#daniel treisman

[iamadarshbadri]

Review of Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman's Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century

There once was a time when dictators were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Not so long ago, dictators controlled all aspects of their citizens’ lives, including who they spoke with, what they consumed, how they dressed, and who they revered. Above all, people feared these dictators. The twenty-first century, however, is a strange time for dictators. There is a new brand of spin…

[unwelcome-ozian]

THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND TREATMENT MODELS (listed alphabetically)

Practitioners who are unfamiliar with dissociative disorders or to working with DID may prefer to start with texts that are based on their core models or familiar ways of working. Survivors can also expect to come across and be offered a variety of theoretical approaches, summarised below, although none have the monopoly on healing. It is more important that professional help is trauma-informed and based on a collaborative and companionable approach to finding what is best for each individual’s journey.

Attachment-based Psychotherapy – focuses on relationships and bonds between people. It emphasises the developing child’s need to form a healthy emotional bond with at least one primary caregiver for positive social and emotional development.

Doing Psychotherapy: A Trauma and Attachment-Informed Approach, (2020) by Robin Shapiro

Nurturing Children: From Trauma to Growth Using Attachment Theory, Psychoanalysis and Neurobiology, (2019), by Graham Music (See description in Working With children & Adolescents)

Trauma and the Avoidant Client: Attachment-Based Strategies for Healing, (2010), & Trauma and the Struggle to Open Up, (2019) by Robert Muller

Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect, (2022), by Ruth Cohn

Cognitive & Behavioural – theories and therapies elaborate the interplay between mind, thought, behaviour and action, and demonstrate how they can provoke emotions and contribute towards the maintenance of problems or towards recovery.

Cognitive Behavioural Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Dissociation, (2013) edited by Fiona Kennedy, Helen Kennerley & David Pearson

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, (2014) by Marsha Linehan

Reinventing Your Life, (Schema Therapy-updated 2019) by Jeffrey Young & Janet Klosko

The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Recovering from Trauma and PTSD: Using Compassion-Focused Therapy to Overcome Flashbacks, Shame, Guilt, and Fear, (2013), by Deborah Lee & Sophie James

Trauma-Focused ACT: A Practitioner’s Guide to Working with Mind, Body, and Emotion Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, (2021), by Russ Harris

Creative Therapies – use arts-based models and interventions, including music, drama, movement, art or play, with support from a trained professional. Individuals of all ages may find them helpful because they address issues and support expression without the need to talk or focus on the physical self.

A Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working with Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma, (2017), by Karen Treisman

Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy, (2020), by Cathy Malchiodi

Integrative Therapy – affirms and blends different models of therapy with consideration given to what works and why.

Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders, (2009), by Paul Dell & John O’Neil (Eds)

Mindsight: Transform Your Brain with the New Science of Kindness, (2011) by Daniel Siegel

Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Towards an Embodied Self, (2008) by Ulrich Lanius, Sandra Paulsen & Frank Corrigan

Working with Voices and Dissociative Parts – A Trauma-informed approach, (2019) by Dolores Mosquera. (See description in Treatment Books)

Internal Family Systems Therapy – elaborates the relationships between parts of self or psyche and demonstrates how separation or division between parts can cause suffering.

Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual: Trauma-Informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse, (2017) by Frank Anderson, Richard Schwartz & Martha Sweezy

Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Edition, (2019) by Richard Schwarz & Martha Sweezy

Mindfulness – a meditative practice that reconnects individuals to the present moment; purposefully drawing attention and focus to moment-by-moment, internal and/or external awareness.

Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations: Trauma-Informed Practices to Facilitate Growth, (2017), by Christine Forner

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing, (2018), by David Treleaven & Willoughby Britton

Polyvagal Theory – explains the importance and value of interpersonal neurobiology in recovery from trauma, and the effect of trauma on the body and the brain. The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, (2011) by Stephen Porges The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, (2018) by Deb Dana

Psychoanalytic – theories and therapies that aim to treat mental disorders and distress by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious mind.

The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working with Trauma, (2016), by Elizabeth Howell & Sheldon Itzkowitz

Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves, (2010) edited by Valerie Sinason

Psychodynamic – based on the theories and principles of psychoanalysis, but with an increased emphasis on an individual’s relationship with their external world; seeks to understand conscious and unconscious processes that influence emotions, thoughts and behaviour patterns.

