Article: Gambia president may become king

On 8 November 2010, the news agency Associated Press released an article by Dakar/Senegal-based staff writer Artis Henderson titled "His majesty? Gambia president may become king".

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_GAMBIA_KING_OF_GAMBIA?SITE=OHALL2&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Excerpts: "Gambia's president [...] may soon have a new title in this tiny West African nation: His majesty. Tribal chieftains are touring the country to rally support for President Yahya Jammeh's coronation. 'The president has brought development to the country, and for that he deserves to be crowned King of The Gambia,' said Junkung Camara, chief of the western region of Foni Brefet. [...] Like many rulers in this part of Africa, Jammeh, 45, came to power in the wake of a coup. He was elected president two years later, and is currently serving his third elected term in the tiny country surrounded on three sides by Senegal. If he were crowned king, he could dispense with the formality of elections altogether. [...] Abdoulaye Saine, professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio who specializes in Gambian politics [...] says Jammeh's coronation would give him a new title but would not change anything politically. 'Jammeh is already king,' Saine said. 'He practically owns the country of Gambia. He controls the press, the opposition, the clergy, and the coffers of the state.' While sub-Saharan Africa has just one remaining absolute monarchy – in the southern African nation of Swaziland – other leaders have tried to similarly solidify their role."

Article: Mikhalkov Takes Jab at Medvedev

The Russian English-language daily newspaper "The Moscow Times" today published on its website a report titled "Mikhalkov Takes Jab at Medvedev" by staff writer Alexander Bratersky.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/mikhalkov-takes-jab-at-medvedev/421291.html

Excerpts: "Nikita Mikhalkov, the Oscar-winning film director and a monarchist with close ties to the ruling elite, set the political classes chattering Wednesday with the release of a nearly 10,000-word political manifesto [in Russian] promoting 'enlightened conservatism.' The document, written in a flowery language and titled 'Right and Truth,' attacks Western-styled democracy in an indirect dig at President Dmitry Medvedev, but stops short of outright condemning the capitalist reforms of the past two decades. 'Euphoria of liberal democracy has come to an end. Now it is time to do the job,' Mikhalkov said in the manifesto, copies of which were provided to 'state leaders,' Ekho Moskvy radio reported. The manifesto, which cites pre-revolutionary conservative thinkers such as Pyotr Struve and Konstantin Pobedonostsev to support its theses, describes the current state of affairs in the country as 'a mix of West-chasing liberal modernization, nepotism of local authorities and widespread corruption.' [...] The manifesto caused a flurry of reactions but left many politicians and analysts skeptical [...]. A self-proclaimed monarchist, Mikhalkov has made a number of political U-turns in the past. He voiced support for former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, a friend who staged a failed coup against Yeltsin in 1993, but then campaigned for Yeltsin's Our Home Is Russia party [...] just two years later."

I can't figure out whether the article appeared in print too.

Article: On Democracy and Kings

John C. Médaille is the author of an article titled "On Democracy and Kings", which appeared on 15 September 2010 as the first of a series of articles in the fortnightly traditionalist Roman Catholic US newspaper "The Remnant" (43 [15]: no page numbers given).

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2010-0915-medaille-monarchy.htm

Excerpts: "[I]t is clear to me, especially in this late date of our democracy, that it enthrones the will of determined and well-financed minorities, that it dissolves the customs and traditions of the people, and that it has no concern for the future. And a king may indeed be a tyrant, but such is the exception rather than the rule. [...] A king, no less than a president, must consider the forces and interests in his kingdom. But a king is free to judge the justice of the arguments; a president is free only to count the votes. And while the president might attempt to engage in persuasion, in the end he himself can only be persuaded by power, that is, by whoever controls the votes, which is very likely to be the one who controls the money. A king may also be persuaded by power and money, but he is always free to be persuaded by justice. And even when a king is a tyrant, he is an identifiable tyrant; much worse is when a people live in a tyranny they may not name, a system where the forms of democracy serve as cover for the reality of tyranny. And that, I believe, is our situation today. [...]

