Essay on The Benefits and Consequences of Authoritarian Governance

You will make yourself comfortable... Once feeling comfortable and safe in your chosen place… You will close your eyes… Listen to my voice… Any noises in the background are unimportant… From now on, you will only hear my voice… Concentrate on your breathing… Breathe in… Hold it for a few seconds… Breathe out… Notice how each breath in, is equal to the amount of time it takes to breathe out… Repeat this one more time… Now you are going to relax your mind and body by allowing any tension to flow from your head, to the extremities of your toes… Keep concentrating… You are in control… You will be in control throughout this session…Continue with your breathing as you would normally … Now relax the

Government is an essential part of civilization in modern and historic times. This crucial element of society has been observed in different forms. There are three main systems of governments: autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy. Which system a government belongs to is determined by who hold the sovereignty, meaning who has the supreme power and authority (“Sovereignty”). This leads to there being major differences between autocracies, oligarchies, and democracies.

Those who are in power are not accountable to constituencies and public policy does not derive from social consent. Within sociology and political science, particularly within comparative politics, authoritarianism has been understood as a modern type of political regime. Therefore, the concept focuses on the way of accessing, exercising, and organizing power, on the nature of the belief system, and the role of citizens in the political

In a totalitarian dictatorship there is an official ideology, covering all aspects of a man’s existence to which everyone living in that society must adhere. A totalitarian dictatorship is also a single mass party led typically by one man the “dictator” and has a system of terroristic police control in order for the dictator to remain in power [doc 1]. Totalitarian governments also had total control over the military, economy and means of communication such as newspapers and propaganda.

During the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, life was very difficult. The people who lived within the countries controlled by the Soviet government experienced levels of oppression akin to slavery. They could not express themselves through any means and had to conform both body and soul to the views of the Communist Party. People could be arrested, imprisoned, shipped off to exile or executed often without trial. Some twenty million people died while Joseph Stalin led the USSR and for many years after his death it was still dangerous to dare criticize his regime, although some scholars put that number closer to forty million people who died. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is its own country there is more freedom, but the people still live under the yoke of an oppressive leader who does not tolerate political or social challenges. The people do nothing to stand up to this government because they have all been scarred by the decades they lived under Stalin.

Despite the primitive backwardness of this collectivist society, the power of its suppressive methods must be recognized. The dictators have succeeded in subjugating the populace in ways that go beyond the stifling policies of such murderous tyrants as Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. These real-life collectivist rulers forced millions of human beings to surrender their individuality in practice. The dictatorial regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, and Communist Cambodia forced their citizens, in action, to serve the state. Individuals had no right to their own lives, and their actions were brutally controlled; they were slaves of Nazism or Communism.

This implies a relationship in which the state through its instruments dominates society. Hence in the totalitarian state all political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual activities should be directed towards fulfilling the aims of the state” (“Totalitarianism”, 1999). In a totalitarian state, individuals have no rights and they must obey the government without question. If individuals questioned or disagreed with the government, they were silenced by death or prison.

Imagine living in a world of complete rejection of liberal ideas and absolute conformity. Citizens of this world do not have the freedom to choose their occupation. In fact, these citizens have no rights. They cannot speak freely, they do not enjoy any personal freedoms or privacy, and the media is aggressively censored. This is the world of George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, and he is a fireman. His job is to destroy books completely by setting fire to them. Winston Smith is the main character in 1984, where he works as a civil servant in the lower class ruling party. Both of these men become entranced with the past and how life was before a totalitarian government.

Authoritarianism is a form of government in which the leader or leaders have exclusive power concerning matters of the state. Although these

Many people have sought to evaluate the vulnerabilities associated with states and markets that are under totalitarianism, which is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society. First developed in 1920 by the Italian fascists, and in particular Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy for over twenty years, totalitarianism embossed the minds of those who lived under it. This system was conceptualized mainly to highlight the similarities between Nazi Germany and other fascist states. There’s one underlying difference that one must understand for one to assess the restrictions that totalitarianism puts on one’s liberty. One should realize that totalitarianism states are states where there is a single party rule, where a dictatorship is type of government in which a single person rules. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are famous authors who opposed totalitarianism, and through their philosophical ideals, attempted to inform people of the dangers faced by society under this restricting system, where people are inhibited from holding any sort of authority. George Orwell, in 1984, discusses concerns relating to big government and big brother and Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, discusses predatory markets impinging on our personal freedoms. Through their works, they attempt to question societal beliefs on brute force and physical coercion verses the manipulation of preferences and tastes leading to willing submission. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley each

In Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, Karen Dawisha relates Russian President Vladmir Putin’s rise to power. She overarchingly claims that Putin is an authoritarian leader who has obstructed and even reverted Russia’s path of democratization, citing, amongst many factors that enabled his ascension, his “interlocking web of personal connections in which he was the linchpin” (100), money-laundering to tax havens and personal projects, and the complicity of the West. With copious research, journalistic interviews, legal documents, and even sporadic informational diagrams, it is evident why her book is so popular amongst scholars and history enthusiasts. Unfortunately however, in spite of the grand yet oftentimes substantiated claims she generates, a more subtle yet noteworthy assumption is made: that the state is a protector, as Olson proffered. She employs this theoretical underpinning from the beginning, though is not representative of Putin’s actual authoritarian regime.

In these systems, the regimes possess some of these characteristics but have found ways to manipulate the system to consolidate their power. “Rather than openly violating democratic rules (for example, by banning or repressing the opposition and the media), incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and other state agencies to ‘legally’ harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior from critics” . While it is apparent that these regimes are not fully democratic, it would be unfair to label them as fully authoritarian either. Unlike traditional totalitarian governments, the persistence of true democratic institutions in competitive authoritarian regimes allows the opposition to contest, weaken and occasionally even defeat autocratic incumbents. While these situations are generally uncommon, these situations are possible in competitive authoritarianism due to four independent means, the electoral arena, the legislature, the judiciary and the media. These four branches are virtually independent of the executive control however, unlike in democracies, the competitive authoritarian regimes use its power to undermine their independence. “In regards to the electoral arena, large-scale abuses of state power, biased media coverage, harassment of opposition candidates and activists are widespread, legislatures tend to be relatively weak, the

In recent times, no one can take total power by force alone; you must offer something favorable to the people in order to obtain support. Unfortunately, there are some countries that follow a dictatorship system, which is a form of government that includes social and political power to ensure that the individual’s capability remains strong. Vladimir Putin is a contemporary dictator of Russia. His rebelliousness as a child has led him to his leadership. His cold-heartedness to his rivals and invasion towards countries has led to an opposition towards him. Vladimir Putin’s experience as a street thug led him to his leadership, which easily rose him to power: Not only has he committed crimes against humanity, but he has made groups of people and countries oppose him.

Schedler argues that authoritarian regimes – particularly since the end of the Cold War era have been replaced by electoral authoritarian regimes that combine the façade of electoral democracy with systemic abuse of democratic procedures. They have reproduced institutional arrangements present in the democratic system, such as elections, the legislative and judicial powers, and independent local governments. However, these institution creations are never meant to become autonomous, rather manipulative in order to be instruments of pretentious delegation of power from the executive.

Instead, the regime programmed people with the notion of social order, with traditional attitudes to great power, superiority and history, “Orthodoxy” the primary religion of the state and military. The area where politics and civil society should have been was "purged" decreasing the rights of citizens unknowingly. “If participation were not contained, the Kremlin feared the state would lose control; if the constraints were too tight, citizens would not participate, and the state would again need a cumbersome bureaucracy to get things done” (Richter 41). Political parties, independent television channels, non governmental and public organizations, the system of elections, the courts and law-enforcement bodies as autonomous bodies