OisA-n Tansey – författare

Autocrats must overcome a range of challenges as they seek to gain and maintain political power, including the threat that comes from both rival elites and discontented publics. The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule examines the ways in which international forces can encourage and assist autocratic actors in overcoming these challenges. Often, autocratic incumbents are strengthened in power by events on the international stage and by the activesupport of international allies.The book offers a typology of different international forms of influence on authoritarianism, and examines the ways in which external forces shape autocratic rule at the domestic level. The typology distinguishes between three broad forms of international influence: passive influences, unintended consequences, and active forms of external autocratic sponsorship. The book focuses in particular on the latter category, and examines intentional autocratic sponsorship in the post-Cold War period.A central contribution of the book is to address the question of how international autocratic sponsorship can bolster authoritarian rule. It highlights the ways in which international sponsorship can contribute to authoritarian practices is three significant ways: by increasing the likelihood that authoritarian regimes will pursue ''authoritarian practices'' (such as coups, repression or election fraud), by contributing to the implementation of those practices, and finally by shieldingautocratic actors from international punishment after such practices are pursued. External sponsorship can thus lower the costs of authoritarian behaviour, and protect and shield authoritarian regimes from the negative consequences of their actions.Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, NuffieldCollege, University of Oxford.

What impact does UN peacekeeping have on the politics of authoritarianism in host countries? This book advances a theoretically innovative and empirically rich answer to this question: while the UN does not intentionally promote authoritarianism, it faces a number of constraints and dilemmas that give rise to what we call authoritarian enabling. Enabling can occur through two mechanisms, capacity building and the creation of a permissive environment, which enhance the ability of host governments to engage in authoritarian behavior and signal to them that doing so is low-cost. This book illustrates these two mechanisms with four in-depth case studies of UN peacekeeping operations: UNTAC in Cambodia, MONUC/MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MINUSTAH in Haiti, and UNMIL in Liberia. The analysis is based on primary interview data from over 200 interviews. The authors explore the sources of enabling, identifying the trade-offs and contradictions that give rise to these two mechanisms. They include respect for sovereignty, the importance of working relations with the host government, the tension between democracy and other mission goals, the pressure to demonstrate quick results, and divergences within missions and the broader international community. While enabling stops short of the outright promotion of authoritarianism, it explains why the UN's activities often appear to contradict its stated objectives and the outcomes it delivers fall short of its goals. In addition to its theoretical and empirical contributions, the book suggests how these dilemmas and challenges can be overcome.