POLS 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, Theocracy

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Political Studies
• Course: POLS 110
• Professor: Eleanor Mac Donald

Document Summary

In a non-democracy, the state has a hierarchical authority over citizens. There is either no electorate of adult citizens or the electoeate has no real role in choosing leaders. A selectorate of some small subset of the national population exists that chooses and removes the leader or leaders. There is a relationship of reciprocal accountability, which means that the selectorate chooses and removes the leadership, but the leadership also selects and removes the members of the selectorate. Membership in the slectorate is usually chosen from political favouritism or family, ethnic, or religious ties. Three characteristics distinguish totalitarianism from authoritarianism: use of ideology, the extent of coercive mobilization, the degree of social and political pluralism permitted. Totalitarianism tends to engage in more severe repression. An authoritarian regime concentrates on using coercion to limit political pluralism in order to remain in pwer, but relative to a totalitarian regime, it does permit some social pluralism.