authoritarian government

authoritarian government

The Impact of Authoritarian Governments on Society and Politics

1. Introduction to Authoritarianism

Authoritarian politics, like all strategic interactions, takes place within an institutional environment. Governments and political oppositions, as institutional institutions, have rational preferences and respond to their settings. In influential and identifiable ways both politically and civilly, the institutional context shapes their decision-making. The organization and practices of oppositions, and consequently the methods governments themselves employ, their probability of success and ideas concerning the appropriateness of rebel threats and exchanges all depend on the political system in which parties are occupying their roles. Despite the argument waged by other scholars in this debate, the nature of the country’s political system is often a significant and substantial determinant of the form and distribution of political violence and campaigns. Autocracies take a variety of forms and as a result of societal and historically driven considerations, different authoritarian systems have diverse political institutions. However, all autocracies have de jure ideological and practical clauses that restrict officials from being elected. They all share the same property of being autocracies.

Authoritarian regimes preside over the governance of a substantial majority of the world’s states and frequently command a grander share of the world’s populace. These countries operate under ruling organizations with the most power concentrated in centralized, highly unaccountable leaderships. A system of institutional regulations, such as those seen in modern democracies, is largely absent or weak. When present, these are employed, biased, or simply an extension of the autocratic leadership. Authoritarian governments remain in power through a variety of methods, including the control of the military, coercion, the setting of legal constraints on the regulation of political activities, identity, and the limitation or annihilation of political alternatives. Principles such as competitive, regular elections, public participation, and opposition intervention that are basic to democratic ideology are antithetical to an authoritarian regime’s existence and contradictory to the methods by which these autocracies navigate society.

2. Historical Context and Evolution of Authoritarian Regimes

Data on individual behavior, party competition, religion, and autocratic authoritarian societies reveal regression to the mean in these categories, such as less binding constraints on citizen agency and association as societies evolve from autocratic toward democratic rule, while simultaneously the demand for public services, financial institutions, and political outreach is rising in both country types. An authoritarian structure leads to dispersion within society and less clear hierarchical organization, which fosters the passage of rules. Democratic systems require a common understanding and agreement among larger coalitions of citizens to endorse collective rules and services. An autocratic society, with its focus on satisfying a small group of leaders or rulers while removing a large portion of the citizenry from the possibility of collective decision, will not establish the same connections among citizens nor construct as high a level of shared and institutionalized social norms. The individual prefers to live in a society in which all citizens are autonomous and equal under the law and represent a bargaining solution to an agreed contract, sharing a broad set of social norms through which they interact productively.

Authoritarian governments and regimes have existed for much of recorded history and have exerted considerable power in the formation and evolution of societies and the social contract between citizens and the state. The interplay between the state and individuals and presence of checks and barriers to the concentration of power have been at the heart of much of human history. Inherently, humans form groups, have leaders, and construct rules and social norms that govern behaviors and exchange among individuals. Circumstances that precipitate the empowerment of and reinforce authoritarian rulers, such as war, exposure to foreign religions and ideas, and economic instability, have long historical roots, while the modern characteristics of autocracies that differentiate them from politically and economically active citizens within democracies are more recent phenomena.

3. Effects of Authoritarian Rule on Society

Religious freedom is typically a rare freedom in non-democratic nations, as autocrats fear religious sessions and local elites can use religious leaders and texts to gain public support. Religions that introduce competing interests to those of the dictator and his small clique are at a higher risk of repression. Authoritarian elites will often work to structure and control institutions to ensure certain sectors of society are marginalized from public life. There are also instances where participating in organizations not associated with the regime is restricted and environments are created to ensure isolating many citizens from one another, othering the general population, indifferent to one another, and all involved in maintaining security.

In assessing the impact of non-democratic rule, it is also important to consider the lasting effects of authoritarian regimes on social values and norms. Unlike in democratic systems, where freedom of speech and religion is enshrined in public institutions, authoritarian strongmen can often manipulate societal values in ways that have long-lasting effects on the body politic. This is evident in instances where autocratic leaders take the state religion for themselves, incorporating religious texts into their personality cult. Authoritarian governments also control both what people see and hear, oftentimes promoting a fabricated history of the country and rewriting existing historical evidence.

4. Political Dynamics and International Relations under Authoritarian Governments

Another feature of domestically centralized autocracies is that they all generally provide the foreign policy ideal type of a single voice negotiations authority. The political leaders’ primary international concerns all revolve around figuring out ways to protect and strengthen the regime by minimizing the foreign policy entanglements that would support an opposition attempting to overthrow them. Some North Africans and Middle Easterners are non-democratic allies of America, not because they do not wish to see an Islamic Caliphate, but because they spy more deeply into the games and gather a wider and more diverse array of subjects. In addition, they are better able to accommodate and resonate with older traditions of governance.

From typically peaceful diplomatic relations, authoritarian governments place a hierarchical security strategy atop their dealings with other regimes. The chief concern for any authoritarian government is how to maintain controls at home and extend them abroad. Regardless of differences among them, all authoritarian cyberspace regimes are concerned with ways to subdue and neutralize domestic opposition movements. Pressures to design a more controlled regime run to clean up, arrest, or silence political dissidents, but more importantly they focus on ways to ensure ongoing centralized resource allocation through the support given loyal and compatible entrepreneurs. The ‘stylized dictatorship’ seeks to optimize political survival over the medium and short-terms while still providing for acceptable rates of economic growth and domestic tranquility.

5. Conclusion: Challenges and Opportunities for Transition to Democracy

Non-democratic rules can create the best opportunity for democracy, and the experience of developing countries shows that economic transformation and state building can begin under strong executive leadership, and that these expedited tasks can lay the conceptual and institutional foundation for democratic process. Institutions, political parties, and civil society – like other kinds of political regiments – must be made. Yet even during its establishment, the state is best served, and its overarching goal best met, by coupling an emphasis on order, distributive and redistributive, with limiting, constitutional rule. This overarching process is consistent with a key goal of liberalism – to construct a relatively independent and autonomous civil society that houses a variety of associational linkages, including labor unions, occupational and non-profit organizations, professional organs, and, importantly, local government councils. Democratic order is not just an adjunct to democracy, it is a daily affirmation of the very thing that democrats seek to achieve.

Authoritarian governments have marked a significant portion of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and their prevalence – and the continued relevance of the challenge of democratic transition – suggests that this pattern is unlikely to be fully overturned in the foreseeable future. The prevalence of developmental and non-developmental regimes (often within the same state) and the deep and lasting effects that both types of authoritarianism have on society, economics, and politics suggest that the development of democracy will only become more central as a political project as actors continue to search for the right balance between stability, freedom, and security in their state and in the international environment more broadly. While the current state of the world may present more trouble than hope for scholars and practitioners examining transitions to democracy, many political scientists and international relations scholars share a belief that the continued pursuit of this “more just” world for its citizens certainly presents as much of an opportunity as it does challenge.