The Language of Legitimation in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

No wonder, totalitarian societies were under the scrutiny of political scientists and philosophers of the post-World War II period. Fascism and Communist party in the Soviet bloc were extensively investigated by the brightest scholars of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt 1973, Friedrich and Brzezinski 1965, Huntington and Moore 1970, Linz 1975. Huntington and Moore (1970 provide most comprehensive classification of one-party systems based not only on theoretical propositions but also on empirical relationships of politics with social divisions. Sartori, Allardt, and Stein in 1970 also made a comparative study of political parties, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, dictatorship, despotism, and absolutism. Almond and Powell (1966) constructed classification of conservative, modernizing, and premobilized authoritarian (Spain, Brazil, and Ghana of the 60's would respectively are the examples). As was noted by Friedrich and Brzezinski (1965): "Totalitarian regimes of 20th century were novelty, no government like that had existed before the 20th century." 150 There are few totalitarian regimes: Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, and Communist China. Modern North Korea also has the features of a totalitarian regime. 151The typology of non-democratic regimes by Linz J. ( 2000) distinguishes totalitarian regimes, authoritarian regimes in all their varieties, particularly post-totalitarianism (as a distinctive type of authoritarian rule), "sultanistic" regimes or regimes with strong sultanistic tendencies.Linz's practical criteria for delimiting democratic regimes from non-democratic are based on his definition of democracy which "allows the free formulation of political preferences, through the use of basic freedoms of association, information, and communication, for the purpose of free competition between leaders to validate at regular intervals by nonviolent means their claim to rule." 152 To sum up, his requirement for a state to be put into the group of democracies is the presence of political rights, freedom to form political parties, contestation in elections, elections at regular intervals, alternation in power (not always an indicator). The analysis of these features permits us to unequivocally distinguish democratic and non-democratic states.Authoritarian regime according to Linz (2000) means:… political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive