Understanding Non-Democratic Regimes: Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, & Hybrid Regimes, Appunti di Scienza Politica

Scarica Understanding Non-Democratic Regimes: Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, & Hybrid Regimes e più Appunti in PDF di Scienza Politica solo su Docsity! Non-democratic regimes Political scientists focused on democracy for a long time, instead attention on non-democratic regimes was low. We define a non-democratic regime if the regime does not fit in the definition of democracy. In reality, non-democracies are the most diffused polities in the world. In the index we can see that the majority of the countries are non-democratic regimes or are partly free: which means that they are moving toward democracy or either regressing. Among the non-democracies, although, there are differences: what we have to do is firstly understand the difference between democratic and non-democratic regimes and then also the differences among these non-democracies. Which are the features that make a non-democratic regime different from democracy? ● Lack of responsiveness- that should be guaranteed by means of accountability, it is the capacity of the government to respond to the demands coming from the bottom (from citizens). A democracy should be continuously responsive, so you need to preserve future responsiveness through elections that show the accountability of a regime. What are the other channels to make a regime accountable? Protests and other actions of the single citizen. ● Lack of pluralism- pluralism in a democratic regime not only should be accepted but has to be part of democracies. With pluralism ideas that differentiates should be respected by political powers. ● Lack of institutional pluralism- pluralism forms institutions- it pushes the government to comply and to be responsible for its own actions. Democracy is constituted by a set of institutions differently from autocracy- the political power is all in the hands of the dominant authority and there are no other institutions that can compare. No other institutions exist- there is no chance to control the dominant authority that can do whatever without any constraints (there are norms but none of them can constrain in some way the authority). The lack of institutional pluralism leads to the concentration of power in one hand. The various difference between non-democracies lead us to differentiate them in these groups: 1. Totalitarian regime 2. Authoritarian regime 3. Hybrid regime 4. Regimes in transaction Totalitarianism Totalitarianism can be defined as the most extreme case of non-democratic regime. The regime mostly relies on mass-mobilisation: the idea is to include citizens in the political life but excluding those who are against the regime. All the projects of the regime are led by ideology. Friedrich and Brzezinski in 1965 highlighted in their book the elements that define a totalitarian regime: ● Totalising ideology: which is the main aim to reshape the society. The project should be not only political but also social and anthropological to reshape the society on the basis of an ideology. ● Single party inspired by that ideology and leaded by a dictatorship: One man is charged to be the ruler of a party that, once stabilised the ideology, must force the citizens to comply with it. Those who do not accept this ideology are alienated and persecuted. ● Powerful secret police: to control the private life of the citizens- in this way there is no possibility to have a private sphere separated from the public one (basically what is your private is public). To control the citizens the authority needs secret police- in this way they can individuate those who are against the regime and those who may be. Then the regime can also exercise violence against opposers and potential ones. ● Monopoly of mass communications, weapons and economy: the control on communication channels for citizens, always excluding the possibility of having a private sphere. The control on weapons in particular evoluted technological ones. And of course on economy, in this way the regime can have control also on resources that allow it to have huge structures in the society. These monopolies are vital in order to exclude any possibility of armed oppositions between citizens. Other definitions of totalitarianism: Brezinski- in 1962 he defined totalitarianism as a form of government aiming at realising a“total social revolution”=total politicisation (no border state- ● Cuba (until the 1970s): also, in the case of Cuba we have a transition post in a post-totalitarian regime phase, more similar to the authoritarian regime-always caused by the demobilisation of citizens. Today we do not have proper cases of totalitarian regimes. Should North Korea be considered today a real totalitarian system according to the characteristics listed above? There is no real mass mobilization around the objectives defined by the ideology. The ideology too, cannot really be considered a source of legitimation of political power. Authoritarian regimes After WWII the attention was mainly focused on totalitarian regimes (Nazi and Soviet), all the other regimes in a sense did not fit, considered to be non- democratic. If we exclude Chinese, Nazi and Soviet regimes the cases that fall in a non-democratic category are many. In between democracy