Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is a characterized by an emphasis on hierarchy and the rejection of liberty, equality, and political plurality. The use of a strong central authority, reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting are required to preserve this political status. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic in nature and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military.

Rudolph Rummel in his 1976 book Understanding Conflict and War, Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix distinguished totalitarianism from authoritarianism as distinct rejections of Liberalism. While the term totalitarianism had a slightly different meaning prior to Rummel's work prior political philosophers such as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer traced the roots of this ideology back to Jean Jacques Rousseau. The thread of totalitarian thought follows consistently from Rousseau, to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, to Karl Marx, to Antonio Gramsci ending in the common form of totalitarianism seen in the world today largely developed by Herbert Marcuse. This is contrasted with authoritarianism which is a distinct tradition and hierarchy focussed ideology. A common oversimplification of this is that authoritarianism is the rejection of liberalism from the political right while totalitarianism is rejection of liberalism from the political left. This is encapsulated in the Three Telos Model.