Easy Ego State Interventions: Strategies for Working with Parts, (2016) by Robin Shapiro

Somatic (Body-Oriented) Resources – recognise that trauma and its effects are stored within the body, and cause dysregulation and restriction to movement and/or emotion.

EMDR Eye Movement, Desensitisation & Reprocessing – a psychotherapeutic approach that uses visual, auditory or tactile stimuli bilaterally, (from side-to-side of the body), in a rhythmical pattern, to enable reprocessing of memory and its effects. Care needs to be exercised with RAMCOA survivors, since similar techniques have been used in some survivors’ abuse, and EMDR may prove triggering or breach the therapeutic relationship.

EMDR and Dissociation: The Progressive Approach, (2012) by Anabel Gonzalez & Dolores Mosquera

EMDR Toolbox: Theory and Treatment of Complex PTSD and Dissociation, 2nd Edn, (2018), by James Knipe

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy – an evolving “body-oriented talking therapy”, helps individuals stabilise, discharge and resolve physiological symptoms of trauma and adverse experiences.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment, (2015) by Pat Ogden & Janina Fisher

Trauma and the Body, (2006) by Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton & Clare Pain

Additionally: The Body Remembers Volume 2, (2017) by Babette Rothschild 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery, (2010) by Babette Rothschild

Somatic Experiencing – focuses on the body and perceived body sensations, to express and relieve mental and physical traumatic stress-related conditions.

In an Unspoken Voice, (2010) by Peter Levine

Waking the Tiger, (1997) by Peter Levine

[panicinthestudio]

Best Of: A Powerful Theory of Why the Far Right Is Thriving Across the Globe, March 31,2023

In last November's midterm elections, voters placed the Republican Party in charge of the House of Representatives. In 2024, it’s very possible that Republicans will take over the Senate as well and voters will elect Donald Trump — or someone like him — as president.  But the United States isn’t alone in this regard. Over the course of 2022, Italy elected a far-right prime minister from a party with Fascist roots; a party founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads won the second-highest number of seats in Sweden’s Parliament; Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party in Hungary won its fourth consecutive election by a landslide; Marine Le Pen won 41 percent of the vote in the final round of France’s presidential elections; and Jair Bolsonaro came dangerously close to winning re-election in Brazil. Why are these populist uprisings happening simultaneously, in countries with such diverse cultures, economies and political systems? Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she has taught for three decades. In that time, she’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. And in 2019 she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/... which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read. In this conversation, taped in November 2022, we discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the best predictor of support for populist parties is the generation people were born into, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, how demographic and cultural “tipping points” have produced conservative backlashes across the globe, the difference between “demand-side” and “supply-side” theories of populist uprising, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes, why delivering economic benefits might not be enough for mainstream leaders to stave off populist challenges and more.

Mentioned:

Sacred and Secular (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...) by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

“Exploring drivers of vote choice and policy positions among the American electorate (https://perryundem.com/wp-content/upl...

Book Recommendations:

Popular Dictatorships (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...) by Aleksandar Matovski

Spin Dictators (https://press.princeton.edu/books/har...) by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

The Origins of Totalitarianism (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-orig...) by Hannah Arendt

The Ezra Klein Show, New York Times Podcasts

[nyuszimotor]

Aktuális olvasmány

[jose96853]

TRUMP’S ‘VIOLENT RHETORIC’ REQUIRES ‘CLOSE MONITORING,’ SAY POLITICAL SCIENTISTS

Two political scientists from UCLA, Nikita Savin and Daniel Treisman, have raised concerns about the increasing use of violent and inflammatory rhetoric by former President Donald Trump. According to their research, Trump’s political messaging has grown more aggressive over the years, particularly since he first entered the national political scene. The scholars argue that such rhetoric, when…

[mariacallous]

In April 2022, economist Sergei Guriev and political scientist Daniel Treisman published a book titled Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century focused on modern autocracies and what they call “spin dictatorships,” which base their authority on manipulation and propaganda. The book was submitted for publication prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Guriev and Treisman long categorized Vladimir Putin as a “spin dictator,” they warn in this book that the Russian president has grown increasingly reliant on force, morphing into a “fear dictator.” Meduza special correspondent Margarita Liutova spoke to Professor Treisman to learn more about how Putin’s regime has changed in recent years — and what the future might have in store for Russia.

