The early Frankfurt School’s Studies in Authority sought to understand modern society’s susceptibility to authoritarian leadership. This research project resulted in two major works in 1936, Fromm’s Studies on Authority and Family and Horkheimer’s Egoism and Freedom Movements, and produced the concept of the Authoritarian Character. After 1939 the project was abandoned, Fromm and the Frankfurt School went their separate ways, and the Frankfurt School’s research focus turned in a new direction. This paper argues that, appearances notwithstanding, research on the (...) Authoritarian Character did not end in 1939 and that Fromm’s later work on necrophilia and biophilia in the 1960s-70s should be reconsidered as his attempt to complete the Frankfurt School’s research project on the Authoritarian Character. (shrink)

This paper revisits the conceptual history of the early Frankfurt School’s investigations into the authoritarian character, the set of sadomasochistic character traits that dispose an individual or group to seek their own domination. This research project, which produced Fromm’s Studies on Authority and Family and Horkheimer’s Egoism and Freedom Movements in 1936 and ended in 1939 with Fromm’s expulsion from the Frankfurt School, is generally held to have been a theoretically-unproductive and abortive endeavour. We dispute such a reading by reconstructing (...) the key concepts and methods of this research project, and demonstrating its breadth and coherence. In so doing we illustrate the centrality of Fromm’s contribution to the Frankfurt School early work on authority and indicate that the proper point of origin for those seeking to grasp the Frankfurt School’s research on the authoritarian character is 1930, the year in which Fromm joined the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

Critical social theories look critically at the ways in which particular social arrangements hinder human flourishing, with a view to bringing about social change for the better. In this they are guided by the idea of a good society in which the identified social impediments to human flourishing would once and for all have been removed. The question of how these guiding ideas of the good life can be justified as valid across socio-cultural contexts and historical epochs is the most (...) fundamental difficulty facing critical social theories today. This problem of justification, which can be traced back to certain key shifts in the modern Western social imaginary, calls on contemporary theories to negotiate the tensions between the idea of context-transcendent validity and their own anti-authoritarian impulses. Habermas makes an important contribution towards resolving the problem, but takes a number of wrong turnings. (shrink)

Contemporary electoral autocracies increasingly rely on information abundance rather than censorship to maintain control. This article explores how infotainment has emerged as a key battleground in Serbia’s protest politics (2024-2025), serving both as a tool of resistance and as a mechanism of soft authoritarian control. Utilizing a combined quantitative and qualitative content analysis of six media outlets, three pro-government (B92, Informer, Pink) and three independent (Danas, Juzne Vesti, N1), the study traces how the regime constructed a divisive discourse by splitting (...) students into two opposing camps: “caci” (a viral misspelling co-opted to represent innocent non-political youth) and “blockaders” (a pejorative for those protesting). The analysis reveals a structural asymmetry: while pro-government outlets aggressively deployed emotive frames and mockery (labeling student protesters as “fascists” or “foreign agents”), independent media were relegated to a reactive role, attempting to debunk these narratives. This discursive aggression is identified as a calculated prelude to the physical violence observed since the summer of 2025. Ultimately, the study concludes that modern authoritarianism thrives not by hiding the truth, but by burying it under layers of irony and manufactured conflict. (shrink)

Authoritarianism is on the rise globally and poses a serious threat to civil society. We define this term and show the difference between old- and new-school autocrats. Historical data demonstrate a developmental course for how autocracies start, persist, and end. They also show democracy occurs in waves, rising and falling at different periods over time. Much research attention has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. To balance this, we detail features of the left-wing version as well and its relation to (...) postmodernism. We then look at the authoritarian personality type and how easy it is for a would-be dictator to hijack populist sentiment and dismantle democratic institutions. Polarization, political capture and economic inequality are highlighted as three key factors that explain democratic erosion in the U.S. and around the world. We conclude with suggestions for how to stop dictatorships and reform societies to make them more resilient to autocratic takeover. (shrink)

In this paper, we seek to understand the psychology and cognitive strategies of people with the psychological profile of authoritarian leaders. To understand their personality traits, we compare them with literature concerning successful psychopaths. We also see both personalities in the light of literature in the field of self-help for success in business. We say these psychological profiles are shaped by culture, as self-help literature shows. Our intention in comparing successful psychopaths and authoritarian leaders is not to reinforce the idea (...) that authoritarian leaders are unemotional, but rather the opposite. We wish to explore this relationship from the perspective of embodied cognition, according to which emotions are a fundamental part of decision-making, including political decision-making. Traditionally, both successful psychopaths and authoritarian leaders are understood as unemotional and therefore completely rational: here we explore the idea that this apparent rationality hides a particular emotional profile and a certain stubbornness and impulsivity regarding previously set goals. Also, as self-help literature reveals, set goals are closely associated with their identity, so that compromise regarding goals is seen as a loss of said identity. The study of the authoritarian leader as a gnoseological category helps us think about the relationship between volition, rational thought, identity, and emotions in decision-making; and to understand the way of acting of authoritarian leaders, and the way they succeed and fail. (shrink)

Shapiro knows there are totalitarians on the political Right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian Left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising leftists have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition. Shapiro lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping into (...) all American ideology, and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future. -- adapted from jacket. (shrink)

