Michael G. Schatzberg

Since the late 1980s the world has witnessed the decline and, in many
cases, the seeming demise of various forms of authoritarian rule.
Besieged everywhere by the forces of change, long-ruling autocrats of both
the left and the right have pursued a range of strategies and tactics to
remain in power. Few have gracefully ceded their coveted positions as
heads of a state-party without resistance; fewer still have openly and sin-
cerely embraced the new crosscurrents of political change. The vast majori-
ty of them have waged a fierce and occasionally violent political struggle to
retain both their positions and their power. Zaire's president, Mobutu Sese
Seko, is no exception.

Even when autocrats have either departed or been removed from the
scene, however, we should not assume that the political struggle is over,
because they often leave behind them political forces and erstwhile allies
who continue to fight to preserve or restore the old order that nurtured
them. The Nigerian military is a case in point, as Peter Lewis explains in
Chapter 7. Although the precise tactics such politicians pursue in hijacking
the processes of political change may vary because of specific contextual
differences, certain strategic commonalities have nevertheless begun to
emerge from the welter of information surrounding particular cases.

This chapter is about the "hijacking," or the co-optation and subver-
sion, of political movements directed either against autocrats who have
long been part of the political landscape or against the repressive and anti-
democratic forms of political order that have survived their departure.
Except indirectly, this chapter does not discuss "democratization" — a term
of distinctly limited applicability in the present political moment. Although
it is certain that we are witnessing an increasingly clamorous retreat from
autocracy, to label this historically open-ended autocratic recessional as
democratization is to confuse a normatively desired goal with a complex
series of political processes whose outcome is far from predetermined.

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