“Actions are caused by desires and opportunities.” —Jon Elster1 Can social mechanisms sustain political order in autocratic- authoritarian regimes? Does the use of mechanisms tell us something significant about how these regimes govern? In many ways, these questions are more than rhetorical. Despite the indiscriminative repression against its opponents, citizens continue to find innovating mechanism […]

As of late there is a burgeoning discussion in the social sciences about how political mobilization and civil society affect the chances for a sustained democratic polity. One of the prevailing views in this literature asserts that the higher the rate of mobilization in civil society, the better the chances for a lasting democracy. In […]

As we approach the millennium, one question in the minds of most observers of Cuban politics is when and how will the transition to pluralism unravel in the island? At a practical level, this preoccupation is based on the fact that only a handful of Communist regimes survived the end of the Cold War. From […]

Rule by one has innumerable times been reproached for the contradiction which is supposed to lie in the purely quantitative disproportion between the one­ness of the ruler and the many-ness of the ruled. — Georg Simmel [ref]Georg Simmel, “Subordination Under an Individual,” in Kurt H. Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free […]

Note[ref]An abbreviated version of this paper was prepared as a Briefing Paper for Dr. Carl-Johan Groth, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Some sections were incorporated into Agenda item 112 (A/50/663) at the Fiftieth Session of the General Assembly, Fall 1995.[/ref][ref] would like to thank Carlos Seiglie and Phil Brenner for […]