Conceptualizing Politics

GOVERNMENT AND DEMOCRACY

---

80  How politics works
with internal rules that governs was, in his eyes, the relevant distinction. Though 
two centuries later Montesquieu reinstated a triad (monarchy, republic, despotism), 
in the centuries of modernity and particularly in the last and the current century 
the triad has lost its meaning in favour of a dichotomy, which is still different 
from Machiavelli’s democratic vs. authoritarian regime – or democracy and autocracy, 
as others prefer to say.
2
 Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of 
authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; 
it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as 
normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change 
by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and 
lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting 
procedures. Authoritarianism differs from totalitarianism in as much as this regime, 
based on one-party rule, goes a step further and tries to permeate the society with 
its own ideology and to reorganise it according to its doctrine – and to the vagaries 
of the leader. To do so, it must enact a violent and suffocating intervention in all 
societal interactions, which can go as far as to establish state terrorism.
3
 Authoritar-
ian regimes of various kinds abound in our present world, sometimes mixed with 
totalitarian, sometimes with democratic features such as limited or fictional party 
pluralism; while the only existing case of complete totalitarianism seems to exist in 
the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.
For an authoritarian, and to a lesser extent, a totalitarian regime, further con-
notations such as dictatorship, tyranny and despotism are used. There is no universally 
accepted differentiation between these terms, and even the classical one, accord-
ing to which illegitimate, limitless rule relies, in the case of tyranny, on unduly 
possession of the highest office (illegitimate ex defectu tituli/for lack of entitle-
ment) and in the case of dictatorship, on the illegal handling of the instruments 
of power (ex parte exercitii/on the side of exerting power), is no longer observed 
by all writers. Neither is the etymological meaning of despotism as rule of the 
state as if it were a private possession of the ruler (in ancient Greek 
δεσπότης is 
the lord or master of house and business) still clear to everybody, and this word is 
rather used as pejorative or in the specialised sense envisaged by Montesquieu or 
in the notion of ‘oriental despotism’. In the absence of a clear language conven-
tion using one term rather than another is left to the literary preference of the 
individual speaker.
We will now first differentiate in §1 between two understandings of democ-
racy, then watch in §2 the link between representative democracy and its national 
format, while §3 will examine the pre-conditions under which democracy can 
work and preserve its meaning. The framework conditions that favour its devel-
opment will keep us busy in §4, which will also discuss possible alternatives to 
it – at this time their existence is very unlikely, while on the other hand demy-
thologizing democracy, as it is attempted in this chapter, seems to be a necessary 
passage in order to strengthen its credibility. A seminal question raised by this 
inquiry, the relationship between democracy and capitalism, will be discussed in 
the concluding §5.

---

Government and democracy  81