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

It is becoming increasingly common for authoritarian regimes to leverage digital technologies to surveil, repress and manipulate their citizens. Experts typically refer to this practice as digital authoritarianism (DA). Existing definitions of DA consistently presuppose a politically repressive agent intentionally exploiting digital technologies to pursue authoritarian ends. I refer to this as the intention-based definition. This paper argues that this definition is untenable as a general description of DA. I begin by illustrating the current predominance of the intention-based definition (...) (Section 2). Section 3 then presents four counterexamples to this definition: benign surveillance; digital sovereignty; attention-harvesting algorithms; and tech-induced loneliness. In each case, we witness authoritarianism being promoted by digital technologies without any evidence of this being intentionally caused by politically repressive agents. Based on these observations, I contend that the intention-based definition is underinclusive and is therefore unsustainable. Section 4 outlines an improved definition of DA – what I call the promotion-based definition. Since this more expansive definition does not posit intentional, politically repressive agency as a precondition of DA, it can accommodate the counterexamples discussed in Section 3. Moreover, it enables us to catch a broader spectrum of cases of DA, such as tech-induced loneliness, which those adhering to the intention-based definition are prone to overlook. After outlining further practical benefits of the promotion-based definition, I argue that we still need to distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of DA since they call for distinct types of remedial action. -/- . (shrink)

Ecologically-motivated authoritarianism flourished initially during the 1970s but largely disappeared after the decline of socialism in the late-1980s. Today, 'eco- authoritarianism ' is beginning to reassert itself, this time modelled not after the Soviet Union but modern-day China. The new eco-authoritarians denounce central planning but still suggest that governments should be granted powers that free them from subordination to citizens' rights or democratic procedures. I argue that current eco-authoritarian views do not present us with an attractive alternative to (...) market liberal democracy even if we take a highly pessimistic view of our shared prospects under the latter sort of regime. (shrink)

Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, xenophobia, and paeans to “traditional values,” in brazen bids for electoral support. How are we to understand this move to the mainstream of political policies and platforms that lurked only on the far fringes through most of the postwar era? Does it herald a new wave of authoritarianism? Is liberal democracy itself in crisis? In this volume, three distinguished scholars draw on critical theory to address (...) our current predicament. Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon, and Max Pensky share a conviction that critical theory retains the power to illuminate the forces producing the current political constellation as well as possible paths away from it. Brown explains how “freedom” has become a rallying cry for manifestly un-emancipatory movements; Gordon dismantles the idea that fascism is rooted in the susceptible psychology of individual citizens and reflects instead on the broader cultural and historical circumstances that lend it force; and Pensky brings together the unlikely pair of Tocqueville and Adorno to explore how democracies can buckle under internal pressure. These incisive essays do not seek to smooth over the irrationality of the contemporary world, and they do not offer the false comforts of an easy return to liberal democratic values. Rather, the three authors draw on their deep engagements with nineteenth–and twentieth–century thought to investigate the historical and political contradictions that have brought about this moment, offering fiery and urgent responses to the demands of the day. (shrink)

Internet-enabled technologies are said to allow individuals to consume, create and distribute their own content without governmental control. They also provide opportunities for new forms of activism and mobilisation that can challenge repressive governments. Recent reports on citizens’ mobilisation in authoritarian states suggest that the Internet can generate new forms of opposition against totalitarian rules. The aim of this paper is to examine whether these new technologies can be regarded as vehicles of democracy or instruments of authoritarianism. Can Internet-enabled (...) technologies promote values of openness and freedom that gradually and significantly act as anti-totalitarian tools? (shrink)

In the past few years, a body of ideas based on political economy theory has been built up by North and Weingast, Olson, Przeworski, and Acemoglu and Robinson. One theme that emerges from this literature concerns the transition to democracy: why would dominant elites give up oligarchic power? This article addresses this question by considering a formal model of an authoritarian regime, and then examining three historical regimes: the Argentine junta of 1976—83; Francoist Spain, 1938—75; the Soviet system, 1924—91. We (...) argue that these historical analyses suggest that party dictatorships are more institutionally durable than military or fascist ones. Key Words: democratic transition • authoritarian regimes • rational choice theory. (shrink)

The rapid development of digital technologies, including AI, is having a significant impact on the social, economic, and political life. Yet, while presented as milestones in innovation and progress, these technological transformations have also introduced mechanisms of control, forms of organization, and ideological patterns that bear striking resemblances to historical fascist phenomena. Moreover, in parallel and increasingly intersecting with this development is a broader political context of fascist ideologies and strategies, populism, authoritarianism, and (other forms of) illiberalism in the (...) West. Drawing from the classic philosophical and political theory literature on fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, this paper argues that and how features of contemporary digital technologies, their governance, and their political context mirror features of fascism. It concludes with a call to resist these new, anti-democratic forms of governance and domination, and make more systemic changes to both the development of technologies and the governance of tech and society. (shrink)

