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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Within Germany, Carl Schmitt's status as a political thinker is on a par with Machiavelli and Hobbes. With the rise in neo-conservatism and authoritarian liberalism in less developed countries such as Chile and Singapore, Renato Christi believes Schmitt's theories will become of considerable importance. Nazi Third Reich. His political theories provide an insight into the nature of Conservatism. well as extrapolate possibilities for the future.

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)

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 article analyses and assesses the development of the post-war thought of Julius Evola. Evola's initial writings in the inter-war period were from an ideological position close to the Fascist regime in Italy, though not identical to it. Over a long and prolific writing career he developed a complex line of argument, which synthesises the spiritual orientation of writers such as Rene Guenon with the political concerns of the European authoritarian Right. The paper argues that notwithstanding the changed circumstances, (...) Evola remained committed to the 'Traditionalism', broadly defined, with which he had been associated before 1945, and that his success lay in his capacity to adapt his strategic perspective without sacrificing the fundamentals of his conservative authoritarian position. The continuing use of his work among the radical Right, and the appearance of many of his writings in English translation for the first time, suggest that he should be taken more seriously by academic analysis than has hitherto been the case. (shrink)

This article investigates the efficacy of a form of electoral innovation unique to the island-state of Singapore, the Nominated Member of Parliament scheme, and its impact on democratic governance, in light of the changing political landscape. A comparative perspective will be employed and broader conclusions on electoral engineering will be reached, especially for democratizing countries. Contrary to conventional scholarly wisdom, I argue that the NMP scheme can actually boost democratic representation in the country, considering the changing political landscape in the (...) state previously dominated by a hegemonic party. This is via two ways: firstly, NMPs could better represent the voices of the people at the margins of society and, secondly, they could be better positioned to raise issues that are deemed too to be raised by opposition parties. NMPs can enhance democratic governance by promoting deliberation, accountability, and representation. (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)

Among the most used expressions in scholarly articles concerning collective memory, is “dealing with the past”, or its more specific alternative, “dealing with the traumatic past”. This is a rather inexact formulation, because what scholars, artist, curators deal with is not the past in itself but the manner in which it is narrated and represented, or remembered, reconstructed. A series of questions are triggered by this statement: who “remembers”, for what purpose, with what consequences? The scope of this yearbook is (...) to present two different ways of approaching the construction of collective remembrance: the authoritarian one and the post-authoritarian one. Th e articles discuss case studies of collective memory and identity building in Communist Romania, comparative studies of participative art in post-authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, or intricate artistic approaches of traumatic collective memories. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1247-1276, November 2022. 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)

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)

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)

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)

The events on January 6th should signal to us just how divided the United States is as a country and prompt us to think through some of the challenges we face—as well as what we can reasonably hope for in terms of restoring a belief in the most coveted ideals of American democracy as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, namely, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Upon analyzing Trump’s rise to political power via the lenses (...) of Hannah Arendt’s concept of ideology and Louis Althusser’s notion of interpellation, I try to find hope through these dark times through looking at the increased momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Youth Climate Movement, two social movements I interpret through the frame of Johan Galtung’s conception of positive peace, that is, as potential infrastructural social systems aligned with social justice that we should enact to promote human flourishing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs one response to the secular crisis of capitalism, higher education is being proletarianised. Its academics and students are shorn of autonomy beyond the sale of their labour-power. One h...

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are notoriously uninterested in truthtelling. They also often appear uninterested even in constructing plausible falsehoods. What stands out above all is the brazenness and frequency with which they repeat known falsehoods. In spite of this, they are not always greeted with incredulity. Indeed, Republicans continue to express trust in Donald Trump in remarkable numbers. The only way to properly make sense of what Trump and Johnson are doing, we argue, is to give a greater role (...) to audience relativity - and in some cases, audience participation - in notions like bullshitting and bald-faced lying. In this paper, we develop a new understanding of bullshitting, one that includes bald-faced lying, and recognizes that different communicative acts may be directed at different audiences with a single utterance. In addition, we argue for recognition of the category of bald-faced bullshitting, a particular speciality of both Trump and Johnson, and one especially useful to authoritarian leaders. (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)

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)

The “return of the state” as an economic actor has left scholars at a lack of theoretical tools to capture the characteristics of state-dominated business systems. This is reflected in the fact that any type of state intervention in the economy is too easily qualified as a sign of “authoritarian capitalism,” which has led scholars to lump together countries as diverse as China, Singapore, and Norway under that heading. Rather than considering any type of state intervention in the economy (...) as authoritarian, we propose a more sophisticated conceptualization, which distinguishes two boundaries between the public and the private domains and conceives of the “return of the state” as the erosion of one or both of them. This conceptualization allows us to clearly distinguish a shift from an ideal-typical market-based “regulatory capitalism” to “state capitalism” or “authoritarian capitalism,” respectively. We use interview data with business leaders in an extreme case of the return of the state to identify the nature of the mechanisms by which an authoritarian government erodes these private-public divides. We argue that a focus on these constitutive mechanisms of the erosion of private-public divides allows us to define “authoritarian capitalism” in a way that makes it a useful tool to understand contexts beyond the Chinese case in which it first emerged. (shrink)

In his 1930 article ‘Changes in the Structure of Political Compromise’ Otto Kirchheimer wrote: “The relationship that persisted between the financial community and the government up to the last cri...

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)

Paradoxes of liberalism -- Liberalism and value pluralism: the precarious equilibrium -- Deliberation and democratic justice -- The nuances of judgment -- Dissent and the politics of defiance -- Exceptionalism and entitlement -- The shadow of narcissism -- Technocrats, cabals and non-representation -- Democracy and the ecological imperative -- Techno-democracy and the limits of communicative reason -- Towards a democratic culture: a reflexive intent -- Democracy and the imagination.