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Some Key Terms

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15 views3 pages

Some Key Terms

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mani tageja
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SOME KEY CONCEPTS

BY SUSHANT VERMA

AUTHORITARIANISM

➢ Authoritarianism is a belief in, or the practice of, government ‘from above’, in which political rule
is imposed on society regardless of its consent.

➢ Authoritarianism is a very broad classification of government. It can be associated with

✓ monarchical absolutism,

✓ traditional dictatorships and

✓ most forms of military rule; and

✓ left-wing and right-wing versions of authoritarianism can be identified, associated,


respectively, with communism and capitalism.

➢ However, authoritarianism is usually distinguished from totalitarianism, on the grounds that it is


primarily concerned with the repression of opposition and political liberty, rather than with the more
radical goal of obliterating the distinction between the state and civil society. Authoritarian regimes
may therefore tolerate a significant range of economic, religious and other freedoms.

ABSOLUTISM

➢ Absolutism is the theory or practice of absolute government. Government is ‘absolute’ in the sense
that it possesses unfettered power: government cannot be constrained by a body external to itself.
The most prominent manifestation of absolute government is the absolute monarchy. Unfettered power
can be placed in the hands of the monarch, but it can also be vested in a collective body such as the
supreme legislature.
➢ Absolutism nevertheless differs from modern versions of dictatorship, notably totalitarianism.
Whereas absolutist regimes aspire to a monopoly of political power, usually achieved by excluding
the masses from politics, totalitarianism involves the establishment of ‘total power’ through the
politicization of every aspect of social and personal existence.
➢ Absolutism was the dominant political form in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It
was usually linked to the claim that sovereignty, representing unchallengeable and indivisible legal
authority, resided in the monarchy.

VAJIRAM & RAVI Page 1


➢ However, absolutist theories are now widely regarded as politically redundant and ideologically
objectionable. They are politically redundant because the advance of constitutionalism and
representation has fragmented power and resulted in a strengthening of checks and balances. It
is ideologically objectionable because absolutism serves as a cloak for tyranny and arbitrary
government, and is, by definition, irreconcilable with ideas such as individual rights and democratic
accountability.

DICTATORSHIP

➢ A dictatorship is, strictly, a form of rule in which absolute power is vested in a single individual; in
this sense, dictatorship is synonymous with autocracy.
➢ Originally, the term was associated with the unrestricted emergency powers granted to a supreme
magistrate in the early Roman Republic, which created a form of constitutional dictatorship.
➢ In the modern usage of the term, however, dictators are seen as being above the law and acting beyond
constitutional constraints. More generally, dictatorship is characterized by the arbitrary and
unchecked exercise of power, as in the ideas of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, ‘military
dictatorship’ and ‘personal dictatorship’.
➢ A distinction is sometimes drawn between traditional and totalitarian dictatorships. Traditional
dictatorships aim to monopolize government power and conform to the principles of
authoritarianism, while totalitarian dictatorships seek ‘total power’ and extend political control to
all aspects of social and personal existence.

TOTALITARIANISM

➢ Totalitarianism is an all-encompassing system of political rule that is typically established by


pervasive ideological manipulation and open terror and brutality.
➢ Totalitarianism differs from both autocracy and authoritarianism; in that it seeks ‘total power’
through the politicization of every aspect of social and personal existence. Totalitarianism thus
implies the outright abolition of civil society: the abolition of ‘the private’.
➢ Friedrich and Brzezinski (1966) defined totalitarianism in terms of a six-point ‘syndrome of
interrelated traits and characteristics’:
1)The existence of an ‘official’ ideology
2) A one-party state, usually led by an all-powerful leader
3) A system of terroristic policing
4)A monopoly of the means of mass communication
5)A monopoly of the means of armed combat
6) State control of all aspects of economic life.

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➢ The idea of totalitarianism originated in fascist Italy as a belief in the state as an all-consuming ‘ethical
community’ that reflects the altruism and mutual sympathy of its members. This was developed into
the doctrine: ‘everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state’.
➢ The term was subsequently adopted to describe the perhaps uniquely oppressive character of twentieth-
century dictatorships, in particular Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s USSR.
➢ Totalitarian analysis achieved its greatest prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was widely used
to highlight totalitarian parallels between fascism and communism, and to divide the world into rival
democratic (liberal democratic) and totalitarian states.
➢ The concept of totalitarianism is useful in highlighting distinctions between modern and traditional
dictatorships, and in drawing attention to the importance of charismatic leadership. The latter
consideration has given rise to the idea of ‘totalitarian democracy’, the phenomenon whereby a leader
justifies his or her unchecked power through a claim to possess a monopoly of ideological wisdom and
to articulate the ‘true’ interests of his/her people.

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