Law, Violence, and Authoritarianism - POL00104M

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Module summary

This module studies the relationship between law, violence, and authoritarianism. In doing so, it problematises the distinction between authoritarian and democratic regimes, while helping students think critically about sources and drivers of political control and repression.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2023-24

Module aims

After completing this course, students should:

• Understand how authoritarian rule works in the day-to-day,

• Recognise the relationships between violence and law in various regime-types.

• Understand how the methods and theories of political science shape conceptions of authoritarianism in scholarly literature.

Module structure (indicative at this stage)

• Conceptualizing and typologizing authoritarian regimes and the authoritarian state

• Law and violence in the everyday

• Literature on life under authoritarianism: Methodological reflections

• Authoritarian state bureaucracy and bureaucrats

• Formal and informal coercive and surveillance apparatuses

• Legal devices such as state constitutions and courts

• Gender and symbolic power

Module learning outcomes

After completing this course, students should:

• Understand how authoritarian rule works in the day-to-day,

• Recognise the relationships between violence and law in various regime-types.

• Understand how the methods and theories of political science shape conceptions of authoritarianism in scholarly literature

Module content

Module structure (indicative at this stage)

• Conceptualizing and typologizing authoritarian regimes and the authoritarian state

• Law and violence in the everyday

• Literature on life under authoritarianism: Methodological reflections

• Authoritarian state bureaucracy and bureaucrats

• Formal and informal coercive and surveillance apparatuses

• Legal devices such as state constitutions and courts

• Gender and symbolic power

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Module feedback

Students will receive written timely feedback on their formative assessment. They will also have the opportunity to discuss their feedback during the module tutor’s feedback and guidance hours.

Indicative reading

Desrosiers, Marie-Eve. Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda: Elusive Control before the Genocide. African Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Ginsburg, Tom. "Authoritarian international law?." American Journal of International Law 114, no. 2 (2020): 221-260.

Green, Linda. “Fear as a Way of Life.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 2 (1994): 227–56.

Hassan, Mai. "The strategic shuffle: Ethnic geography, the internal security apparatus, and elections in Kenya." American Journal of Political Science 61, no. 2 (2017): 382-395.

North, Douglass C., John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast. "Violence and the rise of open-access orders." Journal of democracy 20, no. 1 (2009): 55-68.

Ong, Lynette H. Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Purdeková, Andrea. “‘Even If I Am Not Here, There Are so Many Eyes’: Surveillance and State Reach in Rwanda*.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 49, no. 3 (September 2011): 475–97.

Scheppele, Kim Lane. "Autocratic legalism." The University of Chicago Law Review 85, no. 2 (2018): 545-584.

Wedeen, Lisa. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.