# Authoritarianism (Government Type) > **Stub.** This entry covers authoritarianism in its narrow regime-type sense. The full treatment — psychological literature (Adorno, Altemeyer, Stenner), sociological dynamics, and democratic-backsliding scholarship — lives at [[Authoritarianism]] in `/Subjects/Authoritarianism/`. ## Regime-type definition (Linz) Juan Linz's classic 1964 / 1975 definition characterizes authoritarian regimes by: 1. **Limited, not responsible, political pluralism** — some actors and parties may exist but compete on terms set by the regime 2. **No elaborate guiding ideology** — distinguishing feature vs. totalitarianism 3. **No extensive political mobilization** — population is largely demobilized rather than ideologically activated 4. **Power exercised by a leader or small group within ill-defined but predictable limits** This is the framework most comparative-politics texts still use. It treats authoritarianism as a *broad regime category* with diverse subtypes (military rule, single-party state, personalist dictatorship, monarchical authoritarianism, theocratic authoritarianism). ## Distinguishing from neighbors - vs. **[[Totalitarianism]]** — Linz's key contribution: totalitarianism has a totalizing ideology + mass mobilization + terror; authoritarianism has limited pluralism and demobilizes rather than mobilizes. Most 20th-century right-wing dictatorships (Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Latin American military juntas) were authoritarian in Linz's sense, not totalitarian. - vs. **[[Democracy]]** — authoritarian regimes lack the institutional checks (free/fair elections, civil liberties, rule of law) that constitute democracy. Many regimes occupy a hybrid space — V-Dem and similar indices treat the dimension as continuous rather than binary. - vs. **[[Dictatorship]]** — overlapping but not identical. Dictatorship typically refers to the *leadership form* (single ruler with unconstrained power); authoritarianism describes the *regime type* (the broader institutional pattern). A military junta can be authoritarian without being dictatorship in the strict single-ruler sense. ## Authoritarianism as a *style* overlaid on other regime forms Critically, "authoritarianism" can describe the substantive politics of regimes that are *formally* republics, parliamentary systems, or even monarchies: - Putin's Russia is formally a presidential republic; substantively authoritarian - Orbán's Hungary is formally a parliamentary democracy; substantively illiberal/authoritarian (V-Dem reclassified as electoral autocracy in 2020) - [[Saudi Arabia]] is an authoritarian monarchy - North Korea is formally a republic but operates as a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship This is why the regime-type taxonomy here treats authoritarianism as a regime category in its own right rather than treating "authoritarian republic" or "authoritarian monarchy" as separate cells. ## Right-wing relevance The substantive question of whether — and how — contemporary US politics has authoritarian features is the spine of much of the rest of this vault. See [[Authoritarianism]] (Subjects hub) for the deeper psychological/sociological literature; see [[Project 2025]], [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]], [[Schedule F]], [[Eastman Memo]] for specific operational vectors. ## See also - [[Authoritarianism]] in `/Subjects/Authoritarianism/` — the full treatment with psychological scales, key thinkers, and democratic-backsliding scholarship - [[Totalitarianism]] — for the narrower, more extreme regime category - [[Dictatorship]] — for the leadership-form distinction