Abstract

This book examines political regimes as living forms of power. It analyzes democracy and authoritarianism through the real conditions under which citizens can speak, dissent, organize, and exercise their rights. Instead of reducing regimes to labels or current events, it develops a comparative framework covering the major forms of democracy — direct, representative, liberal, electoral, and illiberal — and the principal types of authoritarianism: military, personalist, bureaucratic, electoral, and party-based.