Chapter 6: Authoritarian Regimes

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.