# Authoritarianism (Term) A governance system, a mass dynamic, and an individual disposition — three different objects sharing a single label. *Authoritarianism* names (1) a regime type characterized by concentrated power, limited pluralism, and restricted political competition; (2) a mass-political dynamic in which authoritarian dispositions activate in response to perceived threat; and (3) an individual personality syndrome characterized by submission to in-group authority, aggression against sanctioned out-groups, and rigid conventionalism. The three levels overlap but are not identical, and one of the recurring confusions in popular usage is collapsing them — speaking of "authoritarian voters" (level 3) as if their existence guarantees an "authoritarian regime" (level 1), or treating regime-level democratic backsliding (level 1) as proof of mass authoritarian disposition (level 3). The categorized treatment of all three lives at [[Authoritarianism]]. ## The three levels **Psychological — authoritarian disposition.** The Adorno→Altemeyer→Stenner→Duckitt research tradition. Individuals vary in their preference for hierarchical order, in-group conformity, sanctioned aggression against out-groups, and submission to legitimated authority. Measured by the F-scale (Adorno et al. 1950), the RWA scale (Altemeyer 1981), the SDO scale (Sidanius/Pratto 1994), and Stenner's Authoritarian Predisposition measure (2005). The vocabulary at this level is the `authoritarian personality` — see [[Authoritarian Personality Theory]]. **Sociological — authoritarian dynamic.** The mass-behavioral level. Karen Stenner's framing in *[[The Authoritarian Dynamic]]* (2005): authoritarian *predisposition* (stable trait) activates in response to *normative threat* (the perception that the in-group's defining norms or order are under attack). Explains why authoritarian-coded mobilization spikes in some periods and recedes in others without changes in the underlying distribution of dispositions. Adjacent: [[Steven Levitsky]] and [[Daniel Ziblatt]] on democratic backsliding (*[[How Democracies Die]]*, 2018), which describes how authoritarian dynamics convert into regime-level erosion. **Regime-type — authoritarian government.** Juan Linz's classical typology (1964 / 2000) distinguishes authoritarian regimes (limited pluralism, mentality rather than ideology, limited mobilization, predictable arenas of unaccountable power) from totalitarianism (all-encompassing ideology, total mobilization, terror) and from democracy. The contemporary literature has refined this with electoral autocracy, competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky/Way 2010), and illiberal democracy (Zakaria 1997) — regime types that retain elections while emptying them of competitive substance. [[Sovereign Democracy]] is the practitioner's-side name for the same family. ## Why the word does the rhetorical work it does *Authoritarianism* is descriptive on its face but evaluative in deployment. To call a movement, a leader, or a policy "authoritarian" is to invoke a comparison with the 20th century's catastrophic regimes — Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Mussolini's Italy — and to position the speaker against them. The word does three kinds of work simultaneously: - **Diagnostic** — identifies the regime-type or disposition in standard political-science vocabulary - **Normative** — flags it as a violation of democratic and rule-of-law norms - **Coalitional** — signals the speaker's location in the pro-democracy coalition The third use is the one that draws criticism from the right, which argues that "authoritarianism" has become an all-purpose anti-conservative epithet. The empirical literature (RWA scale, SDO research, Stenner's predisposition data, the democratic-backsliding scholarship) gives the word more analytical traction than the polemical critique allows for, but the polemical use is also real and worth distinguishing from the analytical one. ## "Right-wing" qualifier The Altemeyer-derived measure is specifically *right-wing* authoritarianism (RWA) — the personality syndrome aligned with submission to *established* authority, in cultures where established authority is right-coded. Left-authoritarianism does exist as a measurable disposition (Costello, Bowes, Stewart et al. 2022 documented an LWA scale), but the empirical consensus is that contemporary (~2000–) right-authoritarianism predicts substantially more anti-democratic political behavior, prejudice, and support for political violence than left-authoritarianism does in Western democracies. The asymmetry is itself a finding, not a built-in assumption of the instruments. See [[Right-Wing Authoritarianism]] for the project-namesake acronym (RWA) and the personality-research lineage in detail. ## Distinct from neighbors - **Fascism** — a specific 20th-century mass-mobilizational variant of authoritarianism with characteristic ideology (palingenetic ultranationalism, per Roger Griffin), aesthetic (the leader cult, paramilitary spectacle), and class coalition. All fascisms are authoritarianisms; not all authoritarianisms are fascisms. - **Totalitarianism** — Hannah Arendt's category in [[The Origins of Totalitarianism]] (1951): regimes that not only restrict but *abolish* the private sphere via total mobilization and ideological saturation. A more demanding standard than authoritarianism; few regimes in history meet it. - **Tyranny** — older / classical vocabulary for unaccountable rule, often emphasizing personal-rule rather than systemic features. - **Despotism** — [[Montesquieu]]'s category for arbitrary unchecked rule, often theorized in racialized terms in Enlightenment usage. - **Autocracy** — generic synonym for individual unaccountable rule; less theoretically loaded than the others. ## See Also - [[Authoritarianism]] — categorized framework view - [[Authoritarianism Lexicon]] — alphabetical MOC view - [[Fascism]] — the 20th-c. specific differentia - [[Right-Wing Authoritarianism]] — the RWA personality scale - [[Authoritarian Personality Theory]] — the research framework - [[The Origins of Totalitarianism]] — Arendt - [[Sovereign Democracy]] — the practitioner's-side framing