Barbara Geddes

Last updated
Barbara Geddes
Born (1944-10-15) October 15, 1944 (age 79)
NationalityAmerican
Academic career
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles
Field Political science
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley

Barbara Geddes (born October 15, 1944) is an American political scientist. One of the main important theorists of authoritarianism and empirical catalogers of authoritarian regimes, [1] she is currently a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. [2] Her 2003 book Paradigms and Sand Castles is an influential research design book in comparative politics.

Contents

Research

Geddes studies various authoritarian regimes and classifies them in five typologies: Military Dictatorships, Single-party Dictatorships, Personalist Dictatorships, Monarchies, and Hybrid Dictatorships. [3] "Geddes' (1999) categorization of personalist, party, and military regimes and her use of this classification to examine theories regarding the survival of dictatorships and the likelihood of democratic transitions have been path breaking." [4] In a 2014 article, the classification had seven typologies: dominant party regimes, military regime, personalist regimes, monarchies, oligarchic regimes, indirect military regimes, or hybrids of the first three. [5] Thomas Pepinsky has described Geddes's work on authoritarianism as "path-breaking." [1]

She is also interested in collapse of and transition between regimes. Her earlier work, "investigated bureaucratic reform and corruption in Brazil, the politics of economic policy making in Latin America, and political bargaining over institutional choice." [6] Geddes has a regional focus on Latin America. [7]

Major works

Awards

In 2014, the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Geddes the Bingham Powell Graduate Mentoring Award. [8] "The Autocratic Regimes Data Set" that Geddes created with Joseph G. Wright and Erica Frantz, political scientists at Penn State University and Michigan State University, respectively, garnered the Lijphart/ Przeworski/ Verba Data Set Award in 2015, also awarded by the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictatorship</span> Form of government

A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian, and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies.

Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power is held by the ruler, known as an autocrat. It includes most forms of monarchy and dictatorship, while it is contrasted with democracy and feudalism. Various definitions of autocracy exist. They may restrict autocracy to cases where power is held by a single individual, or they may define autocracy in a way that includes a group of rulers who wield absolute power. The autocrat has total control over the exercise of civil liberties within the autocracy, choosing under what circumstances they may be exercised, if at all. Governments may also blend elements of autocracy and democracy, forming an anocracy. The concept of autocracy has been recognized in political philosophy since ancient times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">One-party state</span> State in which only one party has the right to form the government

A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system. All other parties are either outlawed or only enjoy limited and controlled participation in elections. Sometimes the term "de facto one-party state" is used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike the one-party state, allows democratic multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning power.

A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a strongman, or by a council of military officers known as a military junta. They are most often formed by military coups or by the empowerment of the military through a popular uprising in times of domestic unrest or instability. The military nominally seeks power to restore order or fight corruption, but the personal motivations of military officers will vary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Military junta</span> Government led by a committee of military leaders

A military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term junta means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808. The term is now used to refer to an authoritarian form of government characterized by oligarchic military dictatorship, as distinguished from other categories of authoritarian rule, specifically strongman ; machine ; and bossism.

In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratization</span> Society becoming more democratic

Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.

Arend d'Angremond Lijphart is a Dutch-American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics. He is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is influential for his work on consociational democracy and his contribution to the new Institutionalism in political science.

Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby reducing their standing among their fellow citizens. Repression tactics target the citizenry who are most likely to challenge the political ideology of the state in order for the government to remain in control. In autocracies, the use of political repression is to prevent anti-regime support and mobilization. It is often manifested through policies such as human rights violations, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration, and violent action or terror such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance, and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Direct repression tactics are those targeting specific actors who become aware of the harm done to them while covert tactics rely on the threat of citizenry being caught. The effectiveness of the tactics differ: covert repression tactics cause dissidents to use less detectable opposition tactics while direct repression allows citizenry to witness and react to the repression. Political repression can also be reinforced by means outside of written policy, such as by public and private media ownership and by self-censorship within the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparative politics</span> Field in political science

Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relating to political institutions, political behavior, conflict, and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as comparative government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political strongman</span> Authoritarian political leader

In politics, a strongman is a type of authoritarian political leader—civilian or military—who exerts control through military enforcement and has, or has claimed to have, strong popular support. Strongmen typically claim to have widespread popular support, portray themselves as the only one capable of solving the country's problems, and espouse a disdain for liberalism and democracy.

Juan José Linz Storch de Gracia was a German-born Spanish sociologist and political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was Sterling Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Yale University and an honorary member of the Scientific Council at the Juan March Institute. He is best known for his work on authoritarian political regimes and democratization.

Adam Przeworski is a Polish-American professor of political science specializing in comparative politics. He is Carroll and Milton Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics of New York University. He is a scholar of democratic societies, theory of democracy, social democracy and political economy, as well as an early proponent of rational choice theory in political science.

Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country. A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”, meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions. This is the case when no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.

David Collier is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is Chancellor's Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He works in the fields of comparative politics, Latin American politics, and methodology. His father was the anthropologist Donald Collier.

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of democracy and political plurality. It involves the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coup d'état</span> Deposition of a government

A coup d'état, or simply a coup, is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.

A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.

The Manifesto Project Database (MPD) is the full database of political manifestos as well as election performance compiled by the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) project (MARPOR), formerly known as the Manifesto Research Group/Comparative Manifestos Project (MRG/CMP). It is maintained on the website of the Social Science Research Center Berlin in Germany. It claims to be based on "quantitative content analyses of parties’ election programmes from more than 50 countries covering all free, democratic elections since 1945."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratic backsliding</span> National decline in democracy

Democratic backsliding is a process of regime change toward autocracy that makes the exercise of political power by the public more arbitrary and repressive. This process typically restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection. Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression. Democratic backsliding is the opposite of democratization.

References

  1. 1 2 Pepinsky, Thomas (2014). "The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism". British Journal of Political Science. 44 (3): 631–653. doi:10.1017/S0007123413000021. ISSN   0007-1234.
  2. "Barbara Geddes". University of California at Los Angeles.
  3. Ezrow, Natasha (2011). Dictators and dictatorships : understanding authoritarian regimes and their leaders. Frantz, Erica. New York: Continuum. ISBN   978-1-4411-1602-4. OCLC   705538250.
  4. Gandhi, Jennifer (2008). Political Institutions Under Dictatorship. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. xxi. ISBN   978-0-521-89795-2.
  5. Geddes, Barbara; Wright, Joseph; Frantz, Erica (2014). "Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set". Perspectives on Politics. 12 (2): 313–331. doi:10.1017/S1537592714000851. ISSN   1537-5927. S2CID   145784357.
  6. "UCLA Department of Political Science". polisci.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  7. "UCLA Department of Political Science". polisci.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  8. "American Political Science Association > MEMBERSHIP > Organized Sections > Organized Section 20: Powell Graduate Mentoring Award". www.apsanet.org. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  9. "American Political Science Association > MEMBERSHIP > Organized Sections > Organized Section 20: Lijphart/ Przeworski/ Verba Data Set Award". www.apsanet.org. Retrieved 2019-04-07.