The immediacy of daily encounters with gender roles, as well as the specific features of authoritarian mediation in their social shaping, make an analysis of gendered social interaction indispensable. In this paper the analysis is centered on the concept of social character, with special emphasis on authoritarianism as a continuous determinant of the transformation of natural sex into social construct of gender. It is precisely the authoritarian personality type that is the basis for alienated gender, dominated by sexism, a?natural? (...) belonging to the private or the public sphere of social life, suppression of individual human capacities, and reduction of choice. After a review of the theoretical conceptions of social character and authoritarianism, a historical-comparative analysis of authoritarianism is offered, where the latter is seen as an element of the social character within the perspective of the typology traditional - modern - postmodern society. It is argued in conclusion that, in spite of certain emancipatory achievements, men and women still tend to escape into the security of authoritarian alienation. Feminist theory remains a basic source for reflecting on these processes; therefore the author pleads for a wider acceptance of feminist insights as contributions to establishing a postmodern, interpretive?sociology in a new key?. Analiza drustvene interakcije medju polovima nametnuta je neposrednoscu svakodnevnog susretanja sa polnim ulogama, kao i specificnostima autoritarnog posredovanja u drustvenom uoblicavanju tih uloga. U ovom radu, analiza je organizovana oko pojma drustvenog karaktera, pri cemu se poseban naglasak stavlja na autoritarnost kao kontinuiranu determinantu preobrazaja prirodnog pola u drustveno konstruisanu kategoriju roda. Upravo je autoritarni tip licnosti podloga za otudjenu polnost, u kojoj dominiraju seksizam,?prirodno? pripadanje privatnoj ili javnoj sferi drustvenog zivota, suzbijanje individualnih ljudskih potencijala i suzavanje mogucnosti izbora. Posle pregleda teorijskih koncepcija drustvenog karaktera i pojma autoritarnosti, nudi se istorijsko-uporedna analiza prisustva autoritarnosti kao elementa drustvenog karaktera iz perspektive tipologije tradicionalno - moderno - postmoderno drustvo. Zakljucuje se da, i pored izvesnog ostvarenog emancipacijskog hoda, muskarci i zene jos uvek teze bekstvu u sigurnost autoritarne otudjenosti. Feministicka teorija ostaje nezaobilazna osnova za promisljanje ovih procesa, te se pledira za sire usvajanje feministickih uvida kao doprinosa oblikovanju jedne postmoderne, razumevajuce?sociologije u novome kljucu?. (shrink)

The Wet’suwet’en land defense movement and the allied #ShutDownCanada protests remain some of the most highly publicized anti-pipeline protest events of the last decade. This protest movement offers an insight into how Canada protects and reproduces its accumulation by resource extraction strategy. Situating this research within an observed global phenomenon of growing intolerance to protest and dissent in democratic contexts, I illuminate the ways through which opposition against extractive projects is repressed by the Canadian settler colonial state in the contemporary (...) era of neoliberalism. Drawing on the political economy framework of “authoritarian neoliberalism,” I elucidate the legal, discursive, and coercive means through which extractive projects are insulated from public opposition. These means are repressing the democratic right to protest in Canada and indicate that Canada is no exception to a broader global deterioration of democracy under a political-economic system that is antagonistic to social solidarity and collective action. Moreover, these repressive strategies exacerbate the violent and dispossessive nature of Canada’s settler colonial extractive capitalism. (shrink)

In Of Spirit, Jacques Derrida claims that Heidegger's attempted deconstruction of metaphysical anthropocentrism remains anthropocentric and, as such, is inherently authoritarian. This paper takes up these charges to engage with whether Derrida is justified in coming to this conclusion. To do so, it briefly outlines Heidegger's critique of anthropocentrism and subsequent re-thinking of human being in line with the question of being, before suggesting that Derrida is correct to suggest that Heidegger's thinking remains anthropocentric. It then engages with whether Heidegger's (...) defence of this continued anthropocentrism is authoritarian by engaging with the nature of what it is to be authoritarian. By engaging with three senses of authoritarianism, termed authoritarian in the sense of the author, sovereign, and dogmatic, it suggests that, while Heidegger can indeed be thought of as being authoritarian in the senses of the author and sovereign so too can Derrida, and, indeed, by pointing to passages whereby Derrida links the sovereign author to democracy, I show that, on Derrida's terms, it is possible to conclude that Heidegger's thinking is inherently democratic. I then engage with the third sense of authoritarian, authoritarian in the sense of the dogmatic, and by discussing the relationship between being and time, the nature of provisionality in Heidegger's thinking, highlighting a number of statements he makes on animality that confirm this provisionality, and pointing to the openness inherent to meditative thinking, conclude that, while Derrida is correct to maintain that Heidegger's thinking is anthropocentric and can be thought of as being authoritarian in the senses of authorship and sovereignty, it is not authoritarian in the sense of the dogmatic. (shrink)

