How Do Dictators Survive So Long?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Robert Mugabe was deposed last year, he had ruled Zimbabwe for nearly four decades. How do dictators and authoritarians stay in power? James Tilley, a professor of politics at Oxford University in the UK, finds out what's in the dictators' survival guide. How do they control ordinary people and stop revolts? How do they stop rivals from taking over? And why are elections often helpful to securing their rule?
Producer: Bob Howard.
(Photo: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe looks on during his inauguration and swearing-in ceremony on August 22, 2013 Credit: ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me James Tilly, |
| 0:09.7 | a professor of politics at the University of Oxford. |
| 0:12.3 | Each week we bring you four ex- Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford. |
| 0:13.2 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses, |
| 0:16.0 | answering one pressing question from the news. |
| 0:19.4 | On the 18th of April 1980, Robert McGarby |
| 0:22.2 | was sworn in as the elected Prime Minister of a new country, Zimbabwe. |
| 0:26.1 | I Robert Gabriel Mugabe do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Zimbabwe and observe the laws of Zimbabwe. So help me God. But by the 90s, |
| 0:45.0 | the 90s, what the 90s, whatever claims McGarby had to democratic legitimacy were long gone. |
| 0:51.0 | He'd become yet another of Africa's many dictators and it wasn't |
| 0:55.6 | until last year that he was forced out after nearly 40 years in power. |
| 1:01.3 | About half of all countries and over half the world's population are ruled by leaders like |
| 1:07.9 | McGarby, leaders I'm going to call dictators. Now there are many explanations for why Mugabe was finally deposed in 2017. |
| 1:17.6 | What is less often considered is why he survived in office for nearly four decades. This week we're asking how do dictators |
| 1:26.0 | like Macabre survive for so long. Part 1, Apparatus of Control. |
| 1:37.0 | I'm Leila Aliba. |
| 1:42.4 | I'm Leila Aliva. I'm a scholar in international relations and I used to lead |
| 1:49.9 | a think tank back in Bakku until 2014 when there was a major crackdown on civil society and I |
| 1:58.1 | had to leave the country. |
| 2:01.9 | Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan once part of the Soviet Union. |
| 2:07.0 | It's a one-party state and the South Caucasus that's been run by the Ellia family, father and son, since 1993. |
| 2:14.4 | This is careful! |
... |
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