Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda

Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda
Author: Marie-Eve Desrosiers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2023-01-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1009224735

Challenging assumptions regarding the strength and control of authoritarian governments in Rwanda in the decades before the 1994 genocide, Marie-Eve Desrosiers uses original archival data and interviews to highlight the complex relations between authorities, opponents, and society. Through careful, detailed analysis Desrosiers offers a nuanced assessment of the functions and evolution of authoritarianism over time, demonstrating how the governments of Rwanda's first two post-independence Republics (1962–1990) sought and often struggled to cement their rule. Whilst the deeper, lived realities of authoritarianism are generally neglected by multi-cases comparisons at the heart of comparative authoritarian studies, this illuminating survey highlights the essential, yet subtle authoritarian strategies, patterns, and forms of decay that are too often overlooked when addressing authoritarian contexts.

Investing in Authoritarian Rule

Investing in Authoritarian Rule
Author: Anuradha Chakravarty
Publisher:
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2015
Genre: Authoritarianism
ISBN: 9781316030202

This book shows how Rwanda's mass courts for genocide crimes helped ensure political stability and authoritarian control for Rwandan elites.

The Violence of Law

The Violence of Law
Author: Jens Meierhenrich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 769
Release: 2024-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108675573

'Lawfare' describes the systematic use and abuse of legal procedure for political ends. This provocative book examines this insufficiently understood form of warfare in post-genocide Rwanda, where it contributed to the making of dictatorship. Jens Meierhenrich provides a redescription of Rwanda's daring experiment in transitional justice known as inkiko gacaca. By dissecting the temporally and structurally embedded mechanisms and processes by which change agents in post-genocide Rwanda manoeuvred to create modified legal arrangements of things past, Meierhenrich reveals an unexpected jurisprudence of violence. Combining nomothetic and ideographic reasoning, he shows that the deformation of the gacaca courts – and thus the rise of lawfare in post-genocide Rwanda – was not preordained but the outcome of a violently structured contingency. The Violence of Law tells a disturbing tale and will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and practitioners of international and comparative law, African studies and human rights.

Competitive Authoritarianism

Competitive Authoritarianism
Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-08-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139491482

Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.

Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Author: Timothy Longman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107678099

A critical exploration of the steps taken to promote peace, reconciliation and justice in post-genocide Rwanda.

Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes

Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes
Author: Thomas B. Pepinsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2009-08-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139480413

Why do some authoritarian regimes topple during financial crises, while others steer through financial crises relatively unscathed? In this book, Thomas B. Pepinsky uses the experiences of Indonesia and Malaysia and the analytical tools of open economy macroeconomics to answer this question. Focusing on the economic interests of authoritarian regimes' supporters, Pepinsky shows that differences in cross-border asset specificity produce dramatically different outcomes in regimes facing financial crises. When asset specificity divides supporters, as in Indonesia, they desire mutually incompatible adjustment policies, yielding incoherent adjustment policy followed by regime collapse. When coalitions are not divided by asset specificity, as in Malaysia, regimes adopt radical adjustment measures that enable them to survive financial crises. Combining rich qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia with cross-national time-series data and comparative case studies of Latin American autocracies, Pepinsky reveals the power of coalitions and capital mobility to explain how financial crises produce regime change.

How Autocrats Compete

How Autocrats Compete
Author: Yonatan L. Morse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108474764

Explains how autocrats compete in unfair elections in Africa and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of modern authoritarianism.

The Arab Spring Abroad

The Arab Spring Abroad
Author: Dana M. Moss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2022-04-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1009272152

Moss presents a new theoretical framework for explaining when anti-authoritarian diaspora movements emerge and become transnational agents of change.

Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb
Author: Michela Wrong
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1610398432

A powerful investigation into a grisly political murder and the authoritarian regime behind it: Do Not Disturb upends the narrative that Rwanda sold the world after one of the deadliest genocides of the twentieth century. We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister. Vividly sourcing her story with direct testimony from key participants, Wrong uses the story of the murder of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s assassination.

Becoming Rwandan

Becoming Rwandan
Author: S. Garnett Russell
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2019-10-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1978802889

In the aftermath of the genocide, the Rwandan government has attempted to use the education system in order to sustain peace and shape a new generation of Rwandans. Their hope is to create a generation focused on a unified and patriotic future rather than the ethnically divisive past. Yet, the government’s efforts to manipulate global models around citizenship, human rights, and reconciliation to serve its national goals have had mixed results, with new tensions emerging across social groups. Becoming Rwandan argues that although the Rwandan government utilizes global discourses in national policy documents, the way in which teachers and students engage with these global models distorts the intention of the government, resulting in unintended consequences and undermining a sustainable peace.