This paper examines a recent form of authoritarianism within liberal democratic societies which I call ‘virtue authoritarianism’. This autocratic movement manifests in both a left- and right-wing form, as mirror images of each other, and undermines liberal values within longstanding liberal democracies. Their motive is to force their ‘morally virtuous’ visions of a utopian society upon all citizens. Virtue authoritarians are motivated by the belief that their movements are justified and necessary as they are founded on honourable and (...) righteous motivations and goals, either to bring the society back to a virtuous golden age (right-wing version) or to drive society towards a morally mandated progressive utopia (left-wing version). This paper, firstly, explores the nature of virtue authoritarianism by setting out its nature, aims and methods. Secondly, it offers some thoughts about resisting virtue authoritarianism by suggesting two ways in which liberal democracies could be protected; namely, to reconceptualise fundamental liberal values such as freedom of speech, and to treat the doctrine of liberalism as a fighting creed so developing a more robust and sustained defence against autocratic forces within it. (shrink)

Inspired by the Studies on authoritarian personality and based on contemporary research on authoritarianism in Brazil, we will analyze the construction of the idol aura surrounding former president Bolsonaro, which allowed the far right to be elected and remain in power until the last elections in 2022. We see his rise as mostly due to the digital violence that largely benefited his campaign and was directed against the block of left-wing candidates. So as to clarify this issue, we will (...) revisit the sociohistorical and psycho-political fundamentals of the antidemocratic and ethnocentric behaviors spurred by that leadership that became idolized. We will also outline an emancipatory, antiracist, culturally relevant and decolonial education, as a way to provide what Adorno regarded as being the antidote to the reemergence of a regressive barbarism. In the case of Brazil, barbarism refers to the remnants of the slave system implemented in the country for three and a half centuries, whose destructive potential was awakened under Bolsonaro’s government, given the latent antidemocratic and authoritarian tendencies in our society. (shrink)

Right-wing populism and authoritarianism are often thought to be closely linked to each other: conceptually, ideologically, historically. This article challenges that assumption by reinterpreting right-wing populism as an essentially anti-authoritarian movement. Right-wing populism diverges from the clearly authoritarian movements of the past, such as classic conservatism and fascism, in at least two important ways: first, it follows a distinctive epistemology with a different idea what constitutes the truth and who has access to it. Second, populism has a peculiar understanding (...) of the ultimate source of political authority and the function of political leadership. My article shows how right-wing populists pursue a project of self-empowerment and appropriate notions of emancipation and autonomy for their own narrative. (shrink)

According to social information processing theory and conservation of resource theory, we examine whether and how authoritarian-benevolent leadership influences employees’ proactive work behaviors (PWBs) and unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPBs). Study 1, a survey of 351 participants, revealed that authoritarian-benevolent leadership was positively related to LMX ambivalence, and that LMX ambivalence was negatively related to employees’ PWBs as well as UPBs. Further, the results showed that LMX ambivalence mediated the relationship between authoritarian-benevolent leadership and employees’ PWBs as well as UPBs. We (...) also found that dialectical thinking negatively moderated the effect of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on employee LMX ambivalence. Study 2, using manipulations in the form of scenarios, examined the mediating effect of LMX ambivalence linking authoritarian-benevolent leadership with employees’ PWBs and UPBs. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. (shrink)

This paper introduces “nihilistic authoritarianism” as a useful concept for political analysis. This term has not been employed before in the scholarly literature, even though the basic idea is familiar from the history of political thought. It is not unusual to say that authoritarians desire power for its own sake. But the basic nihilism of such an idea has not been adequately analyzed. This idea is distinguished from “Platonic authoritarianism,” which consolidates power around a teleological commitment to a (...) set of ethical values or social goals that transcends the political realm. Nihilistic authoritarianism is different. It is “autotelic” in the sense that it does not seek to actualize some further telos or to satisfy some principled justificatory schema. It also tends to consider political power as “autonomous” in the sense that “the political” is severed from other systems of value. Because of its strangeness, nihilistic authoritarianism is often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. The analysis presented here builds upon work found in critical theory and in more recent scholarly discussions of authoritarianism, while offering historical and literary references that help flesh out the phenomenon of nihilistic authoritarianism. In conclusion, a remedy is briefly suggested, which focuses on a broader integration of political power and other ethical and social ends. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of _authoritarian recursion _to explain how contemporary AI systems reproduce institutional control across education, warfare, and digital discourse. It identifies a shared recursive pattern in which algorithms mediate judgment, obscure responsibility, and restrict moral and epistemic agency. Grounded in critical discourse analysis and sociotechnical ethics, the study examines three cases—automated proctoring, autonomous weapons, and content recommendation—alongside cultural imaginaries such as Orwell’s _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, Skynet, and _Black Mirror_. These fictions are treated as ethical heuristics that expose (...) the blind spots of technical rationality rather than as empirical evidence. The analysis brings together research in Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), relational ethics, and data justice to show how predictive infrastructures enable the outsourcing of moral judgment and the closure of contestable knowledge. It concludes by calling for governance models that emphasize _democratic limits to automation_, epistemic plurality, and structural accountability. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of corporate social responsibility in the seemingly oxymoronic context of Chinese “authoritarian capitalism.” Following an introduction to the emergence of authoritarian capitalism, the article considers the emergence of CSR in China using Matten and Moon’s framework of explaining CSR development in terms both of a business system’s historic institutions and of the impacts of new institutionalism on corporations arising from societal pressures in their global and national environments. We find two forms of CSR in China, (...) reflecting the “multiplexity” of its business system: one in the mainly family-owned small and medium-sized enterprise sector reflecting concern with local reputation, and another in the corporate, mainly state-owned enterprise sector, reflecting global and national societal expectations. We investigate the dynamics of CSR in China through the interplay of the global and national societal pressures and mediating and even leading roles played by the State and the Party. We consider the conceptual integrity and practical prospects for “state-led society-driven” CSR and future research opportunities, including those opened up by the three contributing articles to this special issue. (shrink)

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in studying academic dependency, towards the paradigm of brokered dependency. Using Chinese academia as an example, I demonstrate how the neocolonial condition of academic dependency is always mediated through blockage-brokerage mechanisms. The two most salient blockage-brokerage mechanisms of dependency in the Chinese context are linguistic barrier and authoritarian malepistemization, and the effects of the latter consist of three layers: institutional, informational and incorporational. On top of their domestic impacts, those mechanisms jointly exacerbate spectacularized (...) postcoloniality in anglophone-hegemonic global academic publishing. The paradigm of brokered dependency not only represents a more nuanced approach to the study of academic dependency, but also underscores the fact that the dismantling of the neocolonial condition cannot be conceived and pursued in isolation from comprehending and confronting the authoritarian condition, especially when the latter pertains under the disguise of anticolonialism. (shrink)

In a sample of 522 police officers and staff in an English police force, we investigated the role of authoritarian leadership in reducing the levels of employee ethical voice. Drawing upon uncertainty management theory, we found that authoritarian leadership was negatively related to employee ethical voice through increased levels of felt uncertainty, when the effects of a motivational-based mechanism suggested by previous studies were controlled. In addition, we found that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee ethical voice via (...) felt uncertainty is mitigated by higher levels of benevolent leadership. That is, when authoritarian leaders simultaneously exhibit benevolence, they are less likely to cause feelings of uncertainty in their followers who are then more likely to speak up about unethical issues. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

The present study investigated variables potentially associated with a lack of concern about COVID-19 and belief in the conspiracy theory that China is responsible for the virus. In particular, the study looked at Authoritarianism, Conspiracy Beliefs, gender, and consistency of handedness as predictors of nine Likert-type items gauging attitudes, behavior, and beliefs regarding the virus. Initial analyses showed that Authoritarianism predicted less concern about the impact of the virus on health, less mask wearing, and a stronger belief in (...) China’s responsibility for the illness. Conspiracy Beliefs were associated with a stronger belief in China’s responsibility. Women expressed greater degrees of concern about their own and others’ health and about the financial wellbeing of others. In order to reduce the number of dimensions, and thus the number of tests that could yield a type one error, the nine items were then submitted to a principal components analysis which yielded a “Concern about COVID” factor and a “Blame for China” factor. Authoritarianism is generally associated with less concern about the virus. In addition, men showed less concern about the virus overall than women. Both Authoritarianism and Conspiracy Beliefs accounted for unique variance in blame on China for the virus. (shrink)

A communitarian approach to bioethics adds a core value to a field that is often more concerned with considerations of individual autonomy. Some interpretations of liberalism put the needs of the patient over those of the community; authoritarian communitarianism privileges the needs of society over those of the patient. Responsive communitarianism's main starting point is that we face two conflicting core values, autonomy and the common good, and that neither should be a priori privileged and that we have principles and (...) procedure that can be used to work out this conflict but not to eliminate it. Additionally, it favours changing behaviour mainly through the creation of norms and by drawing on informal social control rather than by coercion. (shrink)

This paper examines how accounting can both entrench and challenge an inhumane and costly neoliberal policy—namely, the Australian government’s offshore detention of asylum seekers. Drawing on Bruff, Rethinking Marxism 26:113–129 (2014) and Smith, Competition & Change 23:192–217 (2019), we acknowledge that the neoliberalism underpinning immigration policies and the practices related to asylum seekers takes an _authoritarian_ tone. Through the securitisation and militarisation of the border, the Australian state politicises and silences marginalised social groups such as asylum-seekers. Studies have exposed accounting (...) as a technology that upholds neoliberalism by representing policy as objective and factual. Curiously, there has been a wilful intention by successive Australian governments to silence the accounting for offshore detention. We seek to demystify this _un_accounting and _un_accountability by exploring counter-accounts produced by meso-level organisations that support asylum seekers. We apply a close-reading method in analysing limited governmental accounts and various counter-accounts to demonstrate how counter-accounts give visibility to practices that an authoritarian neoliberal regime has obfuscated. We also reflect on the potential for counter-accounting to foster broader social change by holding the Australian government accountable to moral and ethical standards of care for human life. This paper considers the intersections between accounting and authoritarian neoliberalism and presents counter-accounts as mechanisms that can challenge these neoliberal norms. (shrink)