"Modern democracy has come to mean, in preference to all other possible forms, electoral democracy [...]. Since this democracy is something we are willing to both kill and die for, it assumes the status of a religion, albeit a secular one. Like all religions, electoral democracy has its central sacrament, its central liturgy, and its central dogma; its sacrament is the secret ballot, its liturgy is the election campaign, and its dogma is that the election will represent the will of the people. But is this dogma true in any sense? [...] One might respond that it is the will of the people who cared enough to vote. However, that ignores the fact that there are people (like myself) who care enough not to vote; people who find no party acceptable, or worse, find that both parties are really the same party with cosmetic differences for the entertainment and manipulation of the public. [...] Further, we can ask if a bare majority is actually a sufficient margin for any really important decision, one that commits everyone to endorse serious and abiding actions. For example, should 51% be allowed to drag the rest into war? [...]

"[D]emocracies tend to erode traditions by pandering to current desires. [...] In abandoning the past, democracy also abandons the future. We pile the children with debts they cannot pay, wars they cannot win, obligations they cannot meet [...]. In truth, elections are markets with very high entry costs. [...] Indeed, in the 2008 elections, campaign costs were a staggering $5.3 billion, and that was just for the national races. There are very limited sources for that kind of money, and the political process must, perforce, be dominated by those sources. [...] And why is so much money needed? Because the political arts in a democracy are not the arts of deliberation and persuasion, which are relatively inexpensive, but are the arts of manipulation and propaganda, which are extremely costly. The appeal is almost never to the intelligence, but to raw passion and emotion. The path to power in a democracy, the surest way to ensure the loyalty of one's followers, is to exaggerate small differences into great 'issues.' [...]

"A thing is known by its proper limits, and a thing without limits becomes its own opposite. Thus democracy, sacralized and absolutized, becomes its own opposite, a thinly disguised oligarchy of power which uses all the arts of propaganda to convince the public that their votes matter. There is precedent for this. The Western Roman Empire maintained the Republican form and offices. Consul, quaestor, aedile, and tribune remained and there were hotly contested and highly expensive campaigns for these offices. The army still marched under the banner not of the emperor, but of the SPQR, 'The Senate and People of Rome.' But of course it was all a sham; real power lay with the emperor and with the army and the merchant/landowning classes whose interests he largely represented, while buying off the plebs with the world's largest welfare state. But at least the Romans could see their emperor, could know his name, could love him or hate him. We are not permitted to see our real rulers, and never permitted to name them. The democratic sham covers the oligarchic reality."

The second installment of the series, an article titled "A Real Catholic Monarchy", appeared in "The Remnant" on 30 September 2010 (43 [16]: no page numbers given).

Excerpt: "A modern bureaucrat, in the normal course of his day, exercises more power than a medieval king; the bureaucrat can, with a stroke of a pen, take away your business or your children, thereby making tyranny a sort of daily routine; the bureaucrat's writ does indeed run as law, as long as the proper forms are filled out ..."

The full text of this article is only accessible to subscribers of the paper (available in print or as e-edition).

I was not able to ascertain whether there will be further installments in future issues of "The Remnant".

John C. Médaille is Adjunct Instructor of Theology at the University of Dallas.

Article: Toppling democracy

Thongchai Winichakul, "Toppling democracy" ("Journal of Contemporary Asia", 38 [1], February 2008: pp. 11-37).

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.sameskybooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/j-of-contem-asia-2008-thongchai-winichakul-toppling-democracy.pdf

Abstract: "Thailand's 2006 royalist coup is best understood by reference to the historical context of democratisation. The dominant historiography of Thai democratisation is either a simplistic liberal view of anti-military democracy or a royalist one that is ultimately anti-democratic. This article offers a serial history of democratisation that allows us to see the long duration of layered historical processes. As democratisation is fundamentally a break from the centralised absolute monarchy, the monarchy and the monarchists, despite their up and down political fortunes, have probably played the most significant role in shaping Thai democracy since 1932. Despite that, their role and place in history has been overlooked due to the perception that they are 'above politics.' This article argues that, since 1973 in particular, the monarchists have assumed the status of the superior realm in Thai politics that claims the high moral ground above politicians and normal politics. With distaste for electoral politics, and in tacit collaboration with the so-called people's sector, activists and intellectuals, they have undermined electoral democracy in the name of 'clean politics' versus the corruption of politicians. The 2006 coup that toppled democracy was the latest effort of the monarchists to take control of the democratisation process."

