Making a Career in Dictatorship

Making a Career in Dictatorship by Christian Gläßel & Adam Scharpf (Oxford, 2025) What if the standard career path was a driver of authoritarianism? That’s the theory put forth by Christian Gläßel and Adam Sharpf, who draw on copious historical data from Argentina’s army, as well as case studies from Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Jawara’s Gambia. What they find is that two of the defining characteristics of dictatorships—huge security apparatuses engaging in surveillance, intimidation, detention, torture, and worse; and the ever present threat of a violent coup—emerge from structures that produce career pressure. Officers left at the bottom of the career ladder will do whatever it takes to improve their lot, even if that means taking on the dirty work or leading a revolt. The comparisons to authoritarianism in the present-day US administration are striking and instructive, as are the very discomfiting comparisons to corporate environments that mimic the same. When a…