Published in Vienna in 1936, _The Authoritarian State_ by Eric Voegelin has remained virtually unknown to the public until now. Sales of the German edition were halted following the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, and the entire printing was later destroyed by wartime bombing. In this volume, Voegelin offers a critical examination of the most prominent European theories of state and constitutional law of the period while providing a political and historical analysis of the Austrian situation. He discusses the (...) dismissal of Parliament in 1933, the civil war, the murder of Federal Chancellor Dollfuss, the adoption of the "Authoritarian Constitution" of 1934, and the predicament of being sandwiched between Hitler and Mussolini. A radical critique of Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law lies at the heart of this work, marking Voegelin's definitive departure from Neo-Kantian epistemology. For the first time, Voegelin elaborates on the important distinction between theoretical concepts and political symbols as a basis for explaining the nontheoretical and speculative character of ideologies, both left and right. He shows that _total_ and _authoritarian_ are symbols of ideological self-interpretation that have no theoretical value, a distinction basic to his later work in _The New Science of Politics._ Available for the first time in English, _The Authoritarian State_ is a valuable addition to the Voegelin canon and to the field of intellectual history in general. (shrink)

Jan-Werner Müller’s analysis of ‘authoritarian populism’ represents a highly limited approach to the issue that is typical of many mainstream approaches within populism studies and liberal-democratic constitutional theory. Through a critique of Müller, the article develops an account of the historical emergence of authoritarian populism as a ‘long counter-revolution of the radical right’ against the values and institutions of the social-democratic welfare state. Focussing on the USA and UK, the article shows how, rather than being a novel phenomenon emerging from (...) the fringes in the 1980s and 1990s, authoritarian populism emerges from the middle of the twentieth century as a highly successful form of hegemonic struggle over the Republican and Conservative parties and over American and British societies. The political success of a highly contradictory ideological framework of the radical right has helped to largely normalise a language, rhetoric and imaginary of authoritarian populism and place it at the centre of contemporary politics and culture. By largely ignoring such a development, and the highly contingent nature of North Atlantic ‘democracy’, theorists and commentators like Müller fail to grasp the depth of the current authoritarian populist threat and offer only liberal-democratic mythology in response to the ranting and chanting of ‘fake news’. (shrink)

What is the basis for intolerance? This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory about what causes intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: individuals' innate psychological predispositions to intolerance interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, resonant particularly in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include national economic downturn, rapidly rising (...) crime rates, civil dissent and unrest, loss of confidence in social institutions, presidential unpopularity, divisive presidential campaigns, and internal or external crises that undermine national pride or confidence. Using purpose-built experimental manipulations, cross-national survey data and in-depth personal interviews with extreme authoritarians, the book shows that this simple model provides the most complete account of intolerance. (shrink)

The aim in this essay is to explore the connections between environmental justice and the respect for the diversity of cultures. To do this, I will draw from Arne Næss’s ecosophy and Deep Ecology. Although there is no systematic political theory in Næss, I will show that we can extract some critical political guidelines from his work, especially concerning the use of violence and the distancing from authoritarian positions (e.g., ecofascism). I will give special consideration to the concepts of structural (...) and cultural violence, showing that these two kinds of violence are at the basis of different forms of ecoauthoritarianism. In this regard, to avoid the dangerous drift toward environmental authoritarianism, Næss’s ecosophy proposes respect for diversity and the idea that cultures should be understood as forms of life. I will argue that moral progress in socio-ecological concerns calls for respect for local cultures, as these constitute a significant part of the environment. I will also claim that the eradication and elimination of these forms of life may lead to more violence, which may mean preventing self-realization, freedom, and flourishing. To clarify this point, I will present the case of “Parque Pumalín” in Chile, which demonstrates how a rigid application of Deep Ecology principles at the political level can lead to conflicts, which can only be healed through respect for local cultures. I will conclude by suggesting that the practice of inculturation (i.e., considering and respecting local cultures as forms of life) may benefit and enrich Næss’s ecosophical and political point of view. (shrink)

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel’s central (...) concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

With right-wing-extremist and -populist parties and movements on the rise throughout the world, the concept of authoritarianism has proven to be particularly valuable to explain the psychological underpinnings of these tendencies. Even though many scales to measure the different dimensions of authoritarianism exist, no short screening instrument has been tested and validated on a large scale so far. The present study examines the psychometric properties of the screening instrument Authoritarianism – Ultrashort in three representative German samples. Using (...) exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the A-US demonstrated acceptable internal consistency. Model fit was good and correlations with related constructs indicated convergent validity in both samples. Construct validity was demonstrated using the original version of the scale. The instrument proved to be invariant across sex, employment status, and education, but not across different age groups. Finally, the analyses showed that differences in the A-US are associated with sociodemographic variables. Potential causes and effects of these findings are discussed. Based on these results, the A-US proved to be a valuable and highly efficient tool to screen for authoritarian tendencies. (shrink)

From 1998 to 2005, six elections took place in postcommunist Europe that had the surprising outcome of empowering the opposition and defeating authoritarian incumbents or their designated successors. Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik compare these unexpected electoral breakthroughs. They draw three conclusions. First, the opposition was victorious because of the hard and creative work of a transnational network composed of local opposition and civil society groups, members of the international democracy assistance community and graduates of successful electoral challenges (...) to authoritarian rule in other countries. Second, the remarkable run of these upset elections reflected the ability of this network to diffuse an ensemble of innovative electoral strategies across state boundaries. Finally, elections can serve as a powerful mechanism for democratic change. This is especially the case when civil society is strong, the transfer of political power is through constitutional means, and opposition leaders win with small mandates. (shrink)