Excerpts: "The fight against corruption and money politics seems indisputably a good cause. It should contribute to democracy with no harm whatsoever. In the context of Thai democratisation of the past thirty years, however, the repercussions and consequences of clean politics against elected politicians significantly contributed to the coup in 2006. [...] To understand the effects of the discourse of clean politics on democratisation, I shall elaborate its four constitutive discourses and point out how each of them has ramified to become anti-democratic. They are (i) politicians are extremely corrupt; (ii) politicians come to power by vote-buying; (iii) an election does not equal democracy; and (iv) democracy means a moral, ethical rule. [...] If a 'communist threat' was the usual reason for many military coups during the Cold War, corruption has been the usual reason for coups after the end of the communist threat in Thailand since the early 1980s. [...]

"From the 1980s, people have believed that vote-buying is rampant at every level of election. It is considered a political pandemic. [...] Given the distrust of politicians and parliament's assumed lack of legitimacy due to vote-buying, Thailand's democracy has been seriously undermined. The public as well as many intellectuals question the legitimacy of the election as a trustworthy means to democracy. [...] While these public intellectuals may support civic movements or people's power, the supporters of clean politics adopted the rhetoric to undermine the electoral and parliamentary system. During the political crisis in 2006, the royalists and the anti-Thaksin activists alike often called the Thaksin government an 'electocracy' and his rule 'monetocracy.' After the coup, as critics of the coup insisted on electoral legitimacy in democracy, the coup defenders and apologists, including the royalist activists, military leaders and many leading intellectuals, kept repeating that the staging of an election does not equal democracy. [...]

"The distrust of elections in fact goes a long way back and is deeper than the rhetoric above. It is rooted in the nationalistic conservatism that distrusts democracy for being alien to Thai culture which honours hierarchical relations and venerates the monarchy as the highest authority in the land. [...] These conservatives often remind us that a constitution, thereby democracy as well, is merely a Western object. It is not necessarily good for Thai political culture. [...] In 2005 and 2006, the anti-Thaksin movement called for the return of power to the monarchy, arguing that it fits Thai political culture, unlike electoral democracy, which is an alien political system. [...] Not only could politicians and elections not be trusted, but democracy itself is also suspect. This is the ideological basis for the royalist distaste of elections. It is compatible with the anti-electocracy discourse of liberal intellectuals, thanks to their shared distrust of the existing 'democracy.'"

Thongchai Winichakul is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Article: Urbanity, Class and Post-democracy in Thailand

Jim Glassman, "'The Provinces Elect Governments, Bangkok Overthrows Them': Urbanity, Class and Post-democracy in Thailand" ("Urban Studies", 47 [6], May 2010: pp. 1301-23):

http://usj.sagepub.com/content/47/6/1301

Abstract: "Urban social movements are often associated with what are considered 'progressive' causes and most activists involved in such movements are inclined to describe themselves in such terms. The Thai coup of September 2006 poses problems for any such easy identification. Although executed by the military, on behalf of royalist interests, the coup was supported by an array of primarily Bangkok-based and middle-class groups, many of them associated with organisations such as NGOs and state enterprise unions. Although some of these groups claimed anti-neo-liberal political orientations, their support for the coup effectively placed them on the side of forces opposed to quasi-Keynesian policies and in favour of specific forms of neo-liberalism – at least for Thai villagers. This paper explores this development by focusing on the Bangkok/upcountry and urban/rural divisions in Thai politics, which, although socially constructed, have taken on political substance, in part because of their grounding in regionally differentiated class structures."

Excerpts: "I argue that the coup of 2006 and its sequelae represent a slide towards 'post-democracy' – a condition where democratic political forms achieved through previous social struggles (for example, a multiparty parliament) are subverted by both differential structural power (for example, the wealth and influence of royalist institutions) and overt attempts to reign in popular influence (for example, attempts to make much of the parliament appointed, rather than elected). This slide is driven in part by the interests of an embattled middle class, stronger in Bangkok than elsewhere in the country, which cannot consistently get all that it wants out of conventional parliamentary politics. [...]

