What is 'authoritarian rule' and is it best studied? Using the Dominican Republic, this book investigates new methods of analysis, arguing that it should be imperative to approach authoritarian histories - like other histories - on the basis of detailed investigations of power relationships, everyday practices and meanings.
"This book is an investigation of political networks and cultural ideas of power and authority conducted by the author since the early 1990s in the Dominican Republic. This is a richly documented and well-informed study of how authoritarian rule was created, legitimated, and embraced by various dominant and subaltern groups in Dominican society for many decades." - Thomas Blom Hansen, Religious Studies at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the Universiteit van Amsterdam