Review

“Acknowledging that coercion is one of the dark spaces of politics, Policzer aims to illuminate the ways in which authoritarian regimes organize their institutions, as well as the causes and consequences of their choices. . . . Policzer’s analysis casts the Pinochet dictatorship in a new light, illustrating how Pinochet faced various trade-offs in organizing his coercive apparatus.” —Choice

“This important book enriches the literature on authoritarian regimes by asking what factors and specific mechanisms explain the changes in the organization of coercion under such regimes. This is a significant book because it poses new questions and delivers new theoretical tools to explore this new region of problematization.” —Latin American Politics and Society

“. . . Repression is often understood in terms of relatively simple explanatory schemes: ideological zeal, domestic power arrangements, and international political pressure. In this new book, Pablo Policzer seeks to expose the inadequacies of such explanations and to offer an alternative approach for explaining and understanding political repression. . . . This work is original and thought-provoking, and offers a valuable contribution to the history of the Pinochet regime. It is certainly a stepping stone for new research in the field of political repression.” —Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies