Authoritarianism

Typologies

According to Yale professor Juan José Linz, there are three main types of political regimes today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes (with hybrid regimes).

According to University of Michigan professor Dan Slater, modern forms of authoritarianism are fundamentally dissimilar from historical forms of nondemocratic rule. He links modern authoritarianism to the era of mass politics, which began with the French Revolution.

Similar terms

• An authoritarian regime has "a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people". Unlike totalitarian states, they will allow social and economic institutions not under governmental control, and tend to rely on passive mass acceptance rather than active popular support.
• An Autocracy is a state/government in which one person possesses "unlimited power".
• A Totalitarian state is "based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)". and are ruled by a single ruling party made up of loyal supporters. Unlike autocracies, which "seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition", totalitarian states are characterized by an official ideology, which "seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition", and "seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination".
• A Fascist state is autocratic and based on a political philosophy/movement, (such as that of the Fascisti of pre-WWII Italy) "that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition".
• Authoritarian personality is the personality type treating authority figures with obedience. A study found evidence for both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism.
• Authoritarian ethics views an authority can determine the only true ethics.

Subtypes

Several subtypes of authoritarian regimes have been identified by Linz and others. Linz identified the two most basic subtypes as traditional authoritarian regimes and bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes:

• Traditional authoritarian regimes are those "in which the ruling authority (generally a single person)" is maintained in power "through a combination of appeals to traditional legitimacy, patron-client ties and repression, which is carried out by an apparatus bound to the ruling authority through personal loyalties." An example is Ethiopia under Haile Selassie I.
• Bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes are those "governed by a coalition of military officers and technocrats who act pragmatically (rather than ideologically) within the limits of their bureaucratic mentality." Mark J. Gasiorowski suggests that it is best to distinguish "simple military authoritarian regimes" from "bureaucratic authoritarian regimes" in which "a powerful group of technocrats uses the state apparatus to try to rationalize and develop the economy" such South Korea under Park Chung-hee.

According to Barbara Geddes, there are seven typologies of authoritarian regimes: dominant party regimes, military regime, personalist regimes, monarchies, oligarchic regimes, indirect military regimes, or hybrids of the first three.

Subtypes of authoritarian regimes identified by Linz are corporatist or organic-statistic, racial and ethnic "democracy" and post-totalitarian.

• Corporatist authoritarian regimes "are those in which corporatism institutions are used extensively by the state to coopt and demobilize powerful interest groups." This type has been studied most extensively in Latin America.
• Racial and ethnic "democracies" are those in which "certain racial or ethnic groups enjoy full democratic rights while others are largely or entirely denied those rights", such as in South Africa under apartheid.
• Post-totalitarian authoritarian regimes are those in which totalitarian institutions (such as the party, secret police and state-controlled mass media) remain, but where "ideological orthodoxy has declined in favor of routinization, repression has declined, the state's top leadership is less personalized and more secure, and the level of mass mobilization has declined substantially." Examples include the Russian Federation and Soviet Eastern Bloc states in the mid-1980s. The post-Mao Zedong People's Republic of China was viewed as post-totalitarian in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a limited degree of increase in pluralism and civil society. however, in the 2010s, particularly after Xi Jinping succeeded as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and rose to power in 2012, Chinese state repression sharply increased, aided by digital control and mass surveillance.

Authoritarian regimes are also sometimes subcategorized by whether they are more personalistic or populist. Personalistic authoritarian regimes are characterized by arbitrary rule and authority exercised "mainly through patronage networks and coercion rather than through institutions and formal rules." Personalistic authoritarian regimes have been seen in post-colonial Africa. By contrast, populist authoritarian regimes "are mobilizational regimes in which a strong, charismatic, manipulative leader rules through a coalition involving key lower-class groups." Examples include Argentina under Juan Perón, Russia under Vladimir Putin, Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

A typology of authoritarian regimes by political scientists Brian Lai and Dan Slater includes four categories:

• machine (oligarchic party dictatorships);
• bossism (autocratic party dictatorships);
• juntas (oligarchic military dictatorships); and
• strongman (autocratic military dictatorships).

Lai and Slater argue that single-party regimes are better than military regimes at developing institutions (e.g. mass mobilization, patronage networks and coordination of elites) that are effective at continuing the regime's incumbency and diminishing domestic challengers; Lai and Slater also argue that military regimes more often initiate military conflicts or undertake other "desperate measures" to maintain control compared to single-party regimes.

