Suchergebnisse

David Roberts has published widely on Italian fascism and more recently a significant comparative study of totalitarianism in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. The short essay published here is a useful compression of the arguments presented in the longer work. Unfortunately, this piece represents all that is problematic and frustrating in totalitarian/political religion studies. Roberts gives us a useful review of the growth and evolution of totalitarianism and political religion from the inter-war period through the Cold War until we reach the sunny postmodern uplands of the cultural turn. A review of the arguments of Gentile, Griffin, Morgan, Kershaw, Eatwell, Payne, Burrin and Voegelin is helpful to the reader who is unfamiliar with a series of complex arguments, which straddle decades.

US contra funding and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

IN AUSTRALIA THE CASE FOR STATES' RIGHTS IS ARGUED IN EMOTIONAL AND MISLEADING TERMS: "SOVEREIGNTY" RESIDES WITH THE STATES; THE EXERCISE OF CENTRAL POWER IS "TOTALITARIAN". INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN STATES, IT IS SAID, ENSURE BALANCED DECENTRALISED DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT "CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE".

Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan follows a newly independent oil-rich former Soviet republic as it adopts a Western model of democratic government and then turns toward corrupt authoritarianism. Audrey L. Altstadt begins with the Nagorno-Karabagh War (1988–1994) which triggered Azerbaijani nationalism and set the stage for the development of a democratic movement. Initially successful, this government soon succumbed to a coup. Western oil companies arrived and money flowed in—a quantity Altstadt calls "almost unimaginable"—causing the regime to resort to repression to maintain its power. Despite Azerbaijan's long tradition of secularism, political Islam emerged as an attractive alternative for those frustrated with the stifled democratic opposition and the lack of critique of the West's continued political interference. Altstadt's work draws on instances of censorship in the Azerbaijani press, research by embedded experts and nongovernmental and international organizations, and interviews with diplomats and businesspeople. The book is an essential companion to her earlier works, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule and The Politics of Culture in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1920–1940.