One of “the most comprehensive, erudite, and timely” explorations of power dynamics and authoritarianism in religions, institutions, relationships and even personal struggles (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review) Authoritarian control, which once held societies together, is now at the core of personal, social, and planetary problems, and thus a key factor in social disintegration. Authoritarianism is embedded in the way people think—hiding in culture, values, daily life, and in the very morality people try to live by. In The Guru Papers, authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad unmask authoritarianism in areas such as relationships, cults, 12-step groups, religion, and contemporary morality. Chapters on addiction and love show the insidious nature of authoritarian values and ideologies in the most intimate corners of life, offering new frameworks for understanding why people get addicted and why intimacy is laden with conflict. By exposing the inner authoritarian that people use to control themselves and others, the authors show why people give up their power, and how others get and maintain it.

​This edited book investigates how life is affected by the increasingly authoritarian regime in Bangladesh.Earlier a flawed but real electoral democracy, over the last several years Bangladesh has been characterised as a ‘hybrid regime’ in The Economist’s Democracy Index. Today it is a country in which law still rules and leaders are still chosen – but only on paper. The uniqueness of this book is not in defining regime type or investigating trajectories. It is in its efforts to study how these changes affect everyday life. All chapters are based on intimate knowledge of a field, on first-hand experience, and on interviews and ethnography. This book will interest political scientists and scholars of Bangladesh, the Islamic world and beyond, with findings of broad relevance to hybrid regimes.

​This edited book investigates how life is affected by the increasingly authoritarian regime in Bangladesh.Earlier a flawed but real electoral democracy, over the last several years Bangladesh has been characterised as a ‘hybrid regime’ in The Economist’s Democracy Index. Today it is a country in which law still rules and leaders are still chosen – but only on paper. The uniqueness of this book is not in defining regime type or investigating trajectories. It is in its efforts to study how these changes affect everyday life. All chapters are based on intimate knowledge of a field, on first-hand experience, and on interviews and ethnography. This book will interest political scientists and scholars of Bangladesh, the Islamic world and beyond, with findings of broad relevance to hybrid regimes.

During the 1990s, international democracy promotion efforts led to the establishment of numerous regimes that cannot be easily classified as either authoritarian or democratic. They display characteristics of each, in short they are semi-authoritarian regimes. These regimes pose a considerable challenge to U.S. policymakers because the superficial stability of many semi-authoritarian regimes usually masks severe problems that need to be solved lest they lead to a future crisis. Additionally, these regimes call into question some of the ideas about democratic transitions that underpin the democracy promotion strategies of the United States and other Western countries. Despite their growing importance, semi-authoritarian regimes have not received systematic attention. Marina Ottaway examines five countries (Egypt, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Croatia, and Senegal) which highlight the distinctive features of semi-authoritarianism and the special challenge each poses to policymakers. She explains why the dominant approach to democracy promotion isn't effective in these countries and concludes by suggesting alternative policies. Marina Ottaway is senior associate and codirector of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment.

This book argues that - in terms of institutional design, the allocation of power and privilege, and the lived experiences of citizens - democracy often does not restart the political game after displacing authoritarianism. Democratic institutions are frequently designed by the outgoing authoritarian regime to shield incumbent elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy systematically documents and analyzes the constitutional tools that outgoing authoritarian elites use to accomplish these ends, such as electoral system design, legislative appointments, federalism, legal immunities, constitutional tribunal design, and supermajority thresholds for change. The study provides wide-ranging evidence for these claims using data that spans the globe and dates from 1800 to the present. Albertus and Menaldo also conduct detailed case studies of Chile and Sweden. In doing so, they explain why some democracies successfully overhaul their elite-biased constitutions for more egalitarian social contracts.

"The entire town is disguised," declared a French tourist of eighteenth-century Venice. And, indeed, maskers of all ranks—nobles, clergy, imposters, seducers, con men—could be found mixing at every level of Venetian society. Even a pious nun donned a mask and male attire for her liaison with the libertine Casanova. In Venice Incognito, James H. Johnson offers a spirited analysis of masking in this carnival-loving city. He draws on a wealth of material to explore the world view of maskers, both during and outside of carnival, and reconstructs their logic: covering the face in public was a uniquely Venetian response to one of the most rigid class hierarchies in European history. This vivid account goes beyond common views that masking was about forgetting the past and minding the muse of pleasure to offer fresh insight into the historical construction of identity.

The populist turn to street protest and the reasons behind its global resurgence are the twin themes of this timely analysis