John Duckitt suggests a link between authoritarianism and collectivism, asserting that both stand in opposition to individualism. Duckitt writes that both authoritarianism and collectivism submerge individual rights and goals to group goals, expectations and conformities.

According to Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, authoritarian regimes that are created in social revolutions are much more durable than other kinds of authoritarian regimes.

Authoritarianism and democracy

Authoritarianism and democracy are not necessarily fundamental opposites and may be thought of as poles at opposite ends of a scale, so that it is possible for some democracies to possess authoritarian elements, and for an authoritarian system to have democratic elements. Authoritarian regimes may also be partly responsive to citizen grievances, although this is generally only regarding grievances that do not undermine the stability of the regime. An illiberal democracy, or procedural democracy, is distinguished from liberal democracy, or substantive democracy, in that illiberal democracies lack features such as the rule of law, protections for minority groups, an independent judiciary and the real separation of powers.

A further distinction is that liberal democracies have rarely made war with one another; research has extended the theory and finds that more democratic countries tend to have few wars (sometimes called militarized interstate disputes) causing fewer battle deaths with one another and that democracies have far fewer civil wars.

Research shows that the democratic nations have significantly less democide or murder by government. Those were also moderately developed nations before applying liberal democratic policies. Research by the World Bank suggests that political institutions are extremely important in determining the prevalence of corruption and that parliamentary systems, political stability and freedom of the press are all associated with lower corruption.

A 2006 study by economist Alberto Abadie has concluded that terrorism is most common in nations with intermediate political freedom. The nations with the least terrorism are the most and least democratic nations, and that "transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism." Studies in 2013 and 2017 similarly found a nonlinear relationship between political freedom and terrorism, with the most terrorist attacks occurring in partial democracies and the fewest in "strict autocracies and full-fledged democracies." A 2018 study by Amichai Magen demonstrated that liberal democracies and polyarchies not only suffer fewer terrorist attacks as compared to other regime types, but also suffer fewer casualties in terrorist attacks as compared to other regime types, which may be attributed to higher-quality democracies' responsiveness to their citizens' demands, including "the desire for physical safety", resulting in "investment in intelligence, infrastructure protection, first responders, social resilience, and specialized medical care" which averts casualties. Magen also stated that terrorism in closed autocracies sharply increased starting in 2013.

Within national democratic governments, there may be subnational authoritarian enclaves; prominent examples include the Southern United States after Reconstruction, as well as areas of contemporary Argentina and Mexico.

Competitive authoritarian regimes

Another type of authoritarian regime is the competitive authoritarian regime, a type of civilian regime that arose in the post-Cold War era. In a competitive authoritarian regime, "formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but ... incumbents' abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents." The term was coined by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way in a 2002 Journal of Democracy article, and later expanded upon in their 2010 book of the same name, to discuss a type of hybrid regime that emerged during and after the Cold War.

Competitive authoritarian regimes differ from fully authoritarian regimes in that elections are regularly held, the opposition can openly operate without a high risk of exile or imprisonment and "democratic procedures are sufficiently meaningful for opposition groups to take them seriously as arenas through which to contest for power." Competitive authoritarian regimes lack core democratic criteria: free elections, robust civil liberties, and a level playing field.

Authoritarianism and fascism

Authoritarianism is considered a core concept of fascism and scholars agree that a fascist regime is foremost an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. While authoritarianism is a defining characteristic of fascism, scholars argue that more distinguishing traits are needed to make an authoritarian regime fascist.

Authoritarian socialism

Authoritarian socialism, or socialism from above, is an economic and political system supporting some form of socialist economics while rejecting political pluralism. As a term, it represents a set of economic-political systems describing themselves as "socialist" and rejecting the liberal-democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and freedom of expression, either due to fear of counter-revolution or as a means to socialist ends. Journalists and scholars have characterised several countries, most notably the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies, as authoritarian socialist states.

Libertarian authoritarianism

Multiple scholars have identified a form of libertarian authoritarianism emerging in the early 21st century. Wendy Brown describes it as emerging from neoliberalism, opposing both democracy and public institutions while defining freedom in terms of speech and actions that promote homophobia, white supremacy and male privilege. Other scholars have connected it to QAnon and to the Argentinian Presidency of Javier Milei.

Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, in Offended Freedom: The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism, describe libertarian authoritarianism as arising from a backlash to government efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and, more broadly, against the increasing complexity of the world, ultimately leading to hostility towards democracy. Writing in Jacobin and New Statesman, Amlinger and Nachtwey define libertarian authoritarians as those who believe in the abolition of the democratic state on the basis of its restrictions on individual freedoms, and "consider the democratic state itself, the authorities and their regulations, to be invasive and harmful"; they described the fundamental basis of libertarian authoritarianism to be based in "post-truth politics", and that in the late-modern era, believers validate their opinions "with proto-scientific evidence, rumours, conspiracy theories and fake news". They describe neoliberalism as an additional factor contributing towards the recent rise of the ideology. Individuals who identify as modern adherents to the ideology include Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Javier Milei, having merged their libertarianism with their "authoritarian tendencies".

Authoritarianism and totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a label used by various political scientists to characterize the most tyrannical strain of authoritarian systems; in which the ruling elite, often subservient to a dictator, exert near-total control of the social, political, economic, cultural and religious aspects of society in the territories under its governance.

Linz distinguished new forms of authoritarianism from personalistic dictatorships and totalitarian states, taking Francoist Spain as an example. Unlike personalistic dictatorships, new forms of authoritarianism have institutionalized representation of a variety of actors (in Spain's case, including the military, the Catholic Church, Falange, monarchists, technocrats and others). Unlike totalitarian states, the regime relies on passive mass acceptance rather than popular support. According to Juan Linz the distinction between an authoritarian regime and a totalitarian one is that an authoritarian regime seeks to suffocate politics and political mobilization while totalitarianism seeks to control and use them. Authoritarianism primarily differs from totalitarianism in that social and economic institutions exist that are not under governmental control. Building on the work of Yale political scientist Juan Linz, Paul C. Sondrol of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has examined the characteristics of authoritarian and totalitarian dictators and organized them in a chart:

Sondrol argues that while both authoritarianism and totalitarianism are forms of autocracy, they differ in three key dichotomies:

(1) Unlike their bland and generally unpopular authoritarian brethren, totalitarian dictators develop a charismatic "mystique" and a mass-based, pseudo-democratic interdependence with their followers via the conscious manipulation of a prophetic image.

(2) Concomitant role conceptions differentiate totalitarians from authoritarians. Authoritarians view themselves as individual beings largely content to control and often maintain the status quo. Totalitarian self-conceptions are largely teleological. The tyrant is less a person than an indispensable function to guide and reshape the universe.

(3) Consequently, the utilisation of power for personal aggrandizement is more evident among authoritarians than totalitarians. Lacking the binding appeal of ideology, authoritarians support their rule by a mixture of instilling fear and granting rewards to loyal collaborators, engendering a kleptocracy.

Compared to totalitarianism, "the authoritarian state still maintains a certain distinction between state and society. It is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, invades private life and asphyxiates it." Another distinction is that "authoritarianism is not animated by utopian ideals in the way totalitarianism is. It does not attempt to change the world and human nature." Carl Joachim Friedrich writes that "a totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a secret police, and monopoly control of ... industrial mass society" are the three features of totalitarian regimes that distinguish them from other autocracies.

Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues "political passivity and civic disengagement" are "key features" of authoritarianism, while totalitarianism relies on "mass mobilization, terror and homogeneity of beliefs".

Economic effects

In 2010, Dani Rodrik wrote that democracies outperform autocracies in terms of long-term economic growth, economic stability, adjustments to external economic shocks, human capital investment, and economic equality. A 2019 study by Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, and James A. Robinson found that democracy increases GDP per capita by about 20% over the long-term. According to Amartya Sen, no functioning liberal democracy has ever suffered a large-scale famine. Studies suggest that several health indicators (life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality) have a stronger and more significant association with democracy than they have with GDP per capita, size of the public sector or income inequality. States that undergo democratic backsliding are more likely to face downgrades in their sovereign bond ratings.

One of the few areas that some scholars have theorized that autocracies may have an advantage, is in industrialization. In the 20th century, Seymour Martin Lipset argued that low-income authoritarian regimes have certain technocratic "efficiency-enhancing advantages" over low-income democracies that gives authoritarian regimes an advantage in economic development. By contrast, Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle and Michael M. Weinstein (2005) argue that democracies "realize superior development performance" over authoritarianism, pointing out that poor democracies are more likely to have steadier economic growth and less likely to experience economic and humanitarian catastrophes (such as refugee crises) than authoritarian regimes; that civil liberties in democracies act as a curb on corruption and misuse of resources; and that democracies are more adaptable than authoritarian regimes.

