What are the main differences between authoritarian and democratic regimes?

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

Authoritarian government and the U.S government is different is very drastic ways. The U.S lets the people vote for the person who will be president. When authoritarian power is inherited of taken by force. The U.S has many different political parties when authoritarian usually has one overall party. Authoritarian government relies on the state control of controlling media, police or military forces,and terror. The U.S relies on the power of the laws made.

Authoritarianism is a political system in which a leader or a small elite group contains all real power. Individual liberties such as freedom of speech, press, and religion are subordinate to the authority of which citizens are blindly compliant to, as opposed to enjoying at will. Therefore, the people's main role in the government is to execute rather than engage. Authoritarianism is described as being a strong central government, which is essentially the exact opposite of democracy.

Leaders of authoritarian systems have an absolute rule without contestation from others and have the power to control all factors that concern their state. This paper will explore the similarities and differences between ruling presidents and ruling parties within the authoritarian system.

The authorities and processes of government are limited by constitutional provisions, tradition, institutional practices and various groups. The different organized and unorganized counteracting groups serve as counterweights that limit government by tending to restrain it from acting harmfully and to constrain it to act beneficially to them. Free political parties are initiators and communicators. They make proposals and recommendations or accept them to broadcast to the public and call to the attention of government. Free political parties are free because they are not operated by the government or subjected to their control. When one political party is permitted, there is neither constitutionalism or democracy. An adversary system of political

In order for a society to survive, there must be some type of government. Different governments vary in the way they are run. A democracy and absolutism are completely opposites. One gives the power to the people where as one has a ruler that will complete power. This paper will describe characteristics in both democratic rule and absolutism and also explain a citizen’s role in each form of government.

The negative economic impacts of corruption have grown rapidly, and major international organizations have claimed that corruption hinders economic growth (world bank 2006). Although there are claims that corruption is harmful to economic growth, economists have not really agreed with the argument from a theoretical point of view. Theoretical studies suggest that corruption may counteract government failure and promote economic growth in the short run, given externally determined suboptimal bureaucratic rules and regulations. As government failure is itself a function of corruption, however, corruption should have

It would be convenient to start this research paper by stating that corruption is a challenge mainly for businesses in developing countries and that it is unrelated to the current affliction of the economy in the United States. It would also be convenient to claim corruption has declined in America as a result of awareness raising campaigns and the numerous anti-corruption laws. But none of those aforementioned statements would be true. Corruption is not the exception, but rather the rule in today’s business practices. In 2004, Daniel Kaufmann, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former director at the World Bank, calculated an index of "legally corrupt" manifestations which is defined as the extent of undue influence

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

1. Democracy is a type of government that emanates from the constituted powers that are elected, depending on the system (presidentialist, parliamentary, constitutional monarchy, semi presidentialist, semi parliamentary, etc...) directly or indirectly by the people. Whereas in an absolute monarchy, an absolutist regime exists and is in power because of family lineage.

Singapore 's former Prime Minster, Lee Kuan Yew once said: "Human beings, regrettable though it may be, are inherently vicious and have to be restrained" (Kwang, Fernandez, & Tan 1). One can infer from Kuan Yew’s statement that he 's subtly saying that individuals shouldn 't be in control of their choices, yet there ought to be somebody to settle on choices for them. An ideology such as this can stem from an authoritarian government. In this day and age, most nations have a tendency to have a democracy. However, it wasn 't generally that way. Throughout history, there were nations under authoritarian rule. In order to fully understand what an authoritarian regime is, one must know the meaning of it. An authoritarian government is "an oppressive regime that rules through strict, intrusive, and violent enforcement of laws. It can “take the form of a dictatorship, but may also manifest itself in totalitarian bureaucracies or oligarchies" (Ritter 576). An authoritarian regime exists when a leader or a small group of leaders owns all property and are the sole decision makers for the entire population. There are only two questions left to be asked. How are authoritarian regimes created and how do they even stay in power? Authoritarian governments ascend to power due to a postwar upheaval and the leader in the charge; they stay in power by employing a resource trap and having a one party system.

Political corruption has existed throughout the ages. It believed to be most prominent in positions of power, because of the role money plays in getting people power. However, over the centuries, corruption has changed so much so as to not match a particular definition of corruption, perpetually growing deceptively harder to find (Ebbe).

Under an authoritarian regime, specifically a dictatorship, the ruler has the political and executive power to persecute an individual or group for political reasons, which demonstrates a form of political oppression.

Corruption is a complex political, social, and economic anomaly that negatively affects developing and developed countries. It weakens democratic institutions, holds economic development, widening the rich-poor gap and certainly leads to governmental instability. The World Bank definition of corruption states that “…the abuse of public office for private gain”.