Keywords

Introduction

Authoritarianism as a concept has experienced an upswing in attention over the past few years, driven at least partially by the devolution of multiple democracies from proto-democratic models of government to more authoritarian models. Vladimir Putin in Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have stood out as particularly high-profile examples of authoritarian leaders who have worked to distort the democratic dimensions of their governments to prevent the appearance of serious rivals to their rule, alter the political systems in which they operate to enable their protracted reign, and generally embed themselves as uncontestable rulers. After years of increasing democratization and liberalization of political systems across the world, these cases have helped to reignite interest in authoritarianism, its characteristics, and its security implications. Within the United States, the election and tenure to date of Donald Trump to President have raised questions – rightly or wrongly – about whether even the state that purports to be the “leader of the free world” has begun sliding down the precariously slippery path toward authoritarianism. Paul Mason summed up the somber mood of many analysts in his recent claim in The Guardian newspaper that “Democracy is dying” (Mason 2017).

Despite the recent resurgence of interest in authoritarianism, the concept is scarcely new and has formed the focus of numerous studies since the end of the World War II. Juan J. Linz was one of the first prominent writers on the topic in the postwar era, with an opening treatise that examined the character of authoritarianism in Spain specifically in 1964. Linz wrote a series of subsequent works that addressed authoritarianism as a form of government, including his seminal work on Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, which was first published in 1975 and reprinted in 2000 with an extensive introduction that covered the evolution of authoritarianism in the intervening period. Paul C. Sondrol also made substantial contributions to the field by fleshing out the differences between totalitarianism and authoritarianism, especially in his 1991 article on “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner.” Milan W. Svolik added further to the field through his discussion of the challenges that authoritarian regimes face in maintaining their control over the population in The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. These represent only a sample of the major authors who have made notable contributions to the academic literature on the topic of authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism as a Concept

Authoritarianism is both difficult and controversial to unpack as a concept. In many ways it is a term that can be defined as much by talking about what it does not embody as much as what it does include. As Linz notes (1964), authoritarian regimes are those:

Political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some points in their development, and in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones. (p. 291)

At its core, then, an authoritarian state is ruled over by one or a small number of leaders, yet in a way that is neither totalitarian nor democratic. The goal of the leadership is typically to stay in power no matter the cost, with any ideological considerations playing at best a secondary role to this goal. This has led some scholars to use the term as a kind of wastebasket diagnosis for all nondemocratic systems that do not fall obviously into other categories. Some of the government types that have been placed into the category as a result include military juntas, single-ruler dictatorships, and oligarchies with a weak or nonexistent ideological drive. Yet, this depiction of the regime type appears too broad to provide a satisfactory account of the term, and it is important to break down the term further into its constituent types and parts.

Military-dominated regimes are one major form of authoritarianism because the military often – but not always – benefits from an elevated position of power and privilege within these regimes, especially if they played an instrumental role in bringing the government into power (Linz 1970, pp 271–272). This reality is bolstered by the moral hazard faced by authoritarian governments, that is, they need the military to help deter and prevent the population from rising up against them. In exchange for their cooperation, authoritarian leaders often feel compelled to surrender positions of high prestige and influence over to the military, which in turn supplies the military with the ideal vantage point needed to launch a coup d’etat against the regime. Most militaries are restrained from such an action, however, by the realization that their own positions could be weakened and the privileges that they have garnered under their current regime would be put at risk if they attempted such an endeavor (Svolik 2012a).

Military-dominated authoritarian regimes are not the only kinds that exist however, and Linz identifies a total of five main breeds. The first type is traditional authoritarian regimes, which hold onto power through appeals to tradition, the cultivation of patron-client relationships with influential groups among the population, and the application of repression by groups with personal loyalty to the regime. The second is bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes, in which military officers and technocrats within the bureaucracy work to maintain power over the population using pragmatic measures, often with a focus upon the economy. The third is corporatist authoritarian regimes, in which the regime uses corporatist institutions to coopt and defuse interest groups that might otherwise threaten them. The fourth is racial and ethnic democracies, where specific racial and ethnic groups are empowered with full democratic rights while other groups are denied them. The fifth are post-totalitarian authoritarian regimes, in which totalitarian institutions such as a zealously ideological party, highly mobilized population, and extreme state surveillance were once present but have faded and become shadows of their former selves, but have not been replaced with democratic government (Gasiorowski 1990, pp. 114–115). Within all of these types, a number of actors play influential roles to varying degrees, including the police, the military, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary (Neumann 1957, p. 236), as well as the bureaucratic-military complex, political police, paramilitary forces, and youth movements (Brooker 2009, p. 30).