"Confronted by the contradiction between a putative commitment to democracy and the reality of enormous social privileges which they attempt to maintain, many Bangkok groups – including some 'progressive' activists – have increasingly looked to conservative forces, chiefly the monarchy, to protect their interests and impose forms of development and social order. This tendency was already apparent before the 2006 coup, but became especially evident at that point. [...] Thailand seems to have entered a period of 'post-democracy', a situation in which there is still a functioning multiparty parliament but in which governments elected by the majority cannot effectively function or carry out policies because of Bangkok-based and royalist opposition. [...]

"Bangkok-based social movements and pro-coup middle classes have emerged on the side of 'post-democracy', utilising their disproportionate political power and media exposure to overturn these political decisions. In short, Bangkok is not a site of the most progressive democratic sentiment, while the countryside is neither a site of purely corrupt patronage systems nor of the romantic rural idyll. [...] [I]n the context of on-going divergence between the prospects of the Bangkok middle classes and other Thai social groups, Thailand seems for now to have entered a 'post-democratic' period in which Bangkok political activists and opinion leaders will continue their attempts to derail the political challenges emanating from outside the capital."

The article contains an extensive bibliography of relevant literature.

Jim Glassman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia.

Article: The End of Democracy in Thailand?

Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly are the authors of an article titled "The End of Democracy in Thailand?" that was published on 18 May 2010 on the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The article can be read free of charge here:

www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2902350.htm

Excerpts: "Thailand's fledgling democracy is now all but dead; bloodied and battered on the streets of Bangkok. How did this happen? [...] In the country's rural heartlands Thaksin [Shinawatra]'s policies of universal health care, infrastructure investment, local economic stimulus, and agricultural debt relief were wildly popular. Even the murders that punctuated his bloody 'war on drugs' were applauded by many rural Thais who were fed up with the nightmare of narcotic abuse. To succeed at the ballot box, Thaksin learned to speak the language of rural Thailand in a cadence that alternated between populism and brutality. [...] He was eventually overthrown in the coup of September 2006 and another election was held in December 2007. Thaksin was in exile, but his political allies won again, falling just short of an absolute majority. But the anti-Thaksin forces could not accept this result either and they managed to manoeuvre Abhisit Vejjaiva into power on the back of the yellow shirt occupation of Bangkok's international airport and the dissolution of the pro-Thaksin governing party. [...]

"[T]he underlying motivation of the protesters is clear: they are fed up with having election results overturned. They have gone peacefully to the ballot box three times since 2005 and each time elite forces associated with the palace, the military, the judiciary and Abhisit's Democrat Party, have disregarded their decision. The red shirts have been told that their votes don't count, that they are uneducated country bumpkins, and that they sell their votes to the highest bidder. It is unsurprising that many of them were suspicious about Abhisit's offer to hold yet another election on November 14. There were even more suspicious about the willingness of the forces that back Abhisit to respect its result. [...] Decades of national faith invested in an unelected monarch as the ultimate source of authority and salvation in times of crisis has stunted the development of robust democratic institutions. [...] There is considerable truth to the old joke that Thailand is the world's longest lasting fledgling democracy, and that truth owes much to the fact that the symbolic power of the monarch has overshadowed opportunities for elected politicians to manage national affairs."

Andrew Walker is a Senior Fellow and Nicholas Farrelly is Associate Lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific.

Article: The Mechanics of Regime Instability in Latin America

Adam Przeworski, "The Mechanics of Regime Instability in Latin America" ("Journal of Politics in Latin America", 1 [1], 2009: pp. 5-36).

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jpla/article/viewFile/20/20

Abstract: "The paper is narrowly addressed to a single puzzle: How did it happen that countries that attempted to install democracy earlier enjoyed it less frequently? Regime dynamics are driven by two mechanisms: (1) Democracies become more durable as per capita income increases, and (2) Past experiences with democracy destabilize both democracies and autocracies. As a result, countries that experiment with democracy at lower income levels experience more regime instability. Moreover, until they reach some income threshold, at any time such countries are less likely to be democratic than countries that first enter democracy when they have higher incomes. Hence, paradoxically, the resistance of European monarchies against democracy resulted in democracies that were more stable than those following post-independence attempts in Latin America."

