What is authoritarianism?
Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong, centralized power and limited political freedoms, in which citizens have little or no ability to constrain the government through free elections, independent courts, or a free press, though it does not necessarily require a single all-encompassing ideology or total control over private and civic life.
Last reviewed . Not yet independently reviewed.
Core tenets
- Centralized executive power
- Political authority is concentrated in a strong executive or small ruling group, with weak or absent checks from a legislature or judiciary.
- Restricted political pluralism
- Meaningful political opposition is limited, controlled, or banned, though some authoritarian systems permit limited, tightly managed political competition.
- Limited civil liberties
- Free press, free assembly, and free expression are curtailed to varying degrees, particularly where they might challenge the ruling power.
- No single required ideology
- Unlike totalitarianism, authoritarian rule does not require a comprehensive official ideology or an attempt to control all aspects of private and civic life; the core requirement is simply concentrated, unaccountable political power.
How it works in practice
Authoritarian systems vary widely in how tightly they control daily life, ranging from tightly closed systems to ones that permit substantial private and economic freedom alongside restricted politics.
- Managed or limited elections
- Some authoritarian governments hold elections, but structure them, through candidate restrictions, media control, or fraud, so that a real transfer of power is unlikely.
- Security apparatus
- Police and military forces are commonly used to suppress organized political opposition and enforce compliance with the ruling power.
Common variants
- Personalist authoritarianism
- Power is concentrated around a single leader personally.
- Military authoritarianism
- Power is held by military officers, typically following a coup.
- Competitive authoritarianism
- The government holds real but heavily skewed multi-party elections, retaining enough restrictions on the opposition to make losing power unlikely.
What it is often confused with
Authoritarianism is often used as a general label for any disliked government, but its specific technical meaning is the concentration of political power with weak accountability, distinct from totalitarianism's additional requirement of a comprehensive ideology and control over private life.
Criticisms and debates
Discussion of authoritarianism as a category mostly concerns classification and causes, rather than a live debate over its merits, since few contemporary traditions defend it as a positive ideal in its own right.
Democratic-accountability critique
Argues that weak checks on executive power remove the mechanisms needed to correct policy failures or abuses, regardless of any short-term stability the arrangement might provide.
Response: Some historical arguments for authoritarian governance have claimed that a strong, unified executive can act decisively during crises that fragmented, contested politics might slow; this argument is treated with significant skepticism by most contemporary political science, given the difficulty of isolating governance structure from other causes of development outcomes.
Classification critique
Political scientists note that authoritarianism spans an extremely wide range of actual governments, from tightly closed systems to competitive-authoritarian states with real, if constrained, political contestation, making the single label imprecise for comparative analysis.
Response: Scholars commonly respond by using more granular sub-categories, such as those referenced above, rather than treating authoritarianism as a single uniform type.
Historical examples
- Chile under Augusto Pinochet, 1973 to 1990
- A military-led authoritarian government following a coup, commonly cited as an example of personalist and military authoritarian rule.
- Singapore under the People's Action Party, since 1959
- Frequently cited by political scientists as a competitive-authoritarian system, holding regular elections within a framework that has made a change in ruling party difficult.
Sources
- 1.Linz, Juan. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. 2000.
- 2.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Political Legitimacy.
- 3.Encyclopaedia Britannica. Authoritarianism.