The article examines the memory regime of the German Democratic Republic as an example of authoritarian memory politics. Using the case of the GDR, the article analyses the role of law in extreme memory regimes and the juridification of authoritarian interpretations of the common past. The article’s empirical material consists of court records related to a trial in the state of Thuringia in the early 1960s. The documents show how the GDR introduced a moral hierarchy into historical time, used this (...) narrative to label the enemies of the state as immoral agents, and then judicialised the moral lines of division by claiming that the artificial moral categories attached to the collective past, present, and future were what the people wanted and perceived as true. The article analyses authoritarian memory politics as a flexible and comprehensive tool for use by political elites. It argues that the purpose of authoritarian memory politics — like that of the GDR — is not only to punish individual citizens, but also to cultivate social norms that promote self-censorship and awareness of the power of the ruling elite. (shrink)

Authoritarian social movements and governments have brought about some of the greatest horrors in human history. Naturally, research in the social sciences has aimed at developing an understanding of authoritarianism. Certain kinds of authoritarian things, like personalities or governments, are better understood as a consequence, but a general concept of authoritarianism remains absent. I develop a general account of the concept of political authoritarianism which I call justificatory authoritarianism. According to this view, authoritarianism is a (...) justification of the imposition of political power over others by appeal to a prospect for considerable collective benefit, and that justification serves to suspend or suppress constraints on the exercise of political power. (shrink)

Contemporary society is dominated by the reality of the Anthropocene ecological crisis. In a certain subset of the ecopolitical literature, however, this topic is framed as a problem of governance. Supposedly, the unintended consequences of numerous micro-level human actions can be addressed by macro-level government interventions. Such discourses of eco-governmentality are informed by an emphasis upon the ‘planetary’ and the desirability of political centralisation. Our article seeks to critically engage with both the notion of a supposedly ‘planetary’ community of interests, (...) and also reject the idea of global eco-governmentality. In our view, not only does the misguided emphasis on global ecological governance oversimply the planetary predicament, obscuring differences between cultures and social power structures; but it also runs the risk of obviating local democracy and could also lead to an ecologically legitimated undemocratic global technocracy. Instead of centralisation, further decentralisation could be key to both thinking and acting ‘glocally’, without expecting too much from political systems. We make the case against eco-authoritarianism and also reject ecomodernism. Recent critiques relating to the pitfalls of ecomodernism can help us construct a more inclusive, bottom-up form of ecopolitics. (shrink)

How should legal academics respond to authoritarian populists? What shape should their public interventions take? To address these questions, this article reframes the activism of legal scholars against populism as a struggle over competing legal theories. It is well documented that authoritarian populists make opportunistic use of democratic institutions, in particular constitutional reform and lawmaking by an elected legislature. This article distills a particular populist conception of law embedded in the arguments put forward by populists to defend and legitimate their (...) uses of law. The populists’ legal theory views law as a pure expression of popular will, with two corollaries. First, it completely collapses law into politics. Second, it adopts an extreme form of legal positivism. One way to counter the constitutional and legal changes advanced by populists is to challenge their legal theory, a task that seems appropriate for legal academics. Through a discussion of the mobilization in 2023 by legal academics in Israel, this article argues that countering authoritarian populists’ legal theory is fraught with tensions. Though Israeli legal academics did not claim to operate at the level of legal theory, their arguments against the Israeli government’s legal proposals implicitly challenged the government’s jurisprudential approach. We show that doing so required reclaiming some autonomy for law from politics, but that this was in tension with the task of countering the government’s positivism—since the latter required appealing to values. In addition, the organization of legal academics into activists aiming to mobilize public opinion stood in tension with the claim of legal expertise distinct from politics. We conclude tentatively that while legal scholars have unique contributions to make to the struggle against authoritarian populism, these contributions are necessarily embedded in a moral-political outlook—one that should generally be acknowledged and actively defended in the political arena as well. (shrink)

In recent years, comparative constitutional lawyers have turned their attention to the study of democratic backsliding. However, such scholarship is yet to draw on the now extensive literature on traditional authoritarian systems. The bifurcation of regime type that has structured comparative legal research for decades—for comparative constitutional lawyers and for scholars of specific authoritarian regions—is now under strain. With the global rise of authoritarianism and the growing use of law by authoritarian states, the world is harder to neatly separate (...) into two camps than it once might have been. This Article reflects on how we might place two bodies of literature—on comparative constitutional law and on the study of authoritarian law—in conversation with one another, and how we might study a world with a plurality of regime types, where in many cases there is increasingly a continuum both in regime type and in legal practices. In proposing that we bring together scholarship on traditional authoritarian regimes and contemporary scholarship on democratic backsliding, we hope to illuminate what might be democratic or authoritarian about a particular legal practice, which in turn can shape how we understand democracy and authoritarianism. (shrink)

In this article I explore how Plato balances the power of ruling elites and masses in the Statesman and assess whether the political system in which the political expert rules and which Plato considers to be the only correct political system is best classified as authoritarian or antiauthoritarian. After developing a framework for discussing political authoritarianism in Plato, I argue that the rule of the political expert is strongly authoritarian and that an integral part of Plato’s political authoritarianism (...) in the Statesman is his disregard for the value of the rule of law. I defend my interpretation against two recent antiauthoritarian interpretations of the dialogue advanced by Melissa Lane and John Cooper. (shrink)

