Making a career in dictatorship : the secret logic behind repression and coups / Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf.
| Author/creator | Glässel, Christian author. |
| Other author | Scharpf, Adam, author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025] |
| Description | xiv, 240 pages : illustrations, charts ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Physical medium | illustrations. |
| Contents | The logic of career pressure -- Dissecting the authoritarian security apparatus -- Career pressure and excessive loyalty -- Career pressure and excessive disloyalty -- Extending the logic of career pressure -- The relationship between repression and coups -- Conclusion and outlook. |
| Abstract | "Who loyally carries out the dictator's dirty work? And which individuals actively conspire against the leader? This book explains such extreme behavior by examining the inner workings of the authoritarian security apparatus and the career pressures faced by individual officers. The unified theory accounts for participation in repression (extreme loyalty) and coups (extreme disloyalty) by focusing on organizational promotion systems and the pressures faced by those at the losing end. Officers disadvantaged in their professional advancement have strong incentives to prove their loyalty to the current leadership through repression or to commend themselves to a successor regime by waging a coup. Using individual-level career data on all 14,700 army officers in Argentina, the book systematically traces biographic differences between henchmen, coup plotters, and other members of the officer corps. It finds that officers stuck within the hierarchy and threatened with forced retirement were more likely than their peers to either force their way up in a coup or detour to repressive units in the hope of salvaging their careers. Three qualitative case studies substantiate how career pressure led to extreme (dis)loyalty in Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and Jawara's Gambia. Finally, a global analysis of authoritarian regimes (1945-2020) reveals fundamental interdependencies between repression and coups, shaped by officers' career pressures. Together, the book's findings have implications for understanding career trajectories in both nepotistic and meritocratic systems, the bottom-up dynamics of regime survival and collapse, and bureaucratic compliance and sabotage beyond the security apparatus"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version http://id.loc.gov/entities/relationships/onlineversion Glässel, Christian Making a career in dictatorship New York : Oxford University Press, 2026 9780197831205 |
| LCCN | 2025035084 |
| ISBN | 9780197831199 |
| ISBN | 0197831192 paperback |
| ISBN | 9780197831182 hardcover |
| ISBN | 0197831184 hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic publication |
| ISBN | electronic book |
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