What is Authoritarianism?
This essay will primarily focus on the article What authoritarianism is… and is not: a practice perspective by Marlies Glasius, a Professor in International Relations at the Department of Politics, University of Amsterdam. This article provides much-needed clarity on a term that I have found to be exceptionally vague and distorted.
I plan to structure this essay in the following way: first, I will summarize the relevant information from the Glasius article. This will include (1) the distinguishment between regimes, practices, and personalities in regard to authoritarianism; (2) the identification of accountability at the core of democracy, with elections as a (not the) proxy; (3) the separation of the concepts of authoritarian and illiberal; and (4) the pertinent implications of these definitions and concepts. Then, I will add my own contribution, examining three distinct ideological challenges to modern democracies that emerge in light of Glasius’ definitions.
Glassius: Clarity and Distinction
Regimes, Practices, and Personalities
The first distinction made by Glassius was between the subjects that are commonly described as authoritarian. Importantly, she specifies that the article would deal with the term authoritarian, the adjective, rather than authoritarianism, the noun. It asks the question: What do we mean when we call things authoritarian? Rather than: What is the phenomenon that we call authoritarianism?
Glassius notes that, within different specialties of political science, the term authoritarian tended to describe two different subjects: regimes and personalities. Within comparative politics, the term tends to refer to regimes that do not hold free and fair elections. Within political psychology, the term describes individuals and personality types that hold “a desire for order and hierarchy and a fear of outsiders.” Both these definitions can (and do) lead to confusion.
The comparative politics definition confuses by using an all-or-nothing "dummy variable" way of categorizing governments that often operate within shades of gray. The political psychology definition is concerning for a number of reasons, but addressing these issues in full may distract from the purpose of this essay. Instead, Glasius's work (as well as my own) focuses primarily on the definition used in comparative politics.
Glassius claims the trouble with the comparative politics definition is twofold. First, it is entirely negative (i.e., democracy is defined as a system of government with free and fair elections, and authoritarianism, in this case, is simply not democracy). Second, the focus on regimes rather than practices (behaviors) obscures the phenomena in question. So, her goal then becomes to identify a positive definition of authoritarianism and to do so in a way that focuses on behaviors rather than institutions.
Accountability and its Proxies
Inching closer to a positive definition of authoritarianism, Glassius notes accusations of authoritarian practices against governments that clearly hold free and fair elections. Could a country meet this requirement and still be authoritarian? If so, how? This line of questioning leads the reader to identify a flaw in the “free and fair elections” definition.
It seems that these accusations emerge when the population—the demos—does not influence policymaking at the highest level (i.e. when there is no demos in democracy). Of course, there are plenty of instances of free and fair elections that do not affect government decisions, and, Glassius agrees it is fair in these instances to use the word authoritarian. If this is fair, then free and fair elections must be a proxy for what truly defines democracy—namely, the influence of the demos on the decisions of the state. Glassius’ uses the word accountability to describe the democratic ideal, where the government officials are accountable to the population at large and their decisions must reflect those of the voters. Free and fair elections, then, act as a proxy for accountability. Importantly, it is not the only proxy. Informal institutions, civil society, or the media may act as mechanisms of accountability as well.
A more positive definition of authoritarian emerges when this discovery is paired with the focus on practices rather than regimes or personalities. Glassius writes, “we should look for an active practice of disrupting or sabotaging accountability, rather than the absence of free and fair elections, as the core feature of authoritarianism. Such sabotage will manifest itself in political practices, not necessarily in constitutional arrangements.”
Authoritarianism vs. Illiberalism
Glassius also notes a tendency to use the term authoritarian to describe human rights violations, a pattern that does not fit the above description. The risk, as she sees it, is “of stretching the term to encompass all political phenomena that have a negative impact on people’s lives, including discrimination, violence, corruption or inequality.” Terms that are stretched to include too widely tend to lose their meaning, and this, if you’ll remember, was my primary motivation for writing this essay.
This distinction is difficult to make because one risks setting off numerous political tripwires. So, importantly, this isn’t to say that human rights violations are good or acceptable behaviors. They are not. But, they are also not authoritarian and should not be described as such. Doing so obscures more than it reveals. To describe this phenomenon, Glassius uses the term illiberal, encompassing “a pattern of actions, embedded in an organized context, infringing on the autonomy and dignity of the person… Belonging to the class of illiberal practices are patterns of interference with legal equality, legal recourse, or recognition before the law; infringement of freedom of expression, fair trial rights, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy; and violations of physical integrity rights.” The author provides the following figure for a more visual representation.
