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Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrative Material -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: Democracy, Non-democracy, and the Varieties of Political Competition -- The Importance of Electoral Competition -- Political Regimes and State Capacity -- The Dimensions of Non-Democratic Politics -- Social Control and Personal Power in Non-Democratic Regimes -- Authoritarian Institutions -- Problems and Outcomes of Non-Democratic Rule -- Regime Change, Revolution, and Democratization -- Conclusion -- 2 The Changing Face of Non-Democratic Rule -- Will the Real Democracies Please Stand Up? -- Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Legitimation of Political Authority -- A Very Short History of Republican Institutions -- Waves of Democracy and Non-Democracy -- Conclusion -- 3 The Struggle over Social Control: Totalitarian and Authoritarian Rule -- Totalitarianism -- Authoritarianism -- Conclusion -- 4 Personal Rule -- Personal Rule vs. Institutionally Constrained Rule -- The Personalization of Power -- Power-Sharing and Leader Exit in Non-democracies -- Personal Power and the Structure of the Ruling Elite -- Personal Dictatorships and Patrimonial Regimes -- The Personnel Management Techniques of the Personal Ruler -- Conclusion -- 5 Parties -- The Diversity of Parties and Party Rule -- Parties as Devices for Elite Cohesion -- Varieties of Electoral Experience -- Conclusion -- 6 Armies -- The Coup -- The Fragility of Military Rule -- Conclusion -- 7 Dynastic Families -- The Decline of Monarchy -- Lynchpin vs. Dynastic Monarchies -- Dynastic Monarchies as Family Firms -- Conclusion -- 8 Problems of Non-Democratic Consolidation and Control -- The People's Lies -- The Regime's Lies -- Fear, Love, and Rituals of Power -- Conclusion -- 9 Benevolent Authoritarianism -- Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Economic Development -- Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Violence.

Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of legitimacy appears to have some explanatory value, this is only because explanations of social and political order that appeal to legitimacy in fact conceal widely different (and often inconsistent) accounts of the mechanisms involved in the production of obedience to authority and submission to norms. It is suggested in this article that explanatory social science would be better off abandoning the coarse concept of legitimacy for more precise accounts of the operation of these mechanisms in particular contexts.

Ever since Morrow's seminal contribution to the study of Plato's Laws, the Nocturnal Council described in book XII of the Laws has been generally agreed to be consistent with the rest of the work. In a recent piece in Political Studies, however, George Klosko revives the older argument against Morrow's interpretation, arguing that the Nocturnal Council really is inconsistent with the overall project of the Laws, and that the best explanation for this inconsistency is that Plato changed his mind in the course of writing the Laws but was unable fully to 'work out' the 'philosophical implications' of this change before he died. I argue in this article that Klosko's arguments do not succeed, and that Morrow's interpretation of the Nocturnal Council is still the best account of its role that we possess. But beyond the narrow point concerning the interpretation of the role of the Nocturnal Council in the Laws, I argue that Klosko misinterprets Plato's arguments for the rule of law. A proper interpretation of these arguments shows that Plato's defence of the rule of law never rules out the possibility of improving the law through the accumulation of new experience, and hence is nowhere incompatible with a commitment to institutions like the Nocturnal Council.