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CHAPTER EIGHT: Authoritarian Institutions

Study

The oldest and most basic form of authoritarian rule is the personalist regime, in which one ruler concentrates power in his or her hands so strongly that government becomes an extension of the ruler's personal decisions. Other authoritarian regimes types disperse power somewhat more broadly. Military regimes often concentrate power in the hands of a group of high-ranking military officers. One-party states have an ideological affinity to communism, because Communist parties claim an ideologically based monopoly on power as the only legitimate representative of the proletariat. Leaders in authoritarian regimes rule via some combination of repression, co-optation, and efforts to appear legitimate.

A key difference among types of authoritarian regimes is their level of institutionalization: how much government processes and procedures are established, predictable, and routinized. Authoritarian regimes include bureaucracies and judiciaries, and some even maintain legislatures, federal systems, and electoral institutions, but none of these bodies seriously limits executive power. Only somewhat institutionalized regimes can provide forms of participation that are predictable and might at least seem to have some actual political effect. Lacking these, citizens are extremely unlikely to engage in political activity except individually in their own self-interest, such as via patron-client networks, or when forced to do so as a show of support for the government. Citizens may also organize into social movements in an attempt to force government accountability or change. Authoritarian regimes provide little evidence of a trade-off between participation and effective governance.