AUTHORITARIANISM

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism

This paper highlights the factors that have triggered the fall of Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, (USSR) due to authoritarian doctrine, while the same practices have not affected the Peoples Republic of China and in contrast to the USSR, China has managed not only to survive but is continuously making progress in this contemporary world setup.

It is a fact that both USSR and China were primarily Communist States, with USSR taking the lead in 1921, with the advent of Bolshevism under the leadership of Linen. The communist policies continued under the leadership of Stalin; only to be followed by Mao-Zedong to declare China a Communist State in 1949.

The breakup of the USSR was accompanied by a brief period of cooperation between the United States and Russia. However, hopes for a closer friendship between the two nations have been frustrated over disagreement about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and an increasing turn back to authoritarianism under Russian President Vladimir Putin. The fall of the Soviet Union removed a significant threat to U.S. national security but presented new challenges, as well (Hanson, 2003).

In contrast to USSR, in case of China, the leading sinologists argue that Tiananmen leadership decision-making symbolizes the triumph of Chinese authoritarianism. One scholar maintains that it played out “the unaltered instincts of authoritarianism in the leadership” (Pye 1990, 331). Another contends that for post-Tiananmen leaders “authoritarianism is the best path for China, even for reform” (Waldron 2002, 398-9). “The emperors may be dead, but 'imperial Beijing' is alive” (Hartford, 2005). The Leninist system would not just “wither away” nor would authoritarianism be replaced by some form of Chinese democracy via economic development. In short, China's political traditions and its Leninist political structure support authoritarianism. The rule of authoritarianism seems strengthened; since 1989 people calling for reforms have become far more cautious, owing to the “lesson of Tiananmen.” The view is that incremental change is better than revolutionary upheavals, a view that is actually shared by the generations that experienced the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square event.

Whether anathema or not, an influential polemic by (McKenzie, 2005) also asserted that this combination of central planning and far-reaching participatory democracy could not work. The reasons adduced by (McKenzie, 2005) were the Hayekian problems concerning the acquisition of information and the organization of incentives. In particular Nove emphasized that economic linkages in a centrally planned system were necessarily vertical and hierarchical, and argued that only the horizontal linkages established by market relations (in however regulated a manner) were compatible with democracy. While this was denied by, for example, (McCormick, 2006) has addressed the challenge presented by reflections on the Soviet experience in a different manner. Building on elements of Lange's model, Devine (1988) sought to preserve the socialist vision through procedures of administered coordination between different democratized levels of the planning hierarchy, decisions being implemented by the use of the market mechanism.

The emergence of the PRC opened up a second major front in ...