Excerpts: "Now, the claim that Latin American countries tried democracy earlier and, most importantly, at lower levels of economic development than Europe and North America is not original, even if it often evokes surprise among ethnocentric North American and Europeans. [...] To some extent, this timing is due to the fact that several parts of Latin America participated in the 1809 election to the Cortes of Cádiz, thus launching the idea of representative institutions at the time when many European countries were involved in the Napoleonic wars and elections were still rare. But a more general reason was that Latin American wars of independence were at the same time directed against monarchical rule, while most European countries experienced a gradual devolution of power from monarchs to parliaments. [...]

"Latin Americans had to constitute their institutions anew. And they were traversing a terra incognita. Monarchies, republics with predominantly hereditary collective governing bodies, and one republic with an elected legislature and an indirectly elected president were the choices known when first Haiti in 1804 and then Venezuela in 1811 proclaimed independence. In several new countries the first form of the government was a collective body that exercised both the legislative and the executive function. Triumvirates governed Argentina from 1811 to 1814 and Venezuela in 1811-12. [...] In the end institutions based on the United States pattern prevailed – in time all Latin American political systems would have elected legislatures while placing executive function in the hands of presidents – but this alternative became complicated from the onset by Bolívar's itch to keep the position for life. [...]

"The most creative was Dr. José Gaspár Rodriguez de Francia who, having become one of two consuls who were to alternate every four months in 1813, then a dictator appointed for three years, in 1816 proclaimed himself El Dictador Perpetuo of Paraguay and ruled it until 1840 as El Supremo. While this story may sound anecdotal, Francia's innovation was both radical and durable, deserving to be placed on par with Lenin's invention of the one-party state. It was radical since the only model of dictatorship known at the time was the Roman one, and in this model dictatorship was a power that was delegated, exceptional, and limited in duration. 'Perpetual Dictator' was an oxymoron. Moreover, the last attempt to make dictatorship permanent, almost twenty centuries earlier, did not bode well for Dr. Francia's fate. Yet this invention turned out to be durable: Francia set the precedent for such illustrious gentlemen as Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Kim Il-sung, al-Gaddafi, or Castro. [...]

"Now, how is it possible that Latin American countries attempted to institute democracies at lower income levels but ended up with fewer of them at all levels? [...] [A]t a low income [...] level, the probability of democracy falling is quite high. Suppose this democracy falls. The probability that the subsequent autocracy survives is then lower, so that the probability that this country will try democracy again is higher, but the probability that the second democracy survives is also lower. This sequence can be repeated several times, so that if per capita income were constant, both regimes would become increasingly unstable. But income matters: if the economy grows in the meantime, the probability that a democracy dies declines in spite of the past regime instability. And at one time, income passes a threshold above which democracy is impregnable [...].

"Note that the reasons autocratic spells become shorter and democratic spells longer at higher incomes are different. Autocratic spells are shorter almost exclusively because countries that have higher incomes have accumulated more visits to democracy, and such visits destabilize the subsequent autocracies. Democratic spells are longer, however, only because democracy lasts longer at higher income levels. Although past visits to democracy do destabilize subsequent democratic regimes, this effect is small, while the effect of income is powerful."

Polish-born Adam Przeworski is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Politics and (by courtesy) of Economics at New York University.

Article: Why Non-Democratic Leaders Have More Children

Dustin Beckett and Gregory D. Hess, "All in the Family: Why Non-Democratic Leaders Have More Children" ("Economics of Governance", 9 [1], January 2008: pp. 65-85):

www.springerlink.com/content/m6k1464v4vm24k67/

Abstract: "Economists have come to learn that politics matters. But survival matters the most to those involved in politics. We provide a theory whereby non-benevolent, non-democratic leaders increase their expected family size to raise the likelihood that a child will be a match at continuing the regime's survival. As a consequence, having a larger family size raises the non-democratic leader's expected rents that they can exploit from the citizenry. In contrast, democratic leaders have a lower desire to appropriate rents from the citizenry, and therefore have a diminished desire to have additional children for these purposes. We construct a data set of the number of children of country leaders as of August 31, 2005. We find that in a sample of 221 country leaders, fully non-democratic leaders have approximately 1.5-2.5 more actual children as compared to if they are fully democratic. This empirical relationship is established controlling for a full array of country specific as well as individual specific variables. Our finding also continues to hold when using alternative measures of family size."