Military effects

According to Allan C. Stam and Dan Reiter, liberal democracies have an advantage in battlefield performance over non-democracies and illiberal democracies. They argue that this democratic advantage is derived from the fact that democratic soldiers fight harder, democratic states tend to ally together in war, and democracies can employ more economic resources towards combat. Due to elevated fears against military coups against authoritarian regimes, authoritarian regimes may also put loyalists in the military. This may reduce military effectiveness as loyalty is prioritized over experience when filling key positions within the military. However, critics argue that democracy itself makes little difference in war and that some other factors, such as overall power, determine whether a country would achieve victory or face defeat. In some cases, such as the Vietnam War, democracy may even have contributed to defeat. Jasen Castillo argues that autocratic states may in certain circumstances have an advantage over democracies; for example, authoritarian regimes may have ideologies that require unconditional loyalty, which may contribute to military cohesion.

Historical trends

Pre-World War II

Authoritarian rule before World War II includes short-lived dictatorships and has been claimed to be understudied.

Post-World War II anti-authoritarianism

Both World War II (ending in 1945) and the Cold War (ending in 1991) resulted in the replacement of authoritarian regimes by either democratic regimes or regimes that were less authoritarian.

World War II saw the defeat of the Axis powers by the Allied powers. All the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan) had totalitarian or authoritarian governments, and two of the three were replaced by governments based on democratic constitutions. The Allied powers were an alliance of Democratic states and (later) the Communist Soviet Union. In Western Europe, the initial post-war era embraced pluralism and freedom of expression in areas that had been under control of authoritarian regimes. The memory of fascism and Nazism was denigrated. The new Federal Republic of Germany banned its expression. In reaction to the centralism of the Nazi state, the new constitution of West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) exercised "separation of powers" and placed "law enforcement firmly in the hands" of the sixteen Länder or states of the republic, not with the federal German government, at least not at first.

Culturally there was also a strong sense of anti-authoritarianism based on anti-fascism in Western Europe. This was attributed to the active resistance from occupation and to fears arising from the development of superpowers. Anti-authoritarianism also became associated with countercultural and bohemian movements such as the Beat Generation in the 1950s, the hippies in the 1960s and punks in the 1970s.

In South America, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay moved away from dictatorships to democracy between 1982 and 1990.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991, the other authoritarian/totalitarian "half" of the Allied Powers of World War II collapsed. This led not so much to revolt against authority in general, but to the belief that authoritarian states (and state control of economies) were outdated. The idea that "liberal democracy was the final form toward which all political striving was directed" became very popular in Western countries and was celebrated in Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man. According to Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., "all the new states that stumbled out of the ruins of the Soviet bloc, except Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, seemed indeed to be moving towards democracy in the early 1990s" as were the countries of East Central Europe and the Balkans.

In December 2010, the Arab Spring arose in response to unrest over economic stagnation but also in opposition to oppressive authoritarian regimes, first in Tunisia, and spreading to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere. Regimes were toppled in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and partially in Yemen while other countries saw riots, civil wars or insurgencies. Most Arab Spring revolutions failed to lead to enduring democratization. A decade after the Arab Spring, Tunisia stood as the sole, albeit fragile, democratic success story, while Egypt reverted to authoritarian military rule, and Libya, Syria, and Yemen descended into catastrophic civil wars.

21st century

Since 2005, observers noted what some have called a "democratic recession", although some such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have disputed that there was a significant democratic decline before 2013. In 2018, the Freedom House declared that from 2006 to 2018 "113 countries" around the world showed "a net decline" in "political rights and civil liberties" while "only 62" experienced "a net improvement." Its 2020 report marked the fourteenth consecutive year of declining scores. By 2020, all countries marked as "not free" by Freedom House had also developed practices of transnational repression, aiming to police and control dissent beyond state borders.

Writing in 2018, American political journalist David Frum stated: "The hopeful world of the very late 20th century – the world of NAFTA and an expanding NATO; of the World Wide Web 1.0 and liberal interventionism; of the global spread of democracy under leaders such as Václav Havel and Nelson Mandela – now looks battered and delusive."

Michael Ignatieff wrote that Fukuyama's idea of liberalism vanquishing authoritarianism "now looks like a quaint artifact of a vanished unipolar moment" and Fukuyama himself expressed concern. By 2018, only one Arab Spring uprising (that in Tunisia) resulted in a transition to constitutional democratic governance and a "resurgence of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism" in the region was dubbed the Arab Winter.

Various explanations have been offered for the new spread of authoritarianism. They include the downside of globalization, and the subsequent rise of populism and neo-nationalism, and the success of the Beijing Consensus, i.e. the authoritarian model of the People's Republic of China. In countries such as the United States, factors blamed for the growth of authoritarianism include the 2008 financial crisis and slower real wage growth as well as social media's elimination of so-called "gatekeepers" of knowledge – the equivalent of disintermediation in economics – so that a large fraction of the population considers to be opinion what were once "viewed as verifiable facts" – including everything from the danger of global warming to the preventing the spread of disease through vaccination – and considers to be fact what are actually only unproven fringe opinions.

In United States politics, white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi skinheads, and adherents of the Christian Identity, ideology have long operated as a loose network. In the internet age, far-right extremists throughout the U.S. and much of the West have consolidated further into a movement known as the Alt-Right, which has inspired numerous terrorist attacks while at the same time increasing the mainstream appeal of white supremacism. According to Azani et al.:

The current resurgence of far-right ideology may be explained by a variety of factors, primarily, the strategic adjustment of white supremacists to soften overtly racist rhetoric in order to appeal to a wider audience. This new discourse attempts to normalize white supremacy, developing intellectual and theoretical foundations for racism based on the notion that the white race is at risk of eradication, threatened by the growing population of immigrants and people of colour. The pre-existing, offensive white supremacist, fascist and neo-Nazi ideas that drove the white power movement of the twentieth century were thus rebranded through a new innocuous defensive frame of white victimhood. As such, the new strategy of racist rhetoric has allowed the movement to co-opt mainstream political debates surrounding immigration and globalization, drawing large audiences through a deliberate obfuscation of the underlying ideology.

Far-right extremism has played a key role in promoting the Great Replacement and White genocide conspiracy theories, and an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks, and societal collapse in order to achieve the building of a white ethnostate. While many contemporary extreme far-right groups eschew the hierarchical structure of other authoritarian political organizations, they often explicitly promote cultural authoritarianism alongside xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, homophobia and misogyny, as well as authoritarian government interventions against perceived societal problems.

Contemporary

There is no one consensus definition of authoritarianism, but several annual measurements are attempted. States characterized as authoritarian are typically not rated as democracies by The Economist Democracy Index or as 'free' by Freedom House's Freedom in the World index, and do not reach a high score on V-Dem Democracy Indices.

United States

According to an April 2025 survey, known as Bright Line Watch, of more than 500 U.S.-based political scientists, the vast majority think the United States is moving from liberal democracy to a form of authoritarianism.

During Donald Trump's second presidency, the Trump administration took a series of actions using the government to target his political opponents and civil society. News outlets described his actions as part of his promised "retribution" and "revenge" campaign, within the context of a strongly personalist and leader-centered conception of politics. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly stated that he had "every right" to go after his political opponents.

He undertook a massive expansion of presidential power under a maximalist interpretation of the unitary executive theory. Several of his actions ignored or violated federal laws, regulations, and the Constitution according to American legal scholars, the Government Accountability Office, and federal judges. He threatened, signed executive actions against, and ordered investigations into his political opponents, critics, and organizations aligned with the Democratic Party. He politicized the civil service, undertaking mass layoffs of government employees to recruit workers more loyal to himself. He ended the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence, weaponizing it and ordering it to target his political enemies. He utilized several government agencies to retaliate against his political enemies and continued filing personal lawsuits against his political opponents, companies, and news organizations that angered him.

By July 2025, Trump had extracted more than $1.2 billion in settlements in a "cultural crackdown" against a variety of institutions that largely chose to settle rather than fight back. He engaged in an unprecedented targeting of law firms and lawyers that previously represented positions adverse to himself. Trump targeted higher education by demanding it give federal oversight of curriculum and targeted activists, legal immigrants, tourists, and students with visas who expressed criticism of his policies or engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. He also detained and deported United States citizens.

Trump's actions against civil society have been described by legal experts and political scientists as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding, as well as negatively impacting freedom of the press, free speech, and the rule of law.