‘Fear dictatorship’

Over the course of his years in office, Vladimir Putin’s style of authoritarianism has changed dramatically, Daniel Treisman tells Meduza. During the first two terms of Putin’s presidency and especially during Dmitry Medvedev’s turn in office, there was a focus on maintaining the image of “modernity, sophistication and international respectability.” This is in stark contrast with the political reality of Russia today, as the Kremlin attempts to scare all potential opponents and pursue anyone even hinting at anti-war sentiment.

“I think it’s only reasonable to classify this now as a fear dictatorship, although there are still some elements of attempted manipulation [as is done in a spin dictatorship],” says Treisman.

A “fear dictatorship” and a “spin dictatorship” are not mutually exclusive, however. While Putin won’t be able to return to just a “spin dictatorship,” he will continue to employ tactics characteristic of both.

People want to believe they live in a democracy

If Putin is committed to a “fear dictatorship,” then why has he announced that the 2024 Russian presidential election will comply “with all democratic standards”? This way, the president can appeal to a large audience, explains Treisman, catering to those in the country who still hold democratic values but who are currently willing to accept the militaristic regime. Judging by the available surveys, a majority of people in Russia still believe the country’s leader should run for office in fair elections, and Putin wants to at least formally conform to these ideals.

People still want to believe that they live in a democratic country, argues Treisman:

It’s difficult to recognize that terrible things are happening. So I think there’s a great innate psychological tendency to cling to illusions if they are more comfortable. And I think the regime exploits that. So to a great extent, its propaganda works when there’s a willing recipient who will do their part to make sure that the reassuring message lands successfully.

Transformation from spin to fear dictatorship

When Putin first entered office in 2000, he appeared genuinely inclined to cooperate with the West and seemed to accept democratic constraints — all the while centralizing power. Many underestimated the depths to which Putin was willing to descend, says Treisman, explaining that it’s easy for a “spin dictatorship” to morph into a “fear dictatorship.” This usually happens when a leader begins to doubt whether the manipulation tactics characteristic of a “spin dictatorship” are still effective. “I think Putin came to believe that the sophisticated techniques that he had been using in the early part of his tenure, I think he lost faith that those were still effective,” Treisman explains. Instead of relying on political advisers and liberal economists, he shifted focus to the intelligence community. After all, they know exactly how to intimidate and exert control.

When it comes to his decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Treisman believes Putin convinced himself that Russia, “with its great power ambitions,” was challenged by the international community. His frustration about Russia’s role in the world, as well as his own position, were key in his decision to invade. “Putin shut out of his echo chamber any of the people who might [have] persuaded him to do something different,” says Treisman. Now, all those who are left around Putin share his preferred version of reality.

Nationalism among Russian society

Russian society seemed to be rapidly modernizing and opening up to liberal values, but it now looks increasingly imperialistic and chauvinistic. It’s not that Russian society has suddenly changed, explains Treisman. Rather, many underestimated that this “blatantly aggressive and extreme action would nevertheless evoke this extreme, very strong, patriotic loyalist reaction.”

There have been contradictory trends in Russian public opinion, however. For example, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, there was incredible euphoria for a period of four years that eventually faded away. Levada Center’s polls show that after the annexation, negative attitudes toward the U.S. increased. By 2021, this number dropped to pre-2014 levels, before increasing again after the start of the full-scale invasion.

It’s hard to say for sure how long this “nationalistic boom” will last, says Treisman:

We don’t really know how deep [the nationalistic sentiment] runs because, of course, in this environment of intimidation, there’s a lot of conformism. There’s a lot of superficial loyalty and there’s a lot of confusion, […] and conflict in the Russian psyche — on the one hand, the urge to be loyal, to stand by one’s own people, and on the other hand, alarm and a sense of perhaps even horror at where Russia seems to be going.

The Russian opposition’s role

While there have been internal conflicts within the Russian opposition, dissatisfaction with the Putin regime has spread far beyond just Moscow and St. Petersburg since 2017. Demonstrations in support of Navalny, for example, have taken place all across Russia. But the Russian opposition is up against an “incredibly well-resourced, experienced, and organized oppressive machine,” says Treisman. At the end of the day, the opposition wasn’t ready to overthrow the “FSB state.”

“I don’t think anybody was predicting that we were going to see a revolution in Russia in which the supporters of Navalny and other anti-Putin groups would rise up and take the Kremlin anytime soon,” recalls Treisman. There was progress in Russian society’s willingness to go out and protest, though this was largely sidelined by the full-scale invasion.

