5.1: What are Non-Democracies?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify defining characteristics of non-democratic regimes. 
• Describe how non-democratic regimes differ from democratic regimes in terms of accountability, competition, and freedom.

Introduction

There exists a rich vocabulary for referring to non-democracies, past and present. Scholars employ terms such as personalist dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy, and totalitarian regime, among others, to describe this kind of political system. All of these, and many more, fall under a broad umbrella of regimes that we describe as non-democratic. As a reminder from Chapter 3, a non-democracy is a political regime that denies citizens meaningful institutional channels for making choices about their collective well-being. This can range from limited to no ability for public input in the selection of political leaders and limited to no decision-making power over the allocation of public resources. Non-democracies are often referred to as "dictatorships" or "authoritarian regimes" or "autocracies."

Non-democracies are quite diverse, even more so than democracies, and this variety extends across time and space. While there are varieties of democracy with different institutional configurations, such as the differences between presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential systems discussed in Chapter 4, across democracies there exist common principles such as divided government and accountability to the people. All democracies have electoral systems, an executive, a legislature, and a judiciary. Non-democracies, in contrast, do not have such common organizational features; instead, they run the gamut from rule by a single person with minimal institutionalization to complex bureaucratic systems under collective leadership. In this sense, non-democracies are a much broader and confounding collection of states to study.

Empirically, non-democracies are distinct from democracies in important ways. Non-democratic regimes are much more variable in their economic performance (Gandhi, 2008). Many have swung from enduring extreme levels of nationwide poverty to becoming economic dynamos, presenting sustained economic growth rates unseen in recorded human history. This is, for instance, the example set by China from 1978 to 2020. In a reversal of this pattern, the kingdom of Chad and the post-independence state of Chad (1960-present) made the dramatic turn from being a major trading empire during the ninth through the 19th centuries to becoming one of the poorest sub-Saharan states in Africa today. Non-democracies appear to experience deeper economic troughs and higher economic highs than their democratic counterparts.

While there exist many varieties of non-democracy, which we will describe later in this chapter, all non-democracies share several overriding characteristics. These relate to accountability, competition, and freedom.

Accountability

Political accountability refers to institutional channels for holding political leaders responsible for their decisions and actions, and it has many dimensions. Most critically in democracies, it exists between officials and the public via the institution of free and fair elections. Accountability exists via other channels, such as through the free flow of information about political decisions and developments in a society. A free and independent media can ensure this flow of information, and it can provide a monitoring function to act as a government watchdog. Accountability also exists when different branches of government have check and balances, such as being able to check one another through presidential vetoes, court rulings, and divided authority.

In a non-democracy, some or all of these forms of accountability are compromised. For example, elections are rigged or do not exist, the media is muzzled or state-owned, or government exists to carry out the will of an unchecked political elite. All non-democracies restrict channels for accountability of political authority. Take the example of Saudi Arabia. This kingdom is one of the few remaining absolutist monarchies in existence today, and all political authority lays with the Al Saud royal family. The Saudi king is the leader of this family, and he is also head of state and head of government of Saudi Arabia. There is no legislature to pass laws in Saudi Arabia (though the Saudi Consultative Assembly can propose laws to the king and his cabinet), and Saudi citizens do not elect representatives or otherwise have institutional channels for providing input in the national policy-making process. In this state, the ruling Al Saud family is not accountable to the Saudi people.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Royal Standard of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an absolutist monarchy led by a king who is head of the royal family, Al Saud. The king is the head of government and the head of state. (Source: Flag of Saudi Arabia by Saudi Arabia Royal Decree No. M/3, via Wikipedia, is licensed under Public Domain)

Competition

Separate, but related, non-democracies have limited political competition. Political competition is the presence of multiple options in political life, such as the existence of more than one political party, more than one candidate for office, or more than one policy position. A lack of political competition may mean the absence of political parties, as in the case of Saudi Arabia. Some non-democracies, however, allow limited competition for public office. This was the case in Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), which controlled Mexican political life for 71 years. Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa famously described the PRI as "the perfect dictatorship" because it managed to remain the ruling party of Mexico for decades despite the existence of opposition parties. These opposition parties began to win elections in the 1980s and, in 2000, the presidential candidate from the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) won national elections. The PAN victory overturned decades of single-party rule in modern Mexico. Political parties are one way to observe the degree of competition in a political system, and they are a proxy for a deeper and more meaningful competition of policy ideas. Whether this competition of ideas exists--and therefore whether a government tolerates debate, dissent, and diversity--provides a critical differentiation between democratic and non-democratic systems.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Protests against election manipulation in Mexico in 2012 after presidential elections were won by PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. Protesters claimed widespread election fraud. In 2000, many decades of single-party rule by PRI ended, but PRI reclaimed the presidency in 2012. (Source: Protesting against PRI by Gabriel Saldaña via flickr creative commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Freedom

Non-democracies lack a commitment to individual freedom. While democracies have many institutional channels for individual voice, such as the examples of elections and independent media noted above, these institutional channels are often manipulated or censored in a non-democracy. To justify the abrogation of individual freedoms, non-democracies may promote alternative values, such as the importance of order and hierarchy over individual will or the need to subsume the individual to the larger collective will (as mediated by those in power).

The next section will describe how non-democratic regimes remain in power. Considering their lack of political accountability, lack of political competition, and lack of freedom, what strategies do leaders within these regimes utilize to ensure their survival?