and totalitarianism, they realized that there is space for other regimes and situations. Linz started to define some specific elements of differentiation between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The first systematic effort was made by Linz to introduce the concept of authoritarianism as a specific case of non-democratic regime, as an intermediate category not in line with the definition of democracy nor with the definition of totalitarianism. He basically focused on Spain and the regime led by Francisco Franco as having useful characteristics to define this new category of non-democratic regime. He claimed that authoritarianism should have its proper definition. A perfect example is Francoist Spain. The power of Francisto Franco was almost unlimited, but Spain was not totalitarian. Indeed his Spain was characterised by the absence of monism, which is a basic feature in totalitarian regimes, with other institutions (such as the Church) that were allowed to exist. On a scale of freedom, authoritarian regimes are exactly in between democracy (free) and totalitarianism (not free). Linz defines authoritarian regimes as “political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilisation, except at some point in their development, and in which a leader, or occasionally a small group of power within a formally ill-defined limits but actually predictable ones”. One of the main differences underlined in this definition is that in authoritarianism, a common ideology is substituted by several mentalities. Mentalities are ways of thinking and feeling more than rational and they are more subjective than objective. They may be less attractive than ideologies, but they entail more emotional involvement thanks to their vagueness. In authoritarian regimes there is also limited mobilisation. Participation is less and increases only in specific moments and there is a form of semi-opposition (opposition is not legal but tolerated). Even though the leader is only one, there are different institutions that in some way can impose some constraints to the leader- so there is more predictability than in a totalitarian regime where all the decisions are taken by one single dominant leader. Main features of authoritarianism 1. Limited and not responsible political pluralism In these regimes we have a certain type of pluralism that is different from the one in democratic regimes. Contrary to totalitarian states where the monistic element entails the existence of one single party, in the case of authoritarian regimes we have a “limited pluralism”, the existence of a number of social groups allowed to participate into politics that represent a dominant social coalition. Members cannot participate as single members of a group but as collective members of a group, representing the specific interests of it. There are therefore several social groups that are excluded from participation (religious organisations for example). The system is not competitive because it is true that other parties may exist, but they are just satellites of the hegemonic one. These parties are allowed to participate but they do not have any real power- so there is no real political competition. The opposition party is there and can exist because they legitimise the regime and to strengthen the main party. There are cases with different social groups, with their own interests, which can form their own preferences and represent them in the political arena, by means of political pluralism. Under the principle of alternation in power, there is no chance to oppose the regime. This kind of pluralism can be established both de-facto with the support of certain bureaucratic sectors of the state or through an establishment de iura. 2. No elaborate, guiding ideology Mentality rather than ideology, will of thinking, emotionality rather than rationality. An ideology is a structured system of thoughts, which provides worldviews. In the case of mentality, we don't have such structured systems of thoughts. We have vague and general thoughts, general enough to fit the preferences of every component of the coalition. With mentality we refer to concepts that enforce the emotional attachment to the regime (mentality responds to the pragmatic need of the regime to find some source of legitimation). It is not an elaborated concept and it can be used in a very flexible way, adapting it to what’s happening in the social contest at that moment. Its vagueness allows the leader to obtain the loyalty of all the parts supporting the coalition, while avoiding any form of opposition. In this sense, adopting a mentality is adopting a very pragmatic approach, it serves the pragmatic purposes of the regime. 3. No intensive political mobilisation They lack mass mobilization, since the regime never tried to mobilize citizens, actually usually there is an attempt to push the people outside the regime and don’t make them participate in politics, because citizens should not care about politics. In opposition to the situation of totalitarian regimes where participation serves the ideology, mobilization is discouraged in authoritarianism, apathy is preferred. In the case of totalitarianism, we always have a utopia, while in authoritarianism, there is no basic attempt to provide a social process. We can of course have some form of mobilisation but it is usually intermittent and never persistent. 