Putin’s struggle to keep his grip on power

Putin has grown more dependent on the secret service and the military, though it’s become increasingly difficult for him to keep them under his control — best exemplified by Prigozhin’s mutiny. The Russian president received numerous warnings that the Wagner Group founder would become a problem. With the rebellion, it became clear that Putin was unable to defend himself. Now, Putin is undertaking the task of figuring out who in the security services are actually loyal to him.

It’s unlikely there will be a coup in Russia, says Treisman. What’s more likely is a “gradual erosion of power of the Kremlin.” With the Wagner rebellion, “it was a huge failure to react and failure to preempt and it may be getting just too much for one person in the Kremlin to deal with all the issues related to fighting the war, as well as worrying about loyalty in the different branches of the security state, at the same time as tracking and managing domestic public opinion and all the issues and problems that arise throughout the 11 timezones.” He adds, “we may be seeing the beginning of that kind of a gradual meltdown.”

A future in which Putin steps aside, either reducing or transferring his powers, is also possible. This would likely be the case if he began to allow others to make important decisions. If Putin decides he can no longer effectively manage the situations at hand, he may decide that stepping aside is the safer option, though Treisman notes that this remains unlikely.

‘Adversarial engagement’ with the West

When dealing with “spin dictatorships,” the best way to engage is through “adversarial engagement,” as Treisman calls it. The U.S. and the E.U. must work actively to address dictatorships’ exploitation of Western corruption and economic ties, including closing off all channels for corrupt money and finding ways to limit the influence of dictators on Western societies. This means dealing with lobbyists who work in the interest of dictatorships, making it harder for dictators to hide their money in the West, and closely following how foreign states attempt to influence domestic politics:

It remains necessary to put as much pressure on Russia in all ways possible, short of direct NATO military involvement, to make sure that Ukraine can defend itself and that Putin doesn’t come out of this perceived as a winner, but strengthened domestically.

In the future, if Putin’s successor becomes less dangerous for the outside world, then the West should be ready to reintegrate Russia, argues Treisman, by providing it with more modern, less aggressive, and more open opportunities to prosper and develop as part of the global economy and the international community. Currently, however, the most important task for the West is to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia and to be ready to support the country’s political and economic development as soon as such an opportunity arises.

A “fear dictatorship” won’t necessarily last forever, Treisman tells Meduza. “Repression can be very effective in the short run, but it leaves you with […] problems, with economic challenges […] and the internal difficulties, domestic policy dead ends, that one started with.”

[princetonuniversitypress]

Learn more about how a new breed of #dictators holds #power by manipulating information and faking #democracy . Read this excerpt from Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev./

[newyorkprelawland-blog]

The Legality Of Indicting A Former President

By Ashley Carrasquillo, Mercy College Class of 2025

April 9, 2023

On Thursday, March 30, 2023, news of former President Donald Trump’s indictment was released.

A New York grand jury had voted to indict Trump after he allegedly paid money to cover up an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The charges against Trump are unknown at this time.

Trump would need to be arraigned in person and his indictment would be unsealed on that day. During his arraignment Trump would have to come in for photographs, paperwork, and to have his fingerprints done and enter a plea. All of which is a grueling process.

It has been continuously stated that the justice system should treat a former president as they would any other defendant. Indicating that Trump will most likely go through the similar steps of an arraignment.

The arraignment process will happen behind the scenes instead of going before a judge to hear the charges and enter a plea.

Two of Trump’s lawyers have stated that he will not be handcuffed and plans to enter a not guilty plea.

There are many legal questions that are being raised due to Trump’s presidential status. However, he is entitled to the same due process as citizens. There are plenty of procedural and constitutional protections that are in place to ensure it is fair.

As the indictment progresses, there are 34 felonies against Trump for falsifying business records that falsify campaign finance law.

Through this, Manhattan prosecutors have alleged that Trump concealed payments and labeled them as legal expenses. By this prosecutors believe that Trump violated a New York law, specifically a corporate record keeping law and campaign finance laws.

The Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, had released a 14-page statement of facts that had the case described in greater detail.

Following the arraignment, it was wondered how Bragg would bring the charges as felonies as the main case was a misdemeanor although could become a felony if the falsified records for a separate crime.

Included in the charges is a strange tax claim. In the statement of facts from Bragg there is a claim that Trump and his associates took part in deception to New York by paying more taxes than owed.

Another charge had to do with business records. A New York law requires that the falsification of records and each count claims that Trump falsified records that were maintained by the Trump Organization. The main question going into this is if the documents that were passed to or handed by the Trump Organization are viewed as classified by business records even if it was through Trump’s personal accounts.

In a statement from Bragg he mentioned that each of the checks was processed by the Trump Organization. Two of the checks were approved by a Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who had pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges in 2021 not relating to this.

Trump’s next scheduled court appearance is months away as the judicial system plays its course. The indictment is being closely followed through this historic event.

______________________________________________________________

Millhiser, Ian. “The Dubious Legal Theory at the Heart of the Trump Indictment, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 4 Apr. 2023, https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/4/4/23648390/trump-indictment-supreme-court-stormy-daniels-manhattan-alvin-bragg.

“The New Revelations - and Key Questions - in the Trump Indictment.” POLITICO, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/04/trump-indictment-takeaways-analysis-00089988.

Treisman, Rachel. “What Happens after Trump's Indictment? Here Are Some of the Logistical Considerations.” NPR, NPR, 31 Mar. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/03/31/1167447880/trump-indictment-next-steps.

[arcticdementor]

Sergei M. Guriev and Daniel Treisman write,

Rather than terrorizing or indoctrinating the population, rulers survive by leading citizens to believe—rationally but incorrectly—that they are competent and benevolent. Having won popularity, dictators score points both at home and abroad by mimicking democracy. Violent repression, rather than being helpful, is counterproductive: it undercuts the image of able governance that leaders seek to cultivate.

They are offering a theory of dictatorship in which the dictator obtains power through nonviolent persuasion. In political science, I believe that this is known as “legitimacy.” In this case, their thesis is that dictators achieve their legitimacy through the control of information.

But the relationship between legitimacy and control over information also might be important in a democracy. That is what Curtis Yarvin argues in a recent essay.

[reading-writing-revolution]

"According to Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political scientist, that's not necessarily the case. For a recent paper, he analyzed 218 episodes of democratization between 1800 and 2015 and found they were, with some exceptions (such as Danish King Frederick VII's voluntary acceptance of a constitution in 1848), the result of authoritarian rulers' mistakes in seeking to hold on to power. The list of these errors is both a useful handbook for authoritarians and a useful reminder that even the most capable of them are fallible, with disastrous consequences for their regimes."

[justforbooks]

E. L. Doctorow died in 2015 in Manhattan. He was eighty-four. Widely celebrated for his often formally adventurous historical novels—“The Book of Daniel,” “Ragtime,” “Billy Bathgate,” and “The March,” among others—he received, over the course of his career, nearly every major award available to an American writer of fiction, some of them more than once.

He also, during the last twenty years, published many pieces in The New Yorker. “New York is home for my imagination—which is convenient, since I live here,” Doctorow said, in 1994, in a Talk of the Town story. He had just written “The Waterworks,” a novel set in New York City, in 1871. “When you write about the past,” he said, “you are always reflecting your own age.”

In 1995, Doctorow was one of five writers in the magazine who reflected on “Huckleberry Finn,” a book in which, in Doctorow’s words, “Civilization is a vicious confidence game played on a field of provincial ignorance.” Three years later, Doctorow wrote a Comment for the magazine about Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, an inquiry that brought to mind, for Doctorow, both Joseph McCarthy and the Salem witch trials.

In between those two pieces, he published “Heist,” the first of his short stories to appear in The New Yorker. It was followed by seven others: “A House on the Plains,” “Baby Wilson,” “Jolene: A Life,” “Walter John Harmon,” “Wakefield,” “Edgemont Drive,” and “Assimilation.”

After each of those last two stories appeared, Doctorow exchanged e-mails with the magazine’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, about the inspirations for the stories and the decisions he made while writing and revising them. Asked about how he captured the many voices in “Assimilation,” he explained, “You just listen and write down what you hear.” In 2008, he was a guest on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, on which he read and discussed John O’Hara’s “Graven Image.”

When John Updike died, in 2009, Doctorow remembered a letter that his fellow writer—who had complaints about Doctorow’s earlier novels, but who wrote, in a review for this magazine, that “The March” “pretty much cures my Doctorow problem”—had sent him a couple of years before. Doctorow shared part of that letter on this Web site. Updike had just received a prestigious award, but when Doctorow congratulated him on it, Updike said that he thought mostly of the writers who “can do things I can’t.”

“The self-doubt of this prodigious talent moved the hell out of me,” Doctorow wrote. “On the other hand it’s a good indication of the engine that drives us all, isn’t it?”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[eqxrzbook]

Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century - Sergei Guriev

EPUB & PDF Ebook Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD

by Sergei Guriev.

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Ebook PDF Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD Hello Book lovers, If you want to download free Ebook, you are in the right place to download Ebook. Ebook Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD in English is available for free here, Click on the download LINK below to download Ebook Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century 2020 PDF Download in English by Sergei Guriev (Author).

 Description Book: 

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracyHitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orb?n control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such "spin dictators," describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated

[jrljohnsonsrussialist]

JRL NEWSWATCH: "What Could Bring Putin Down? Regime Collapse Is More Likely Than a Coup" - Foreign Affairs/ Daniel Treisman

JRL NEWSWATCH: “What Could Bring Putin Down? Regime Collapse Is More Likely Than a Coup” – Foreign Affairs/ Daniel Treisman

“Can … Putin lose the war in Ukraine and retain power? As Ukraine’s driving counteroffensive erodes Russia’s position on the battlefield, that question is getting increasing attention. Discussion has focused on the possibility of a coup, whether an armed insurrection by disgruntled Russian generals or a mutiny by Kremlin insiders. Although not impossible, neither of these is currently very…

[thierrylidolff]

LA DÉMOCRATIE DES "TURBULENCES"

LA DÉMOCRATIE DES “TURBULENCES”

La démocratie est-elle le système le mieux à même de traiter – en innovant – les défauts du capitalisme? Entretien avec Helen Milner et Daniel Treisman EXTRAIT : « Malgré la montée de l’extrême droite et l’accommodement des dictatures aux pressions internationales, les politologues Helen Milner et Daniel Treisman se montrent confiants dans l’avenir de la démocratie, seul modèle politique…

[erhanblc]

Liked on YouTube: Consequences of Decentralization — Daniel Treisman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN2eakqmsYg

[mariacallous]

There is a widespread sense that today’s autocracies differ from previous dictatorships in that rulers ruthlessly concentrate power but do not officially abolish institutions such as parliaments. Nor do they actually disavow democracy, for that matter. Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman’s Spin Dictators substantiates this intuition with data. Guriev and Treisman, social scientists who specialize in Russia, distinguish between “fear dictatorships,” a more traditional model relying on terror to enforce ideological conformity, and “spin dictatorships,” a newer kind that refrain from widespread repression but that ensure a change of power is nearly impossible.

Traditional autocracy has not vanished, and Guriev and Treisman concede that its most important example—China—has just “digitized the old fear-based model.” But a trend has emerged: Based on their empirical model, the authors find that fear dictatorships decreased from 60 percent of the total cohort of autocratic leaders in the 1970s to less than 10 percent in the period since 2000; meanwhile, the proportion of spin dictatorships increased from 13 to 53 percent.

Spin dictators focus on keeping people docile or distracted, often through sophisticated public relations, but they do not demand constant loyalty. Election victories with 99 percent of the vote provoke anger; spin dictators ensure the triumph is overwhelming but not obviously proof of fraud while still demoralizing the opposition. Guriev and Treisman write that the pioneer of this new form of authoritarianism was Singapore, where Lee Kuan Yew, who served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, kept up a facade of democracy through regular elections. Rather than arresting opposition figures for dissenting, he would have them sued for libel—bankrupting them—and then benefit from a law barring bankrupt citizens from seeking office.

If traditional autocrats relied on the illusion of consent, today’s autocrats wish to create consent to the construction of illusions—whether about the persistence of real democracy, the leader’s infinite competence, or making the country great again. Guriev and Treisman write that many of these leaders start from a position of genuine popularity—Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example—and then slowly transform institutions such that they cannot lose power if circumstances change. This new autocratic playbook is easily copied across borders, the authors argue, not least because there is no unifying ideology. (Lee Kuan Yew, for instance, called himself a pragmatist.)

Guriev and Treisman marshal a wealth of empirical evidence to back up their argument, with each chapter detailing different mechanisms for how 21st-century dictators preserve power without obviously looking like tyrants. The authors show that today’s authoritarians are less violent than their 20th-century predecessors, including a significantly decreased propensity to start wars. There is one exception. Guriev and Treisman observe that Putin initiated far more military disputes than any other spin dictator: 21 at the time of the book’s writing and now 22 with his invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s conduct during the war in Ukraine complicates other aspects of Guriev and Treisman’s account of the new authoritarianism. This spring, the Russian leader shuttered the last remaining—though already marginalized—independent news outlets in Russia and is working to make society conform to his ideological outlook. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan undertook a similar descent from simulated democracy toward outright repression in Turkey after the 2016 coup attempt against his government. It seems that when circumstances change and when the international context permits, today’s autocrats are ready to fall back on fear.

