POLS 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Authoritarianism
5 Oct 2013
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Pols241 week 5 reading notes part 1 ch. 7 in text (on the tasks of a democratic opposition) The task of the democratic opposition is to change the relations among all the component parts of the authoritarian system in such a way as to weaken authoritarianism while simultaneously improving the conditions for democratization. The passive opposition will grow much larger as people no longer need to constantly fear savage repression. Under the right conditions the passive and active opposition will coalesce and grow to the point where the idea of redemocratization wrests hegemony away from authoritarianism. Five key opposition functions: 1) resistance to integration. If the active opposition maintains some independent ideological, cultural and above all institutional existence it will remain able to carry out its other tasks. If the active opposition can remain independent its next task is to encourage the growth of the passive opposition: 2) guarding zones of autonomy against it.