Excerpt: "While the question of 'who governs?' goes to the heart of the difference between democratic and non-democratic rule, 'who governs next?' is no less a distinguishing query. Often, transitions of power in mature democracies take place at regular intervals, where timing and tenure limits are determined in the law. For non-democratic countries, however, transitions are more problematic and irregular, as there are fewer formal mechanisms for a smooth succession of power."

Sounds intriguing, but the article seems deeply flawed. It is badly written and obviously not edited, i.e.: "For non-democratic leaders, [...] performance indicators are not the main criteria for determining the survival duration of non-democratic leaders."; "a new leader decides how much to seek rent from the citizenry".

Also, this is the first study I came across that is based on (two versions of) "Who's Who" and – get this – "[t]he final source for the data is the online encyclopedia [...] Wikipedia". Are they serious?

Finally, what about leaders, democratic or not, of countries that have, during the leader's lifetime, alternated between democracy and non-democracy or experienced increasing or decreasing levels of democracy? The children of a non-democratic leader may have been born when the country was still a democracy. And even non-democratic rule lasts on average only twenty-one years, it is claimed. But (less than) 21-year olds don't usually become heads of government. Even in non-democratic countries (with the possible exception of monarchies), sons or daughters that young are unlikely to succeed a parent. Most leaders will have started a family well before becoming leaders – and most likely before they ever knew that they were going to become leaders. (Only 15% of the leaders studied were "in line" to succeed to their position.) All this may suggest other reasons for family size than the merely economic ones proposed by the authors of this study.

Dustin H. Beckett is a doctoral candidate in Social Science at the California Institute of Technology.

Gregory D. Hess is James G. Boswell Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College.

Book: Non-Democratic Regimes

A revised and updated second edition of Paul Brooker's "Non-Democratic Regimes" was published by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2009:

www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=289293

Publisher's description: "Despite talk of the 'triumph of democracy', much of the world is still ruled by political or military dictatorships. Paul Brooker provides a comprehensive assessment of the nature of authoritarian regimes, their changing character in the 21st Century world, and the main theoretical explanations of their incidence, character and performance."

Contents: Theoretical Approaches; Monarchical and Personal Rule; Military Rule; One-Party Rule; Consolidation, Legitimacy and Control; Parties and Performance; Democratization and the Demise of Dictatorship; Semi-dictatorships and Semidemocracies; The Future of Non-Democratic Regimes

No editorial reviews of either the first or second edition of this book are to be found.

Paul Brooker is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Book: The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms

Elie Elhadj, "The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms" (Brown Walker Press, 2006; revised edition 2007):

www.brownwalker.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599424118

From the publisher's description: "Washington's 'War on Terrorism' has used democratization of the Arab World as a justification and a weapon. The Islamic Shield contends that genuine religious and political reforms in the Arab World are sheer fantasy: they are not expected for a very long time, if ever. The Islamic Shield argues that democratic ideology cannot defeat Islamic theology. A culture of blind obedience to autocratic authority at home, school, mosque, and work place has been turned into a form of piety by the ulama clerics. [...]

"The Islamic Shield examines why democratic institutions are a mirage in two profoundly different countries, Saudi Arabia, an Islamist monarchy, and Syria, a quasi-secular republic. Although the two countries differ in types of governance, ideologies, agendas, and resources, they share in common non-representative, non-participatory dictatorial regimes. The two countries approximate socio-political models found in other Arab monarchies and republics. The Islamic Shield examines such questions as: [...] Why do non-Arab Islamic countries elect women as prime ministers and presidents while Arab ulama and most Arab rulers treat women as lesser beings and condemn democracy as un-Islamic? Is benevolent dictatorship a viable alternative to Arab democracy?"

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=S2kZfdrEBlAC&printsec=frontcover

Syrian-born Elie Elhadj, a retired international banker, holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.

