights and civil liberties. Across the world, these heads of government have found ways to subvert democratic norms while simultaneously maintaining a democratic façade. Using and abusing elections and institutional reform, they are turning new and old democracies alike into competitive authoritarian regimes.