ExcerptWe live in a polarized world, and political theory has come to reflect its manichaeanism. Eric Hendriks was absolutely correct when he wrote in Telos 213 that “[t]he West’s liberal worldview, structured around the binary of virtuous liberal democracies and villainous authoritarian regimes, aggressively centers political legitimacy on itself.”1 What he failed to note was the ignorant presentism of the West’s—or at least the academic West’s—liberal worldview. That is not to say that liberalism is unvirtuous or that authoritarianism is (...) good. Far from it. It is simply to observe that contemporary liberalism has little sense of history beyond “Weimar good, Nazis bad.” Leave aside the relative ignorance of non-Western traditions among many Western political theorists; their near-total ignorance of the West’s own political history, and of the highly refined vocabulary that their forebears developed to describe it, is far more limiting. (shrink)

Although authority relationships are obviously ubiquitous in organizations, management scholars have, curiously, contributed little to the substantial body of research into the authoritarian personality. Moreover, an observed large-magnitude negative relationship between authoritarianism and ethical relativism, first reported over a quarter century ago, has made almost no meaningful impact on our conceptions of either construct. Perhaps as a consequence, some business ethics researchers have gravitated toward demonstrably inaccurate interpretations of relativism. From these starting points, this paper makes the case that (...) an understanding of the authoritarian personality, with its grounding in low relativism, may provide otherwise unavailable insights into business ethics. Past research reveals that high authoritarians readily comply with authority figures that advocate ethically questionable actions, prioritize the needs of business over concern for the natural environment, appear to lack personal initiative at work, display hostile and aggressive tendencies, and often view diverse others negatively. Awareness of such findings may expand research horizons to include the possibility that highly authoritarian employees might, for example, regard organizational attempts to increase diversity or ‘go green’ as anathema, want no part of participation in decision making, and feel totally justified when engaging in bullying behaviors at work. Managers wanting intelligent and creative employees able both to think for themselves and take initiative, and employees who lack preconceived notions of inferiority about diverse others that has to be overcome when interacting with them at work, should consider hiring persons who are low in authoritarianism. (shrink)

How are we to evaluate the project of common good constitutionalism? This new movement, which dismisses positivism and liberalism, progressivism and originalism, aims to overturn the entire canon of modern political and constitutional theory. In its place, it aims to restore a classical tradition of natural law jurisprudence, which is said to have been lost over the last century of constitutional law and practice. In so doing it uses one of liberalism’s own juristic heroes, Ronald Dworkin, in order to free (...) conservatism from the tethers of fidelity to constitutional text and the principle of popular sovereignty underwriting it. Common good constitutionalism’s intervention in the constitutional culture wars of the present is authoritarian not because of its opposition to liberalism, but because of its steadfast refusal of any link between constitutional authority and democracy. (shrink)

By the end of 2021 it will be a decade since the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ (al-rabīʿ al-ʿarabī) profoundly disrupted the Arab world, particularly in North Africa, raising hopes that the region overall would, through a permanent democratic transition, shake off its apparent exceptionalism in endorsing authoritarian governance. A decade later, such aspirations would appear to have been dashed, except in Tunisia, although fresh rounds of protest in Lebanon and Iraq, and especially in Algeria, during 2019 and 2020, might (...) have suggested that this could be too peremptory a judgment. Nonetheless, authoritarian resistance appears to have been far more resilient than expected at the time. Yet, do the experiences of the decade therefore demonstrate that political liberalization within the region, specifically within North Africa, is not possible and, if not, what were the factors that made such an outcome seemingly impossible to achieve? This comment is designed to address some aspects of these concerns with particular emphasis on the theories behind democratic transition derived from different sets of hypotheses about the origins and principles of participatory socio-political action. (shrink)

Classical leadership models have insistently reinforced the notion of leader-centric rule. Business models focus on strong leadership, definitive decision-making and charismatic figures. Authoritarian leadership is the foundation upon which other models are based. However, the adoption of Charismatic Leadership and Great Man theory puts into relief the tendency within democratic rule towards fascist and populist ideology. Many leading philosophers and political scientists lend support to authoritarian rule. This tendency is not always apparent in democratic theory, indeed it is counter-intuitive, but (...) from a critical perspective, we are forced to ask whether there is not something within democracy which invites authoritarianism and harbours the seed of fascism. (shrink)

In recent years, Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism has been repeatedly associated with the loss of truth and a post-factual age. At the same time, Rorty is presented as a strict opponent of such positions. How is it that the same thinker who is held responsible for a postmodern decline is also to be understood as the most severe critic? To answer this question, this paper reconstructs Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism as a practice of solidarity by referring to his theory of recognition and (...) virtue of contingency. Subsequently, it can be shown why the accusations of post-facticity and ethnocentrism fall short. On the contrary, because his theory combines different political archetypes, the paper presents Rorty’s description of anti-authoritarianism as a social paradigm of contemporary societies. (shrink)