Author’s note The performance of autocracies relative to democracies and to each other is of increasing interest to political scientists. In this article I attempt a contribution to that literature in a comparative study of three Hispanic dictatorships. They are those of Francisco Franco’s Spain, Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile which, though not […]
Fidel Castro’s Regime: An Evaluation
FIDEL CASTRO’S REGIME: AN EVALUATION Alfred G. Cuzán Many academics, journalists, and politicians contend that Fidel Castro’s regime improved the conditions of the Cuban people. Here I challenge that claim by comparing its performance to those of two other dictators, Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, regarding economic growth, literacy, life expectancy, democide and transition. Democide […]
Cuba’s Ranking in the Fitzgibbon Democracy Index: Reflecting a Leftist Bias?
Notes1 In “Fitzgibbon Survey of Latin American Democracy: An Update of the 2000 Tabulations,” Emporia State University Political Science Professor Phil Kelly asked whether “certain reformist and/or radical states, such as Cuba and Nicaragua, [are] given higher scale rankings because the majority of survey participants reflect a ‘liberal’ bias as was seen in the 1985 […]
Franco’s Spain and Castro’s Cuba: Parallels and Contrasts
Notes1 In this paper I explore what I take to be important similarities as well as significant differences between two dictatorial regimes separated by the Atlantic Ocean in space and a generation in time: Franco’s Spain and Castro’s Cuba. Located at opposite ends of the conventional left-right ideological spectrum, founded by men very different in […]
Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro: Loyalist vs. Revolutionary? A Preliminary Exploration
In Loyalists & Revolutionaries: Political Leaders Compared, Mostafa Rejai and Kay Phillips develop and test a two-stage model of leadership.1 According to Rejai and Phillips, individual psychology, acquired skills, and situational or environmental characteristics converge and interact in the making of leaders and, at the same time, channel them into either of two opposing paths […]