Overview

This provocative and timely book challenges conventional wisdom about political legitimacy. While democratic social contracts are traditionally viewed as the only legitimate form of governance, it reveals how authoritarian states maintain stability and popular support without relying solely on repression. The author dissects the “authoritarian social contract”—a tacit agreement between rulers and citizens based not on political participation but on the delivery of three critical benefits: social mobility and prosperity, safety and security, and a sphere of negative freedom outside the political realm, to show that when these benefits are successfully provided, authoritarian regimes can achieve remarkable stability and genuine popular support. He also demonstrates how democracies worldwide are experiencing legitimacy crises precisely because they are failing to deliver these same fundamental benefits. As democratic nations witness declining social mobility, security challenges, and paradoxically, increasing state interference in personal freedoms, they face the same expressions of grievance and anti-regime activism historically seen in failing authoritarian states and risk the same fate that befell such regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This book is essential reading for political scientists, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the future of democratic governance.

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9781041170556

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Jean-François Caron is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University, where he teaches Political Theory. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science and Administration at the University of Opole and the 2025–2026 C. Judson King Endowed Professor at the American University of Armenia.

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