What is an anti-democratic political regime? What are its signs? What features does it have? How is the formation of anti-democratic regimes? Here is an incomplete list of issues that will be addressed in this article.
What is called a political regime?
This is a way of organizing a system of ties that reflects the relationship between society and government. Important from this point of view is the level of political freedom and life in the state. This is largely due to the culture, traditions, historical features of the country's development. All this has led to the fact that each state can boast of its unique political regime.
But, in spite of such features, to find similar features is a simple matter. Therefore, two generalized concepts are used in the scientific literature: an anti-democratic regime and a democratic one. They will be considered in parallel in order to get a wider idea of what they are through comparison. As technical features, it is necessary to inform the reader that the anti-democratic regime is further divided into authoritarian and totalitarian.
Signs
What is characterized by political regimes? By what features can we talk about who is in power now? The signs of an anti-democratic regime are as follows:
- Lawlessness and terror reign.
- There is no political pluralism.
- There are no parties opposed to power.
And the democratic regime acts as its antipode:
- The law prevails.
- There is a separation of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial).
- There are real, not declarative, political and social rights and freedoms of citizens.
- Government bodies are elected.
- Opposition and pluralism exist and are active in terms of improving public life.
Also, let's pay attention to the fundamental details. Under an authoritarian regime, political power is concentrated in the hands of a group of people or a specific individual. But outside the political sphere, relative freedom remains. Under a totalitarian regime, everything is under the strict control of the authorities. This is accompanied by a large number of supervisory authorities. Under democratic regimes, people are considered the main source of power. Interaction is based on the principles of freedom and equality. So what features does the anti-democratic regime have?
Authoritarianism
In this case, when they talk about an anti-democratic
state regime, they mean theocracy, monarchism, neototalitarianism, the rule of the military, or personified power. Often authoritarianism comes with dictatorship. There is no real political opposition, but in other areas (ecology, medicine, and so on), autonomy of the individual remains. The following features can be distinguished:
- Power has an unlimited and non-citizen-controlled character and is expressed in the form of tyranny, monarchy, military junta, and so on.
- It relies on strength. But not the fact that an authoritarian regime will resort to mass repression. It can even be popular among the general public. But if necessary, any action can be taken to force citizens to obey.
- Monopolism of the political sphere and power.
- The replenishment of leading cadres is carried out thanks to co-optation, and not using competitive mechanisms. Also, because of this, there are problems with the continuity and transfer of power.
- There is no total control over society. This is accompanied by a certain degree of non-interference in areas outside of politics.
What is authoritarianism?
It is divided into a whole group of different directions with its own characteristics. There can be rigidly authoritarian, moderate, liberal, populist and national-patriotic regimes. Each of them has its own characteristics.
The first three are distinguished due to the different rigidity of the exercise of power. Populist authoritarianism is based on the masses. The national-patriotic regime uses the idea that unites everyone (or the majority) to build a totalitarian or democratic society. That is, authoritarianism occupies an intermediate position.
Totalitarianism
A feature of this regime is the presence of control over all spheres of society by the authorities. Moreover, it is monopolized (leader or party). Also, a single ideology is considered a feature, which is mandatory for all citizens. To ensure the absence of dissent, a powerful controlling and supervisory apparatus is used. Police repression and acts of intimidation are widely used. The goal of totalitarian regimes in relation to citizens is the formation of a non-initiative person who is prone to submission. Under the control and compulsory regulation falls all the activities of citizens. What features does this anti-democratic state regime have?
Signs of totalitarianism
They can fit in four points:
- There is only one mass party. As a rule, a charismatic leader is at the head of it . There is also a merger, integration of state and party structures, with the latter having an advantage in terms of importance.
- The centralization and monopolization of power provides that the most important is the party’s loyalty to the state. Material, religious, aesthetic and other values are secondary. Moreover, as a result, the boundaries between the spheres of life disappear, the whole country is considered as a single camp.
- The presence of a single official ideology. It is implanted in the mind thanks to a massive and purposeful imposition of it as the only true way of thinking. A feature of such an ideology is that the emphasis is on common values (race, nation, state, class or clan). There is intolerance to all dissent.
- The presence of a system of psychological and physical terror. A police state is being built , which uses the principle "only what has been ordered by the authorities is permitted."
These features have different types of anti-democratic regimes. But now it is impossible to meet something ideal, elements of other political structures are necessarily present. Therefore, in order to understand the difference between a democratic and anti-democratic regime, we consider the features of the first. Of course, this will be done on an ideal state model.
Democracy and its Signs
From Greek, the term is translated as "democracy." Residents of a state with such a system are considered the main source of equality.
Democracy has the following symptoms:
- Selectivity. Citizens are elected to government bodies on equal terms.
- Separation of power. There are legislative, judicial and executive branches that are independent.
- Civil society. People can influence power through a large network of volunteer community organizations.
- Equality. All have equal civil and political rights.
- Pluralism. Foreign opinions and ideologies are respected. There is no censorship in the press and complete publicity reigns.
- Compromises. Relations are aimed at finding a mutually beneficial solution. Conflicts are settled by legal means.
When talking about political regimes: democratic and anti-democratic - there may be problems with understanding the information received due to certain beliefs and mentality. A long stay in the territory of a certain country helps to cope with this in the best way.
Antidemocratic regime: heterogeneity and features
It has already been mentioned that modes differ in nature. They spoke about the antidemocratic political regime in antiquity: then despotism and tyranny were popular. In the first case, arbitrary and unlimited power, which is based on arbitrariness, is implied. Tyranny is based on one-man rule, when power is usurped and cruel methods of its implementation are introduced. A feature of this type is the displacement of a legitimate government due to a coup d'etat through violence.
Also in the framework of practical implementation, military regimes are of interest. They are based on the fact that real leaders of the armed forces (as an alternative, special services) receive power. It is established thanks to the coup, when actions are directed against the rule of legitimate civilians.
The anti-democratic regimes of states of this type were very popular in the last century (but they were territorially limited to Asia, Africa, Latin and South America). After their establishment, an extensive military-police apparatus was created, which included the army, special services and a number of other bodies to control the population, public associations and so on. But this is only the general concept of an anti-democratic regime of this type. In order to have better awareness, each individual case should be studied separately.
Conclusion
So we sorted out what a democratic and anti-democratic regimes are, as well as the features of the latter. Alas, only the tip of the information iceberg is represented here. In order to understand the concept of the anti-democratic regime and its accompanying aspects and nuances, it is necessary to study a large amount of specific, narrowly targeted literature.