Book: Alternatives to Athens

Edited by Roger Brock and Stephen Hodkinson and based on a series of seminars is the collection "Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece" (Oxford University Press, 2000):

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199258109.do

Abstract: "In 1993 the world celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the birth of democracy in ancient Athens, whose polis – or citizen state – is often viewed as the model ancient Greek state. In an age when democracy has apparently triumphed following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, it tends to be forgetten [sic] that the democratic citizen state was only one of many forms of political community in Greek antiquity. This volume aims to redress the balance by showing that democratic Athens was not the model ancient Greek state, and focuses on a range of city states operating a variety of non-democratic political systems in the ancient Greek world. Eighteen essays by established and younger historians examine alternative political systems and ideologies: oligarchies, monarchies, and mixed constitutions, along with diverse forms of communal and regional associations such as ethnoi, amphiktyonies, and confederacies. The papers, which span the length and breadth of the Hellenic world from the Balkans and Anatolia to Magna Graecia and North Africa, highlight the immense political flexibility and diversity of ancient Greek civilization."

We probably shouldn't view Athens as much as the model for democracy as ancient Greece as the model for a world of competitive government – competing and coexistent forms of political
organization – that may yet return in our time.

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=J5Jg8raPTZsC&printsec=frontcover

Roger Brock is now a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics at the University of Leeds.

Stephen Hodkinson is now Professor of Ancient History at the University of Nottingham.

Book: The King Never Smiles

The meaning of democracy and democratic rule in Thailand, a constitutional monarchy frequently subjected to military coups, have been hotly contested for decades. The first unauthorized biography of the King of Thailand tries to shed light on an underappreciated component of it – Paul M. Handley's "The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej" (Yale University Press, 2006):

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300106824

From the publisher's description: "Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world's longest-serving monarch. The King Never Smiles [...] tells the unexpected story [...] how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political and autocratic. [...] [L]ooking beyond the widely accepted image of the king as egalitarian and virtuous, Handley portrays an anti-democratic monarch who, together with allies in big business and the corrupt Thai military, has protected a centuries-old, barely modified feudal dynasty.

"When at nineteen Bhumibol assumed the throne, the Thai monarchy had been stripped of power and prestige. Over the ensuing decades, Bhumibol became the paramount political actor in the kingdom, silencing critics while winning the hearts and minds of his people. The book details this process and depicts Thailand's unique constitutional monarch – his life, his thinking, and his ruling philosophy."

Reviews: "For too long, the issue of the monarchy has been the prone elephant that analysts of Thai history and politics have had to treat carefully around. That era should now pass. ... In sum, this is the classic story of an exceptional man recrafting a monarchy against the grain of an era." (Chris Baker, "Asia Sentinel")

"A new and comprehensive history of the Thai modern monarchy ... [which] presents a direct counterpoint to years of methodical royal image-making." (Jane Perlez, "The Sunday Telegraph")

"This work is essential to understanding Thailand's modern political history and, particularly, the latest coup." (Major Dewayne J. Creamer, "Proceedings"/US Naval Institute)

Excerpt: "[U]nquestioning adoration also arises from the toughly enforced law of lèse-majesté protecting his inviolateness. Embedded within national security statutes, the lèse-majesté law is applied to protect not only the person of the king and his immediate family but the institution of the monarchy itself, both current and historical. Maligning even a previous king can bring charges, conviction for which could bring over ten years' imprisonment. [...]

"[O]ver time he concluded that elected parliaments were self-serving and unrepresentative of the people's true needs. He decided that constitutional law in practice benefited the non-royal elite and didn't protect his subjects. Ultimately, he believed, European-style democracy, constitutionalism, and capitalism only divided the people, undermining the unifying and justice-dispensing role of the dhammaraja [king]. In his alternative vision, the modern Thai state would be guided by the king and the laws of dhamma, and administered by virtuous, loyal, able, and also tough men, neo-princes found in the top ranks of the military and civil service who worked at their jobs under the king's guidance for the good of the whole."

For reasons of lèse-majesté, the book has been banned in Thailand and local authorities blocked access to websites advertising it. It is also not for sale in many other Asian countries.

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=d75WYMdp8-0C&printsec=frontcover

Paul M. Handley is a freelance journalist who lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Thailand for thirteen years.