The crisis of dictatorship: 50 years later

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of The Crisis of the Dictatorships—in which Nicos Poulantzas analyzes the processes of political crisis and transition in Portugal, Greece, and Spain—this article revisits the book to underscore its enduring analytical relevance. It examines three key dimensions: the specificity of dependency in these social formations; the role of geopolitics and interimperialist contradictions in both shaping and destabilizing dictatorships; and the limits of post-dictatorial democratization, marked by state continuities and bourgeois hegemony. Challenging economistic and formalist interpretations, Poulantzas develops an approach that situates states within the imperialist chain, emphasizing that, in an increasingly internationalized capitalism, separating the internal from the external entails a serious distortion of the analysis. The article contends that Poulantzas's analysis anticipates contemporary debates on authoritarianism by revealing how exceptional forms of domination persist within democratic regimes. By articulating the concepts of dependency, State, and authoritarianism, his framework provides critical tools for analyzing contemporary political challenges under current capitalism.