Authoritarianism
Order, stability and effective government take priority over political competition, civil liberties and checks on executive power.
What does this mean?
Authoritarianism is not a programme for what a government should do but a claim about how it should be constrained: minimally. Power is concentrated in a leader, party or military; elections are absent, restricted or managed; courts, press and opposition are subordinate rather than independent. Its own justification is usually stability and capacity — that a government free of obstruction can deliver order, security and development faster than a contested one, particularly in a poor or divided country.
Unlike fascism it has no mobilising ideology of national rebirth and does not usually require mass enthusiasm; it is content with acquiescence. It has appeared across the political spectrum — military governments, one-party socialist states, personal and monarchical rule — which is why it appears here as a position on the power axis rather than as a left or right doctrine. The empirical record does not support its central claim: authoritarian states show far wider variance in economic performance than democracies, with the failures as extreme as the successes, and they lack any reliable mechanism for removing a leader who is doing badly.
Where did it come from?
The most common form of government in recorded history, and the norm rather than the exception before the twentieth century. Modern examples include military governments in Latin America and Asia, one-party states, and the "electoral authoritarian" systems in which elections are held but cannot be lost.
Major thinkers
- Thomas Hobbes
- Carl Schmitt
- Juan Linz
- Samuel Huntington
Historical figures
- Francisco Franco
- Augusto Pinochet
- Park Chung-hee
What it looks like today
- Single-party and military governments in several regions
- Electoral authoritarian systems where opposition can compete but cannot win
- Emergency rule extended indefinitely beyond the emergency that justified it
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
Unfixed. Authoritarian governments have run market economies, planned economies and everything between.
The state in the economy
Personal liberty
Tradition and change
Nation and the world
Religion and the state
Power and its limits
At the concentrated-authority pole. This is the defining feature: no effective check on the executive.
Environment and growth
Crime and punishment
Its strongest arguments
- Its supporters point to states that achieved rapid growth under authoritarian rule, particularly in East Asia.
- Governments free of veto points can act decisively in genuine emergencies.
- In societies with deep and violent divisions, its defenders argue that open competition can escalate conflict rather than resolve it.
Its strongest criticisms
- There is no reliable way to remove a leader who is failing, so errors compound instead of being corrected.
- Without a free press, governments do not receive accurate information about their own country — a principal reason famines occur under such systems and not under democracies.
- The power used against opponents is available for use against anyone, and there is no recourse when it is.
- The claimed growth advantage does not hold up across cases: for every authoritarian success there are several authoritarian collapses.
Common misconceptions
- That it is a right-wing phenomenon. Authoritarian governments have been socialist, capitalist, religious and secular.
- That authoritarian states are more efficient. Their economic outcomes vary far more than those of democracies, and famines have occurred almost exclusively under governments with no free press.
- That it is the same as fascism. Fascism requires mass mobilisation and an ideology of national rebirth; ordinary authoritarianism requires only that people stay quiet.
A caveat
Overlap with this entry usually reflects answers about order, security and decisive government rather than support for dictatorship. This is a description of a system of rule and is not presented as a recommendation.
Sources
- Juan Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes · 1975
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom · 1999
On the relationship between famine, press freedom and democratic accountability.
- V-Dem Democracy Report · V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · 2024 Source (opens in a new tab)