The Social Science Encyclopedia, Second Edition
authoritarian and totalitarian systems
Authoritarian systems are political regimes which are characterized by a concentration of political power in the hands of a small group of elites who are not in any institutional sense accountable to the public. Thus, they lack those traits which distinguish liberal democratic orders—in particular, extensive civil liberties, rule of law, inter-party competition and representative government.
There are many forms of authoritarian government. Rule can be by the military or by civilian politicians, and political power can be exercised directly by individuals or through a political party. Perhaps the most important distinction among authoritarian regimes, however, is on the dimensions of despotism and penetration (Mann 1986). Despotism refers to the extent to which political power is capricious and exercised without constraint, and penetration refers to the extent to which the authoritarian state orchestrates everyday life. At one end of this continuum would be one-party dictatorships which none the less have limits on the exercise of political power and violence and which have limits as well on the reach of the state, for example, Mexico. At the other end of the continuum would be totalitarian states, such as we find in its purist form in Stalinist Russia from 1927 to 1953. Totalitarianism features an interlocking and highly centralized party-state directorate which uses terror, detailed organization and ideological indoctrination to control virtually all aspects of social life. In practice, this means control not only over the selection of the political elite and the policy agenda, but also over the society and the economy through control over the media, elaborate socialization of the public, prevention of any organization autonomous from the party-state structure, and, finally, ownership and planning of the economy (Arendt 1951; Friedrich and Brzezinski 1956). Thus, in totalitarianism the familiar boundaries separating politics, economics and society disappear. This allows for a degree of penetration and despotism which is distinctive to this modern form of dictatorship.
The rise of states as forms of political organization were accompanied by the rise of authoritarianism. In this sense, authoritarianism is as old as the state itself, because it was through authoritarian political practices that states began to form (Anderson 1974; Tilly 1975). However, beginning in the eighteenth century in Europe, states began to differentiate themselves in terms of the degree of their accountability to the public. This process—which eventually led in England and France, for example, to the rise of democracy—has produced a spirited set of debates about the rise of democracy versus the consolidation of authoritarian rule in fascist and communist forms (Moore 1967; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992).
Debates have also flourished on two other issues. One is why some democracies evolve into authoritarian systems (Collier 1979; Linz and Stepan 1978; Luebbert 1991). The other is why some authoritarian systems collapse and give way to more liberalized political orders (Bunce 1985; Di Palma 1990).
Valerie Bunce
Cornell University
References
Anderson, P. (1974) Lineages of the Absolutist State, London.
Arendt, H. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York.
Bunce, V. (1985) ‘The empire strikes back: the evolution of the Eastern Bloc from a Soviet asset to a Soviet liability’, International Organization 39.
Collier, D. (1979) The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, Princeton, NJ.
Di Palma, G. (1990) To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions, Berkeley, CA.
Friedrich, K. and Brzezinski, Z. (1956) Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, MA.
Linz, J. and Stepan, A. (1978) The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Baltimore, MD.
Luebbert, G. (1991) Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origin of Regimes in Interwar Europe, Oxford.
Mann, M. (1986) Sources of Social Power, Cambridge, UK.
Moore, B. (1967) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston, MA.
Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E.H. and Stevens, J.D. (1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy, Chicago.
Tilly, C. (1975) The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton, NJ.
See also: communism; democratization; fascism; military regimes.
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