One of the defining challenges for authoritarian regimes is retaining power. Svolik (2012b) asserts that two main challenges face the dictators of authoritarian regimes in this regard: first, the problem of a small ruling group controlling a much larger population and second, the challenge of power-sharing among the ruling group because even dictators need the support of elites to cement their rule and implement their agenda. Managing both challenges, especially the latter, is essential for the durability of authoritarian governments because over two-thirds of all authoritarian dictators that were ousted between 1946 and 2008 were removed by regime insiders through coups d’etat and other palace intrigues, while another 11% were forced out of power by a popular uprising (the remainder either transitioned incrementally to democracy or were toppled by foreign invasion or assassinated). To forestall the threat of popular uprising, authoritarian regimes typically depend heavily upon coercive repression, divide-and-rule tactics, scapegoating minority groups to distract attention away from their own corrupt rule, and the provision of incentives in exchange for loyalty among key civilian groups (Bove et al. 2017, p. 411; Malantowicz 2010, p. 161). To manage the latter, they usually engage in bargaining and power-sharing with political elites, often by creating a parallel power hierarchy, such as a political party, and allocating influential positions within this structure to their loyal supporters and friendly political elites (Magaloni 2008, p. 2). Going beyond simply rewarding their closest supporters, authoritarian leaders also frequently create legislatures with marginal powers as ways to tempt potentially hostile individuals and groups into accepting seats in this body in exchange for acquiescing to the overarching rule of the regime (Ghandi and Przeworski 2006).

Comparisons with Other Regimes

Authoritarianism shares many similarities and overlaps with other types of government, as well as notable differences and variations. The three most notable regime types that possess interconnections with authoritarianism are totalitarianism, democracy, and absolute monarchy. Comparisons with totalitarian states are commonplace among scholars, and the two types of system contain many similarities. The ruler of both systems is either a single or small body of leaders, who aim to centralize all of the power in the state within their control and not share it with the population. They often use austere and violent measures to maintain their control over the political apparatus in the country and clamp down upon basic political rights and civil liberties, such as a free press. These similarities and overlaps have led scholars to differing opinions regarding whether states such as Cuba and North Korea are authoritarian or totalitarian regimes.

There are, however, a variety of distinctions that set the two types of government firmly apart. One major difference is that the charisma of leaders in authoritarian governments tends to be lower than those in totalitarian systems. A second variance is that the rulers of an authoritarian state usually view themselves as individuals, whereas totalitarian leaders often believe that they are functionaries entrusted with carrying out their ideological mission. A third is that authoritarian rulers typically use their power for their own benefit, whereas totalitarian leaders aim for their use of power to affect the broader population. In addition, authoritarian governments frequently lack strong ideological motivators, possess low legitimacy in the eyes of the population, and employ limited and fraudulent pluralism to bolster their position as a result. In contrast, totalitarian regimes are usually dominated by powerful ideological drivers, possess much higher legitimacy among the population, and decline to employ quasi-pluralist charades to support their rule (Sondrol 1991).

Another major difference is that totalitarian governments strive to obtain total control over all aspects of the social, cultural, and political lives of the population over whom they rule (Arendt 1976, p. 326). As one mechanism to achieve this end, they typically create and maintain an extensive security, surveillance, and social control infrastructure that enable them to monitor and “correct” the everyday lives and actions of their subjects. This includes far-reaching secret policing, the embedding of political commissars and party cadres at all levels of military and civilian government that have monitoring, correcting, and if need be punishing acts of dissidence against the state, pervasive media censorship, neighborhood watch groups in which subjects are pushed to report one another for any nonconformity with the rule of the party, and propaganda that indoctrinates the population with pro-government dogma. In contrast, authoritarian governments have less interest or capability to control the lives of their citizens so fully. They may possess and employ surveillance, pro-government propaganda and censorship, and other forms of control, but these are substantially reduced both in terms of breadth of use and intensity of application.

