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In this thought-provoking book, Guenter Frankenberg explores why authoritarian leaders create new constitutions, or revise old ones. Through a profound analysis of authoritarian constitutions as phenomena in their own right, Frankenberg reveals their purposes, the audiences they seek to address and investigates the ways in which they fit into the broader context of autocracies.

Frankenberg outlines the essential features of authoritarianism through a discussion of a variety of constitutional projects in authoritarian settings: the executive style of opportunist, informal governing, political power as private property, participation as complicity, and the cult of immediacy that is geared towards fantasies of a community of the followers and their leader. He also takes a comparative approach to authoritarian constitutions, drawing out the relationships between them, as well as providing a critique of the discourse around populism and authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism will be critical reading for scholars of constitutional law, as well as political scientists, who will find its comparative analysis of political systems in this context invaluable. It will also be useful to students of comparative law and political science for its clear explanation of the characteristics of authoritarianism across regimes.