ABSTRACT
The fact that democracy seems to have appeared in historical “waves”, not all of which have had lasting resonance,1 is compelling testimony that democratic regimes are neither natural nor sustainable through purely political means alone. Most political systems, in fact, at least up until relatively recently, have been more prone to centralise power and seek to rule over society rather than to foster a consistent process of political give-and-take. That democracy as a political system is considered normatively “better” than others does not necessarily result in its appearance and endurance around the globe. In its most basic form, in fact, politics has often been defined as a contest over power.2 In a significant number of countries, this contest over power is far more likely to be praetorian, brutal, and even violent rather than consensual and democratic. Even if such extremes as brutality and violence do not mark the state’s relationship with society, a majority of political systems continue to be marked less by democratic premises and more by state attempts to either manipulate or repress society’s political yearnings. This chapter focuses on the two predominant types of non-democratic states that continue to exist in a number of countries, namely, inclusionary populist and bureaucratic-authoritarian ones, and examines the different institutions through which they govern and the patterns of relations they tend to establish with their societies. Neither variety, the chapter will conclude, can indefinitely sustain itself in power-as democracies can-as their bases of power frequently tend to be brittle and their normative legitimacy fragile.
