Breakdown of Political Systems

The Basic Notions and its Origins

Drawing on Robert Fishman's distinctions, we can define a regime as a country-based network of formal and informal organizations at the center of political decision making that determines who has access to political power and how those who are in power deal with those who are not. Democracies and dictatorships are the dominant regime types in our literature.

A state is the larger institutional context in which a regime exercises its power. A state is a more permanent structure of domination and coordination in part because, unlike a regime, a functioning state always maintains a coercive apparatus and both the means to administer a society and to extract resources from it. Though there are many state types in our literature, the distinction most relevant to a discussion of system breakdowns is the one between functioning states and failed states.

The current literature on the breakdown of modern political systems has its roots in ancient Athens. Plato attributed political system change (and difference) to “the dispositions of men” and argued that regime types were forged from “the human natures” of their citizens. Later classic commentaries linked the breakdown of oligarchy to societal crises related to taxation, to the successful uprising against the Spartan occupation that followed conflict between Athenian elites, and to structural changes related to the Persian Wars. Aristotle linked political system longevity to levels of economic inequality. Arguments relating the breakdown of political systems to cultural dispositions, fiscal crises, elite divisions, war, and economic inequality remain fundamental to political science literature today.

The Ancients' attempts to derive general, explanatory arguments from specific, contemporary political events remain fundamental to current literature as well. This is one of the reasons why scholarship on the breakdown of political systems has so often come in clusters, following waves of dramatic political system change. Four clusters of system breakdown stand out as catalysts.

The Main Explanations

The first set of debates about regime collapse in the 20th century focused on the breakdown of democracy in interwar Europe. Proponents of [Page 159]psychosocial arguments asserted that the cause lay in the nexus of personality and politics: Individuals who were profoundly insecure found the uncertainty of democracy intolerable and sought comfort in authoritarian leaders and authoritarian regimes. Though this argument was rooted in social psychology, it resonated with scholars of politics as well. Hannah Arendt attributed the breakdown of inter-war democracy to the “negative solidarity” engendered by a mass of “furious individuals” united by “apprehension.” Seymour Martin Lipset attributed “working-class authoritarianism” to economic insecurity and authoritarian family patterns.

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