ABSTRACT
Fundamentally, bureaucratic authoritarianism (BA) is a type of state which encompasses sharply contradictory tendencies. In reality, the surgery that the higher institutions of the BA state attempt to perform upon the nation inflicts heavy costs on many of those who supported the implantation of BA. In this chapter, the author presents other observations indispensable for understanding both the situation prior to the installation of BA and its subsequent impact once installed. The issue of democracy is not equivalent to the other—already mentioned—great issues which BA raises as a result of its policies and their impacts. The possibility of democracy may simply represent an invitation to opportunism for those who wish to use it just to enter into a predetermined game. This possibility may also invite the imbecility of rejecting democracy out of hand because it is initiated from above and because there is such a careful effort to impose limits upon it.
