Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2025

Another “disposition of things”

Résumé

It is now established that there exists no clear frontier between democracy and authoritarianism, and many concepts—such as illiberal democracy or competitive authoritarianism—have tried to label the “grey zones” where seemingly democratic institutions mix with political restrictions and state coercion. Our intent here is to move away from classification attempts to focalize on the dynamic mechanisms and processes through which democratic regimes turn, partially or completely, to authoritarianism. We borrow our main inspiration from Montesquieu who stated that in a democracy “power should stop power” thanks to a peculiar “disposition of things” that prevents any abuse of power. This invites to consider authoritarianism as “another disposition of things” where, to the contrary, abuse in power becomes possible. We intent, more empirically and sociologically, to study the changes, within a given political system, in the relations between institutions or fields of power that allow some to exert abusive power over some others and, thereafter, over the whole society. Most military coups offer paradigmatic illustrations of such mechanisms, as they consist in the brutal subjugation or neutralization of a whole set of other fields of power (e.g. parliament, parties, justice, trade unions, academy, media etc.) aimed to incapacitate them to exert any resistance. But, in many other cases, such a process is rather incremental and partial, with circumstantial attempts to take over some institutions, while (sometimes provisionally) neglecting others or creating new ones.

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hal-05171476 , version 1 (20-07-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-05171476 , version 1

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Lilian Mathieu, Maya Collombon. Another “disposition of things”. Resisting autocratization in polarized societies, IPSA, Jul 2025, Séoul (Corée), South Korea. ⟨hal-05171476⟩
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