4. The leader rules with formally undefined limits but predictable limits The leader and the single party rules with any specific limit, he has any power to decide and to take decisions on his own; in the case of authoritarian regimes there are certain limits that are predictable (for example the role of international countries) even though not really visible. Contrary to totalitarian states, authoritarian regimes are “regimes” and not “systems” since the distinction between state and society is not wiped out. - Fascism cannot be considered a totalitarian regime because it did not have a real structured project about the regeneration of society, how to create a new society and what components it should comprehend were not party of the fascist ideology vs Nazism where there was a real project - It was an anti-ideology vs Nazism with its utopian elements, opposition to traditions and the past Semi-opposition: does not put into question the regime as a whole, it basically wants to achieve a position in the regime by entering it - there might be the opposition of young generations which oppose restricted authoritarian rules. Allowing and tolerating these forms of “fake opposition” could also be a strategy for the regime itself. Lack of competition: the regime is not competitive, no space for it. No chance to create parties that oppose the established elites and no possibility to have free and fair elections. There can be situations however in which elections are held, a consistent number of these cases happens in non-democratic regimes, the problem with them is fairness and freedom, they don't allow competition therefore they just want to support and strengthen the regime; is some cases we have elections but totalitarian and authoritarian regimes share this characteristic. We actually refer to authoritarian regimes and not systems because the distinction between state and society is not wiped out. There are different kinds of authoritarian regimes: ● bureaucratic-military: they are both far from democracy and from totalitarianism, since there is no pluralism, no ideology and no mobilization. They tend to justify themselves, defining their legitimacy in terms of their performance and they emerge with the attempt to realize economic efficiency (technocratic all feature, e.g. Vargas’ Brazil, Peron’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile), so there is no space for political participation and pluralism. The key actor is the military or the bureaucracy, depending on the organization of the institutional setting, in fact there may be a one-party or a multi-party system but without a real competition. They can be moderators, i.e. they don’t hold official position in the state, but they control the regime from the outside, or officials, i.e. the military holds the whole political power, or there may be both some This is a borderline case, outside Linz’s classification. Electoral authoritarianism has arisen as a result of the rise of democratic ideology as the almost unrivalled source of legitimacy. There is an attempt to characterise the procedural organisation of the authoritarian regimes with semi-democratic features in order to legitimize the regime in the international system(also for citizens). This is because democracy tends to be seen as strong- just think about the most powerful international organisations. However these democratic features are just formal procedures, since the electoral process isn’t democratic at all. There is no real competition, indeed opposition is limited and, if there is, is fake, just made in order to be legitimate regimes by the international community. Andreas Schedler argues that on the bases of 2001 data, out of 151 countries in the “developing world”, 36 (23.28%) are liberal democracies, 32 (21.2%) are electoral democracies (they fall in assuming the rule of law, civil rights or limits to arbitrary power), 58 (38.4%) are electoral authoritarian regimes (fairness and competitiveness of the elections are not assured), 25 (16.5%) are closed authoritarian regimes. Thus, electoral authoritarian regimes make up more than two thirds of all autocracies. Traditional regimes There is no ideology, mobilization or pluralism. It is called “traditional” in the sense that the state is entirely managed/owned by the tyrant/ruler.(in a patrimonialistik way=everything in possession of the ruler).These can be very unstable regimes- they tend to fall and be reborn easily (example: Libya's situation after Gheddafi). Other features are: -Loyalty to the tyrant is not based upon tradition or ideology but on a combination of fear and rewards; -Fusion between private and public; -Elite composed of people directly selected by the tyrant; -Occasional paternalistic welfare measures Some cases are: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, Ceausescu's România, Lukashenko’s Belarus. Hybrid regimes It is an increasingly relevant phenomenon. These kinds of regimes are not democratic and neither authoritarian. They are a middle way between democratic and authoritarian regimes. About 60 countries have been classified constantly as partly free regimes- these cannot be considered as regimes that are in transition because they have been constant as this for years so they belong to a specific different kind of regime (that is not