The Erdogan government’s current attempt to prevent the popular mayor of Istanbul from running in next year’s presidential election on a laughable legal pretext is closer to the Guriev-Treisman model, showing that repressive tactics can coexist with seemingly softer ones. And no matter the character of their regimes, today’s autocrats rely on an underrated factor for political survival: Whereas in the 20th century many borders were closed, discontents can now simply leave. It will presumably help Putin that hundreds of thousands of highly educated Russians left the country after the invasion.

That spin can give way to fear is not a decisive argument against Guriev and Treisman’s thesis. Drawing on a large range of cases, they capture something important about early 21st-century politics: Contrary to a view popular among liberal democrats since the fall of the Soviet Union, autocracies are not automatically self-undermining; autocrats can innovate and learn new governing techniques. Yet that some dictators revert to fear casts some doubt on the authors’ claim that a “modernization cocktail” of advances in the economy and especially in education will ultimately be a deadly mix for autocracy. Such leaders are clearly not invincible, but Spin Dictators makes us wonder if authoritarians will not just keep innovating in order to neutralize the apparent political consequences of modernization.

Gideon Rachman’s journalistic The Age of the Strongman nicely complements Guriev and Treisman’s social science-driven account. As the title suggests, Rachman, a columnist at the Financial Times, holds that the world has entered a new era. Putin provided the archetype for the strongman, and Xi Jinping’s elevation to head of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 confirmed the trend. Importantly, the model originated outside the West, and it is not confined to authoritarian regimes: Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are also instances of strongman politics, Rachman writes.

Placing a bumbling member of the British establishment and murderous Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the same category will raise eyebrows, but Rachman insists on a continuum. Present-day leaders’ strategies to undermine independent institutions, particularly the judiciary and free press, are all too similar, he argues. So is the accompanying rhetoric: Johnson whipping up suspicion of the “people who really run the country” is not that different from Erdogan’s attacks on the “deep state.” (Since the book’s publication, Johnson has announced his intent to step down as prime minister pending a party leadership election.)

Although Johnson may not look like a strongman, he was able to get away with so much precisely because the United Kingdom relies on what the historian Peter Hennessy calls the “good chap” model of governance, which cannot cope with gentlemen who look like good chaps but are in fact political rogues. Despite plenty of measures taken from the authoritarian playbook—such as fiddling with the U.K. Electoral Commission—for years Johnson received the benefit of the doubt from politicians, journalists, and citizens in part because of the charming persona he has crafted and in part because people can’t imagine that one of the world’s oldest democracies could drift toward autocracy.

It helps his account that Rachman has had access to many of the figures he describes, through formal interviews or even on social occasions: He describes a wedding some years ago at which Johnson, a fellow guest, cheerfully admitted that his anti-European Union newspaper columns shouldn’t be taken seriously. Of course, not all such information can be verified. Rachman writes that autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called his great ally, Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a “madman” after spending a day together in 2016—a remark that would confirm the widespread assessment of Kaczynski as a nationalist Catholic fanatic in contrast to the opportunistic Orban. Then again, that’s just something one of Orban’s friends told Rachman.

Rachman inserts some liberal self-criticism into his gallery of strongmen, highlighting the “West’s urge to find new liberal heroes.” Figures such as Erdogan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed were once feted as great reformers; Rachman points to how politicians willing to let audiences hear the right buzzwords about globalization, diversity, and good governance generate excited chatter. To his credit, the journalist owns up to his own gullibility on this front, citing his own Times columns for misjudgments of figures such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But is there a darker story—about Western elites shoring up their legitimacy with international converts while turning a blind eye to their abuses? Rachman does not quite say.

German playwright Bertolt Brecht famously wrote, “Unhappy the land that needs heroes.” But woe also to countries in which political analysis has been reduced to guesswork about the mind of a single person. Is there a pattern to explain their rise? Rachman goes through a familiar list, starting with the losers of globalization, but it’s doubtful how much one can generalize about this. Strongmen may look similar in different countries, but it does not follow that the causes of their success must be identical. In fact, Rachman’s own analyses of national contexts show that strongmen’s career paths are much more specific than glib pronouncements about a global wave of populism would suggest.

