structured institution, as, for example, an army, and in explaining the attraction
of political movements characterized by theirauthoritarianismand inega-
litarianism. The mark of an authoritarian personality is that while such a
person enjoys the use ofpowerand having obedient underlings, they are also
happiest when themself subject to firm authority from someone hierarchically
superior who can command unquestioning obedience. There are many roots
to this personality syndrome and many ways in which it expresses itself.
Perhaps the most crucial is that the personality type suffers from extreme
insecurity in any decision-making context and requires absolute clarity and
certainty about their obligations as well as their rights. One definition puts it
that the authoritarian personality suffers from an ‘extreme intolerance of
ambiguity’. It is an aspect of personality common to most people, in varying
degree, making some susceptible to certain political faiths when the author-
itarian aspects predominate unusually.
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism, rather liketotalitarianism, is perhaps more of a technical
term in political science than one in ordinary political usage. An authoritarian
system need not, strictly speaking, be adictatorship, and may well not be
totalitarian. The essential element is that it is one in which stern and forceful
control is exercised over the population, with no particular concern for their
preferences or for public opinion. The justification for the rule may come from
any one of a number of ideologies, but it will not be a democratic ideology, and
ideas ofnatural rightsorcivil libertieswill be rejected in favour of the
government’s right to rule by command, backed by all the force it needs. It is
very much tied to the idea of command and obedience, of inflexible rule, and a
denial of the legitimacy of opposition or even counter-argument.
Because it is such a broad term, it is, in a way, ‘value-free’: it is equally
sensible to talk of left and right, of communist, capitalist, even religiously-
based, authoritarian governments. (This is also true of totalitarianism.) Neither
is it limited to describing political systems or faiths. One of the most influential
works ever written on the subject was in social psychology by Theodor
Adornoet al.,entitledTheAuthoritarian Personality. It is an attempt to
discover the personality traits encouraged by, and found among, those who
most readily fit into an authoritarian system. The stress here tends to be on
characteristics such as a perfect willingness to obey orders from above,
combined with a ruthless intolerance of disobedience from those below, an
unquestioning attitude to the justifying ideology, and associated psychological
attributes such as ‘a low tolerance for ambiguity’. It is unsurprising that
psychologists have usually found the personality profile of authoritarianism
Authoritarianism