Government
AP Comparative Government and Politics
democratization
Political cultures
Rules of the regime
laws
government
authoritarian
theocracy
One-Party Rule
dominant-party system
Military Rule
coup d’état
Personal Rule
TYPES OF AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES
Personality Cult
totalitarianism
Power
Corruption
patron-clientelism
state corporatism
Cooptation
Intimidation of Political Opposition
Authoritarian regimes
Civil society
independent civil society
Restrictions on Civil Society
State Control of the Media
University/Undergrad
Authoritarian rule
has existed since the beginning of human government.
Democracy
is a political system that has existed only since the twentieth century.
Authoritarian regimes
are distinguished by the way they invest political authority into a small group of individuals who exercise this authority without any constitutional responsibility to the public.
Totalitarian regimes
attempt to control and dominate every aspect of their people’s lives, including their career choices, family life, and their political and religious beliefs.
Statism
or the tendency to trust in the state for security and provision of basic needs, for example, emerged in Russia after centuries of foreign invasion and oppression.
coercion
which essentially means force, to compel people to submit to the regime.
Civil society
describes all the various organized groups people choose to join for the sake of a common interest.
independent civil society
that can organize freely is a critical component of liberal democracy, as it allows the people to express their interests, organize to call attention to issues of concern, and demand state action at times.
Corruption
is a concept closely related to patron-clientelism and patron-client networks.
Power
is the ability to compel or otherwise motivate people to take actions that they otherwise would not.
Personality Cult
More common to totalitarianism, some authoritarian regimes will attempt to portray the leader as some sort of near perfected version of the nation’s aspirations, embodying the wisdom, strength, and spirit of the people more generally.
Personal Rule
Systems based on personal rule do not possess any clear rules or regime boundaries to constrain the ruler.
Military Rule
usually comes as the result of a coup d’état (sometimes called a coup, for short), which occurs when the military of a particular state decides to remove the civil authorities from within and take control of the state itself.
One-Party Rule
In a one-party state, also known as a dominant-party system, only one political party is either legally or practically able to compete for and exercise political power.
theocracy
is rule by God, but practically, the power is held by religious leaders, and so a theocratic regime entrusts rule of the state to clerical religious authorities simultaneously with their religious role.