Michael Steven Fish (born August 3, 1962) is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. [1] His research interests include democracy, [2] [3] authoritarianism, [4] postcommunist countries, [5] legislatures and constitutional systems, [6] economic reform, and religion and politics. [7]
Fish writes and comments extensively on international affairs and the rising challenges to democracy in the United States and around the world. He is a commentator in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, [8] and other major networks, and has published in The New York Times [9] , The Washington Post [10] , Los Angeles Times [11] , The American Interest [12] , The Daily Beast [13] , Slate, [14] and Foreign Policy [15] .
He studied international relations, economics and history at Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Fish received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford in 1993. In addition to UC Berkeley, Fish has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Senior Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Airlangga University in Indonesia and the European University at St. Petersburg in Russia.
Fish's most recent book, Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge (2024), [16] examines the causes of democracy’s current crisis in America and proposes a new approach to campaign messaging for Democrats. [17]
In Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (2011), [18] Fish tests a range of notions about Muslims and their political orientations. [19] He finds little support for many prevailing stereotypes, [20] including the view that Muslims are committed to fusing religious and political authority and are more prone to violence. [21] He also finds that homicide rates and class-based inequalities are generally lower in predominantly Muslim societies. [22]
Fish’s work also includes research on legislatures and their role in democratic governance. His coauthored book, The Handbook of National Legislatures (2009), [23] measures the powers of the national legislature in every country in the world. [24] He served as the Project Manager for the Legislatures section of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. In an article, “Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies” (2006) he argued that vesting substantial power in national legislatures is vital to sustaining democratic regimes. [25]
In Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (2005), [26] Fish investigated the demise of Russia’s democratic experiment in the 21st century. [27] [28] He argued that Russian democrats’ failure to build a strong civil society, along with flaws in their economic reform program, Russia’s hydrocarbons-based economy, and the country’s “superpresidential” constitution paved the way for the resurrection of autocracy under Vladimir Putin. [29]
Fish’s earlier work focused on Russia’s democratization after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (1995), [30] which was based on two years of fieldwork in Russia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, [31] Fish argued that Russia’s democratic breakthrough, while momentous and impressive, might prove short-lived given the lack of emergence of a realm of robust civil society organizations. [32] [33]
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. In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or enjoy limited and controlled participation in elections. The term "de facto one-party state" is sometimes used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike a one-party state, allows multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning power.
Regime change is the partly forcible or coercive replacement of one government regime with another. Regime change may replace all or part of the state's most critical leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy. Regime change may occur through domestic processes, such as revolution, coup, or reconstruction of government following state failure or civil war. It can also be imposed on a country by foreign actors through invasion, overt or covert interventions, or coercive diplomacy. Regime change may entail the construction of new institutions, the restoration of old institutions, and the promotion of new ideologies.
In political science, a political system means the form of political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state.
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.
In international relations, the liberal international order (LIO), also known as rules-based order (RBO), describes a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political liberalism, economic liberalism and liberal internationalism since the late 1940s. More specifically, it entails international cooperation through multilateral institutions and is constituted by human equality, open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy, and monetary cooperation. The order was established in the aftermath of World War II, led in large part by the United States.
Elliott Abrams is an American politician and lawyer, who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He was a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021 and as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran from 2020 to 2021.
Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization.
The term "illiberal democracy" describes a governing system that hides its "nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures". There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy, but it is important to have a term to recognize that some governments attempt to look like democracies while suppressing opposing views.
A self-coup, also called an autocoup or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.
Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American political scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. Shugart specializes in electoral systems, party systems, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an orchardist, and runs the Fruits and Votes blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. 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.
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.
Totalitarian architecture is a term utilized to refer to "the officially approved architecture of dictatorships, over-centralized governments, or political groups intolerant of opposition, especially that of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Communist China, etc. As an international style, it often drew on simplified Neoclassicism, and sculpture based on 19th century realism and Classicism for massive oversized State monuments." Such architecture was intended to support the leaders and the ideology of the regime.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit neoconservative think tank and a registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States. It has also been described as a pro-Israel, anti-Iran lobby group due to its focus on Iran and opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
An audience cost, in international relations theory, is the domestic political cost that leaders incur from their constituency if they escalate a foreign policy crisis and are then seen as backing down. It is considered to be one of the potential mechanisms for democratic peace theory. It is associated with rational choice scholarship in international relations.
Democratic backsliding is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest 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.
Constitutional hardball is the exploitation of procedures, laws and institutions by political actors for partisan gain in ways which violate pre-established norms and push the bounds of legality. Legal scholars and political scientists have characterized constitutional hardball as a threat to democracy, because it undermines shared understanding of democratic norms and undermines the expectation that the other side will comply with democratic norms. As a result, the use of constitutional hardball by one side of partisans encourages other partisans to respond in similar fashion.
Dov Waxman is an author, academic and commentator. He is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the director of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
Conservatism in Russia is a broad system of political beliefs in Russia that is characterized by support for Orthodox values, Russian imperialism, statism, economic interventionism, advocacy for the historical Russian sphere of influence, and a rejection of late modernist era Western culture.
Democratic backsliding in the United States has been identified as a trend at the state and national levels in various indices and analyses. Democratic backsliding is "a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power more arbitrary and repressive and that restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection".
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: |first=
has generic name (help){{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2025 (link){{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2025 (link){{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2025 (link)