authoritarian neither democratic). Karl in 1995 considered hybrid regimes the ones that came from the authoritarian ones but that had lost some key characteristics to move towards a bit of democracy. However there is still: ● Uneven acquisition of procedural requisites of democracy ● Lack of civilian control over the military ● Sectors of population politically and economically disenfranchised ● Weak judiciary They are not simply traditional regimes, but we refer to a stable situation. But Morlino contrary to Karl argued the opposite in 2009: he considers hybrid regimes as regimes that came from democratic ones but that acquire some authoritarian characteristics such as: ● Routinely abuse of state resources ● Denying opposition a fair media coverage ● Harassing opposition candidates/supporters ● Manipulating electoral results So they are either authoritarian regimes that assume some characteristics of a democracy or the other way around, so democratic regimes that implement some authoritarian characteristics. Ambiguity of the institutional setting is a main characteristic of hybrid regimes, in fact there are still many aspects of past regimes. For this reason, there is a loss of some key aspects but not a full acquisition of all aspects of the new type of regime (e.g. intervention of non-elected bodies, such as the army, which, however, do not create a new regime). Moreover, the past needs to be incorporated into the definition (traditional/authoritarian/democratic). Morlino: <<alongside the old actors of the previous authoritarian or traditional regime, a number of opposition groups have clearly taken root, thanks also to some partial, relative respect of civil rights. These groups are allowed to participate in the political process, but have little substantial possibility of governing. There are, then, a number of parties, of which one may remain hegemonic-dominant in semi-competitive elections; at the same time there is already some form of real competition amongst the candidates of that party. The other parties are fairly unorganized, of recent creation or re-creation, and have only a small following. There is some degree of real participation, but it is minimal and usually limited to the election period. Often, a powerfully distorting electoral system allows the hegemonic-dominant party to maintain an enormous advantage in the distribution of seats; in many cases the party in question is a bureaucratic structure rife with patronage favours and intent on surviving the on-going transformation>>. <<means that there is no longer any justification for the regime, not even merely on the basis of all-encompassing and ambiguous values. Other forms of participation during the authoritarian period, if there have ever been any, are just a memory of the past. Evident forms of police repression are also absent, and so the role of the relative apparatuses is not prominent, while the position of the armed forces is even more low-key. Overall, there is little institutionalization and, above all, organization of the 'State', if not a full-blown process of deinstitutionalization. The armed forces may, however, maintain an evident political role, though it is still less explicit and direct>>. The set of institutions of a hybrid regime: 1. should be persistent for about a decade otherwise we are referring to a transition 2. should be preceded by authoritarian rule, traditional regime (also colonial), or even a minimal democracy 3. should be characterised by a certain degree of pluralism and autonomous participation 4. there must be the absence of at least one of the four main aspects of a minimal democracy: - Universal suffrage, both female and male - Free, competitive, recurrent and fair elections - More than one party - Different and alternative media sources The role of veto player is fundamental, they are important political actors that humble the transition between the full-fledged democracy and the authoritarian rule. Non-elected actors are armed forces, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, a hegemonic party, a monarch attempting to condition decision- making processes. External actors also play an important role, since they highlight the lack of independence and sovereignty. However veto players are unable or unwilling to eliminate pro-democratic actors, so there is no full transition or reversion to authoritarianism. The classification criteria for the determination of a transitional status to an hybrid regime are: - Freedom House partially free for at least 2 years; - Regime if status for at least 10 years; - Stabilized regime for more than 15 years. There is also a classification regarding the types of hybrid regimes, based on: • Representation actors and freedoms: electoral process, political pluralism and participation, freedom of expression and beliefs, freedom of organization and association; • State functioning; • Rule of law (+ personal autonomy). We can distinguish 3 types of hybrid regimes: 1. Limited democracy : there is universal suffrage, a formally correct electoral procedure; elective posts occupied on the basis of elections; a multiparty system BUT civil rights are constrained by the police or other effective forms of suppression. So there is no actual electoral opposition and a media monopoly (i.e. part of the population is prevented from exercising their rights).