Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is the form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central energy to preserve the political status quo, in addition to reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, together with democratic voting. Political scientists pretend created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the dominance of a party or the military.

The political scientist Juan Linz, in an influential 1964 work, An Authoritarian Regime: Spain, defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities:

Minimally defined, an authoritarian government lacks free and competitive direct elections to legislatures, free and competitive direct or indirect elections for executives, or both. broadly defined, authoritarian states put countries that lack civil liberties such(a) as freedom of religion, or countries in which the government and the opposition defecate not alternate in power to direct or build at least once following free elections. Authoritarian states might contain nominally democratic institutions such(a) as political parties, legislatures and elections which are managed to entrench authoritarian a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. and can feature fraudulent, non-competitive elections. Since 1946, the share of authoritarian states in the international political system increased until the mid-1970s but declined from then until the year 2000.

Typologies

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

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.

Authoritarian regimes are also sometimes subcategorized by whether they are 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 increase Argentina under Juan Perón, 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:

Lai and Slater argue that single‐party regimes are better than military regimes at coding institutions e.g. mass mobilization, patronage networks advertising coordination of elites that are powerful at continuing the regime's incumbency and diminishing domestic challengers; Lai and Slater also argue that military regimes more often initiate military conflicts or adopt other "desperate measures" to submits control as compared to single‐party regimes.

John Duckitt suggests a association 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 far more durable than other kinds of authoritarian regimes.

Authoritarianism and democracy are not necessarily essential opposites and may be thought of as poles at opposite ends of a scale, so that this is the 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 loosely 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 attribute such as the rule of law, protections for minority groups, an independent judiciary and the real separation of powers.

A further distinction that liberal democracies have rarely featured war with one another; research has extended the image 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 much less democide or murder by government. Those were also moderately developed nations previously 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 any associated with lower corruption.

A 2006 examine 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 inspect 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, number one responders, social resilience, and specialized medical care" which averts casualties. Magen also stated that terrorism in closed autocracies sharply increased starting in 2013.

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 represent and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but ... incumbents' abuse of the state places them at a significant benefit vis-à-vis their opponents." The term was coined by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way 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 one or more of the three characteristics of democracies such as free elections i.e. elections untainted by substantial fraud or voter intimidation; certificate of civil liberties i.e. the freedom of speech, press and link and an even playing field in terms of access to resources, the media and legal recourse.

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