Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9781501787560 Academic Inspection Copy

Purges

How Dictators Fight to Survive
Description
Author
Biography
Google
Preview
Purges delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime. From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's removal of over a hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects. Drawing on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea as well as Turkey, Edward Goldring examines the logic behind purges and their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power, punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats. But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their tenure, purges actually weaken their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain-and sometimes lose-power.
Edward Goldring is Senior Lecturer in Political Science (Comparative Politics) at the University of Melbourne.
Google Preview content