Dictatorship

Category: Fields of research

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the absence or curtailment of democracy, political plurality, separations of power, rule of law, and civil liberties. Authoritarian states can be ruled by several different actors: dominant political party, autocratic leader, military, or traditional monarch.

Juan José Linz, in his article An Authoritarian Regime: Spain (1964) gave an definition of an authoritarian regime: “Authoritarian regimes are political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism; without elaborate and guiding ideology (but with distinctive mentalities); without intensive nor extensive political mobilization (exept some points in their development); and in which a leader (or occasionally a small group) exercises power within formaly ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones” (Linz: 1964, 297). He also introduces a typology of political regimes and divides them into totalitarian, authoritarian, and democratic. In his opinion, the authoritarian regime is not a transitional case between totalitarianism and democracy, but a stable institutional system that achieves obedience and control, legitimacy in its special way, and has a special way of recruiting elites.

In “Totalitarian and Democratic Regimes” (1975), Linz further developed the theoretical distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes have an ideology, a single mass party supplemented by other mobilization organizations, and are characterized by a strong concentration of power in one person and his assistants. Fascism, as a sub-type of totalitarian regimes, is also characterized by hyper-nationalism; anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and anti-communist populism. Fascism combines paramilitary tactics with elections, so fascist rule is based on a strange combination of legitimacy and violence. Authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, have no developed ideologies and have limited political pluralism. Authoritarian regimes do not spread elaborate and developed ideologies to their subjects but propagate what Linz calls "mentalities", ways of thinking and feeling that are more emotional than rational. Those in power in authoritarian regimes exercise that power within ill-defined but predictable limits.

Linz introduces a typology of authoritarian regimes: 1) bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes, 2) organic statism (authoritarian corporatism), 3) mobilizing authoritarian regimes, 4) postcolonial authoritarian regimes, 5) racial or ethnic "democracies," 6) incomplete totalitarian and pre-totalitarian and 7) post-totalitarian autocratic regimes. He concludes that the transition from an undemocratic regime to a democratic one cannot take place evolutionarily and gradually, but always requires a sudden and abrupt break with the old regime, in order to create a new, democratic one. In the same text, in addition to democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes, he introduces two other types - traditional oligarchy and semi-constitutional monarchy.

References:

Anderson P. Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974);

- Brazil Apart: 1964-2019 (2019);

Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarians (1951);

- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963a);

Aron. Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968, in French 1965);

Cardoso Autoritarismo e democratização (1975);

Cassirer. The Myth of the State (1946);

Frank. On Capitalist Underdevelopment: Economic Genocide in Chile (1975);

- Equilibrium on the Point of a Bayonet (1976);

Huntington. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991);

Linz. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (2000).