The task of delineating authoritarianism from totalitarianism is complicated by a lack of conformity in how the two terms are defined. In their article on “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea,” for example, Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind label North Korea repeatedly as authoritarian and describe a variety of characteristics to support their claim. Yet the qualities of authoritarianism that they match North Korea against, including “restrictive social policies; manipulation of ideas and information; use of force; co-optation; manipulation of foreign governments; and institutional coup-proofing,” appear more closely aligned with traditional depictions of totalitarianism. They even refer directly to North Korea as a totalitarian state (Byman and Lind 2010).

Another reason why a blurred line often exists between the two regime types is that many totalitarian governments were founded on the back of a fervent revolution but later transitioned to authoritarianism after their initial leaders died and the ideological luster of their successors faded. This happened in the former Soviet Union, which shed many of its totalitarian features and became effectively an authoritarian state after the death of Stalin in 1953, before making the next transition into democracy in 1991. It also happened in China, which morphed from being a totalitarian state under Mao Zedong into an authoritarian one following his death in 1976 and succession by Deng Xiaoping. This represents an interesting occurrence because it could be argued that a totalitarian state is best equipped to become a democratic state if it first goes through a period of authoritarianism rather than attempting to leap from one extreme of the spectrum to the other. The challenges encountered by the United States when it tried to replace the partially totalitarian rule of the Baathist Party under Saddam Hussein with a democratic order in Iraq has been posited by some scholars as an example of the struggles that can ensue when a totalitarian regime is replaced with a democratic government without first going through a period of authoritarianism (Jabar 2003). Using this perspective, it would also be possible to argue that the current retrenchment away from democracy in Russia shows that the state had not transitioned fully enough through an authoritarian period for democracy to root itself in the political culture of the country. It could also be used to give hope to the idea that China will one day become a democratic state, once it has finished gestating through its current authoritarian period.

Conversely, it is also possible for the evolution to happen the other way, with authoritarian states transitioning into totalitarian ones. Some scholars have suggested that this sequence is currently happening in Russia, where Vladimir Putin has begun reconstructing a security state with extensive surveillance and secret police, planting and fostering ideological goals, and stimulating mass mobilization to support these goals (Kaylan 2016; Gessen 2017). Similar observations have been made about China today, with Xi Jinping systematically deconstructing the limited pluralist institutions that had been developed in post-Maoist China, dramatically increasing surveillance and curtailing freedom of speech, cementing a cult of personality around himself, and pushing ideological visions such as the China Dream and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (Editorial Board 2018; Gracie 2017).

The number of wholly nondemocratic authoritarian states has declined since the end of the Cold War, but there are nevertheless a substantial number of states that ostensibly report to be democratic but actually possess the trappings of authoritarian government. Elections are commonplace in nearly all countries around the world, for example, but in many cases these elections are rigged by the ruling party to exclude potential rivals, compel people to vote for the government rather than its opponents, silence any and all criticisms of the government in the press, and rewrite the results. Some examples of states that have been accused of this kind of hybrid democratic-authoritarian rule include Azerbaijan, which has been ruled by the New Azerbaijan Party since becoming a state in 1992; Belarus, which has been under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko since 1994; and Singapore, which has been ruled by the People’s Action Party since 1959 (Rumyantsev 2017; Hurynovich 2011; Toh 2015).

A third government system that possesses significant overlaps with authoritarianism is absolute monarchies. In both kinds of system, there exists an absence of democratic rule, no constitutional constraints upon the ruler, and the absolute authority of the ruler over the population. There are again, however, notable differences, including that in an absolute monarchy, power is usually legitimized as being concentrated in the hands of the monarchy as a result of lineage and, in some cases, divine right. In an authoritarian system, power is often justified by calls upon other sources of authority, including nationalism and xenophobia, threats to social disorder, and sectarianism.

This raises another issue which is the degree to which authoritarian governments possess more or less stability than their totalitarian, democratic, and absolute monarchical counterparts. This stems in part from the challenge of claiming legitimacy. While totalitarian regimes can point to the alleged benefits of their ideological doctrine, democratic governments are bolstered by the presence of a popular mandate, and absolute monarchies can point to tradition and divine right, authoritarian governments lack an equivalent claim to legitimacy. The authoritarian government in post-Maoist China has attempted to circumvent this problem by using economic strength as one of the primary validations of its rule, including pointing to the existence of a booming economy and rapidly increasing quality of life under their rule. Supporting their claims, they can point to annual GDP growth that was in the double digits for much of the 1980s and 1990s and has only now come back down to around 6% – a figure that is still over double that of most Western democracies. The difficulty with this strategy is that if the economy crumbles, then so too does the government’s case. It is for this reason that so many scholars have predicted the demise of China’s government if it should ever experience an economic bust or fail to supply its citizens with the resources they need to meet their needs. The fact that the Chinese government is aware of this risk helps to explain why they have been so determined to seek alternative forms of wealth generation, including through rapid expansion of foreign trade and forceful contestation or seizure of territorial areas with high resource availability.

Examples of Authoritarianism

One current-day example of an authoritarian regime can be found in Sudan, which has been ruled by Omar al-Bashir – the world’s only serving head of state who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court – and his National Congress Party since 1989 (Massoud 2013; Sudan 2017). Despite the existence of a limited amount of political parties and civic activity, the president continues to deploy violent repression against any potential opposition, enact and implement legislation to deprive people of their right to assemble and exercise free speech, and harass journalists and human rights organizations (Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies 2012, pp. 309–322). In addition to deploying repression against potential dissidents, the regime offers incentives to key groups to buy their support (Sudan 2017). It further has a long tradition of scapegoating various minority groups within the country and committing mass violence against them, including in the Darfur conflict when Sudanese militias were deployed in a horrifying ethnic cleansing campaign against South Sudan’s non-Arab population, in part as a political mechanism to focus the remainder of the population away from the harsh and authoritarian rule of Bashir and his supporters (Malantowicz 2010, p. 162).

An historical example of an authoritarian regime was Taiwan under the reign of the Guomindang Party from 1949 to 1990. Led by Chiang Kai-shek, the Guomindang fled to the island province and settled there in 1949 after losing the Chinese Revolutionary Civil War against the communists in mainland China. Yet, their presence was severely resented by large portions of the population from the outset. Proof of their low popularity can be seen by the fact that the indigenous Taiwanese population had risen up against the rule of Chiang Kai-shek, 2 years earlier 1947, an act that was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed by Guomindang security forces (Chiou 1992). Throughout the following 41 years, limited pluralism did exist within Taiwan, but the democratic system was effectively held under the monopoly of the Guomindang Party, and little if any real opposition was allowed to flourish. While the Guomindang loosely adhered to the three revolutionary principles of their founder, Sun Yat-sen, its leaders tended to value pragmatism over ideological doctrine. Power was centralized around first Chiang Kai-shek and then his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, but no real efforts were made to achieve mass mobilization over their agenda, with political control limited to suppressing potential rivals rather than seeking totalitarian levels of control over the population as a whole (Přibyla 2011, p. 76). Although the state did not formally scapegoat a minority population in the same way as the Sudanese, they did leverage the threat of Communist invasion as a mechanism to dampen dissent against the regime (Alagappa 2017, p. 12).

Conclusion

Authoritarianism is a challenging concept to define, with interpretations ranging from complex models involving multiple variants and components to more simplistic depictions of it as a catch-all term for all nondemocratic systems that do not fit easily into other categories. Retaining power represents the primary driving concern for most authoritarian governments, yet they lack the ideological vision, popular mandate, and claims to divine right and tradition that totalitarian regimes, democracies, and absolute monarchies use to promote their legitimacy to their population, which can undermine the durability of their rule. The degree to which authoritarianism is currently on the rise, rolling back decades of democratization, remains an area of both contestation and concern for many scholars and policy makers across the globe today.

Cross-References