Threats to Modern Democracies
As noted earlier, I would like to build upon Glassius' work by elucidating the common ideological challenges to democracy and, if possible, distinguishing between these confrontations on their own grounds. Importantly, this section is titled ‘Challenges to Liberal Democracy.’ So, it will include objections that are either illiberal or authoritarian. The former challenges liberalism; the latter challenges democracy.
Scientific (or Bureaucratic) Aristocracy
The first objection arises from the ancients—Plato and Aristotle, among others. Its classical origins are no grounds for dismissal. The aristocratic challenge is as present today as it was in classical Athens. The ancients did not believe that the population at large knew what was best for itself and therefore thought, paternalistically, that a specific group could govern in the people's interest but not according to its wishes. This distinction between interests and wishes is where the divergence between aristocracies and democracies arises.
This challenge is most relevant today in the worship of experts and the buck-passing of decision-making to bureaucracies (or, rather, those with bureaucratic expertise). Both instances are of individuals claiming to make policy decisions in citizens' best interests regardless of their wishes. One can observe the contemporary backlash against the aristocratic challenges in distrust toward experts after the covid pandemic or in the seemingly permanent low approval ratings of the United States Congress and its leadership.
Claims of Self-Stultification
I will deal next with objections of self-stultification. I've placed this challenge second because it is often confused with the first. Yet, it is importantly distinct. In modern America, claims of stultification ring loudest from Silicon Valley and on the illiberal right. They argue that the median voter deciding the course of American policymaking is detrimental to those at the highest ends of the competence hierarchy. This logic commonly includes objections to excessive regulation (especially against institutions like the FDA) or against various forms of persecution.
Within this objection, a critical distinction arises depending upon its spokesperson. The illiberal right complaint is distinct from the aristocratic in that it makes less of a claim to operate in the immediate interests of the population at large. Instead, it focuses entirely on the obstacles faced by the most talented individuals in society. Conversely, the Silicon Valley crowd claims that liberating the most competent individuals will work in the best interest of the whole. Their spokesperson commonly argues along the objectivist logic, placing emphasis on their ability to provide value for society. The illiberal right critique aligns more closely with classic authoritarianism, which I will discuss last. The Silicon Valley critique leans aristocratic.
The Challenge of Pure Democracy
While the previous challenges approach from the right, emphasizing hierarchy and individualism, the purely democratic challenge comes from the left. This critique claims that the modern democratic voter does not have enough direct influence on policymaking outcomes, noting the lack of accountability elected officials have to their constituents. This objection, as the reader may have noticed, is the one made by Glasius. It values voter wishes over voter interests by arguing there is no difference between the two or, more convincingly, that only the voter can adequately determine and advocate for their own interests.
Classic Authoritarianism
Like the illiberal right-wing stultification critique, these anti-democratic practices prioritize the part over the whole. As noted by Acemoglu and Robinson in their 2006 book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, “... nondemocratic regimes share one common element: Instead of representing the wishes of the population at large, they represent the preferences of a subgroup of population: the ‘elite’” (Acemoglu). However, it is distinct from the stultification critique in its vulgarity. It makes no claims of aiming for something virtuous, be that understood in secular or religious terms. Instead, it seeks only materialist goals—to gain a greater share of goods and services than is otherwise possible without a monopoly on violence. It is importantly valueless and non-ideological.
This challenge also includes arbitrary friend-enemy distinctions and therefore includes notions of autonomy vs. heteronomy. Autonomy can be identified as where the laws also apply to those who make them, and heteronomy, where those who make the laws are above them. That is, “For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.”
Conclusion
In Sum: Authoritarian practices are best understood as behaviors that lessen a government's accountability to its citizens. These practices are distinct from violations of human rights and personal liberties, which are better described as illiberal. Conversely, democratic procedures are those which increase a government's accountability to those it governs, and liberal actions maintain human rights and increase personal liberties. Ideological challenges to liberal democracy emerge primarily from three different places: the aristocratic right, the idealistic left, and the materialist autocrat. The aristocrat is distinguished from the materialist in that he prioritizes values, namely virtue, over wealth and power for its own sake. He claims to govern in the people's best interest, although often against their wishes. The materialist autocrat cannot earnestly make such a claim. The idealist left is distinguished from both in that it prioritizes mechanisms that force governments to rule more closely with people's wishes, regardless of whether those wishes are in their best interest.
