The Fragile Dictator

This book examines digital mass surveillance in authoritarian regimes, highlighting the role of security services. It argues that globalization hasn't diminished dictatorships, and urges Western countries to adopt new strategies to counter digitally-enhanced authoritarianism, which poses a growing challenge to liberal democracies.

---

Authoritarian states are digitizing mass surveillance to extend the reach and depth of autocracy in the service of their shared political goals of precluding organized dissent or the possibility of genuine republican governance. The Fragile Dictator: Counterintelligence Pathologies in Authoritarian States will explore how authoritarian pathologies impact the use of these technologies in terms of the authoritarian secret police, and internal and foreign security services and how larger autocratic pathologies are reflected in the behaviors of security organizations seeking their own survival under the autocratic state. The resilience of authoritarianism suggests that twenty-first century globalization is not a particular argument for the demise of dictatorship and Western powers must think about new approaches to defeat authoritarian internal and foreign security services as intensified by authoritarian sponsored clandestine networks. While authoritarianism has been a subject of scholarship before, the emerging digital authoritarianisms are increasingly powerful adversaries to the world's remaining liberal democracies and suggest a need for a different strategic approach when engaging digitized autocracies.