Rachman does identify one particularly pernicious strategy that strongmen have used in large multiethnic democracies such as the United States: the fear that the “real people”—a euphemism for the white majority—are being replaced by threatening “others.” And so the logic goes, only a strong leader can protect citizens from being “replaced.” Although today’s aspiring autocrats might not use most of the repertoire of 20th-century fear dictators, stoking panic can still work for them.

Great replacement theory—shorthand for the conspiracy theory that conjures up enemies of the nation who seek to substitute “others” for the “real people”—has become central to far-right rhetoric in many countries. That makes carefully framing any discussion of demographics all the more important. In his new book, titled The Great Experiment, the prominent political scientist Yascha Mounk echoes former U.S. President Barack Obama in labeling multiethnic democracy an “experiment,” phrasing that suggests someone is pulling the strings in the first place. In any case, Mounk is very worried that the experiment might go wrong. He suggests that humans are tribal by nature—or, as he puts it, “groupish.” Diverse countries might end up with anarchy, brutal domination by one group, or an uneasy modus vivendi, where power is divided among factions, the author argues.

Mounk offers three ways to counter these dangers: a rather vague set of policies; an attractive metaphor to imagine a diverse yet harmonious polity; and platitudinous appeals for optimism, in contrast to the “fashionable pessimism” that he argues pervades both the right and the left. Mounk situates himself elegantly between ethnonationalist strongmen and various leftist strawmen. The far-right thinks the great experiment will fail because minorities cannot fully integrate, he argues, while unnamed “academic and activist circles” on the left despair that democracies can’t end structural racism. Hence, amid this never-ending conflict, the progressives allegedly instruct people to “double down on their identities.”

This is the kind of false equivalence that gives centrism a bad name: Whipped-up hatred against ethnic and religious minorities is a real threat in some of the world’s largest democracies, while the supposedly pessimistic left remains in a marginal position in the United States and has little political support in the other countries that feature in Mounk’s volume. Instead of studied equidistance from supposed extremes, it would have helped if the author had elaborated on the image he suggests to replace the melting pot and salad bowl clichés: an open public park that allows people to encounter each other but also to do their own thing. It’s a good metaphor, but it remains unclear what the park would really mean for policy.

Mounk offers a laundry list of things he likes, from ranked-choice voting to strengthening the welfare state. But The Great Experiment does not address hard questions: Should religious minorities get exemptions from co-ed education? Would that undermine the civic patriotism that Mounk also advocates? Do institutions such as universities issuing statements on diversity constitute an illegitimate “doubling down on identity,” or can they be justified in the name of shared universal ideals?

Mounk’s book is short on real research and reporting; much space is instead given over to the self-conscious centrism that is in danger of legitimizing an anti-democratic right. Why would an author who describes himself as center-left call for “sensible precautions that curb voter fraud” when it has been shown there is no such thing? Or take Mounk’s argument that the European Union should return decision-making power, “especially in the social and cultural realm, to the national level”—never mind that the EU has no real competence in these areas. Under traditional political circumstances, conceding something to both sides might be reasonable, but when one side systematically promotes falsehoods, such a stance amounts to a failure of political judgment.

The one genuine insight that can be taken away from the book is that demography is not destiny. Here, Mounk’s otherwise mechanical “bothsidesism” has some justification: Plenty of Democrats believe the future is theirs because of minorities’ growing vote share, while Republicans double down on voter suppression based on the same predictions. Both underestimate that identities are fluid and that parties have plenty of leeway in deciding whose interests to appeal to. Mounk is right that both sides should get rid of what he calls the “most dangerous idea in American politics”—but in the end that’s slim pickings for an author who calls himself “one of the world’s leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy.”

The world may be approaching a new cold war, but unlike the leaders of the Soviet Union and China in the 20th century, today’s autocrats do not offer an ideology aimed at global appeal. In fact, they have no new political idea at all—to justify themselves, they often invoke democracy. What’s new is their ability to refine their governing techniques and to exploit the West’s tendency to put profit above political principles. Putin’s system crucially relied on legal loopholes and the cooperation of Western bankers, lawyers, and real estate agents with Russian oligarchs. Spin dictatorships have also benefited from the willingness of former Western leaders to certify them as real democracies.

However, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may lead to a moment of reckoning for the West and a reassessment of how to treat its adversaries. Guriev and Treisman’s indispensable book, and to some extent Rachman’s, can help the West understand just what it is dealing with.