Kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power

ABSTRACT

This article explores kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as sociological ideal types of the exercise of political power. Kleptocracy is theorized as an ideal type which uses coercion as its primary power resource, while both authoritarianism and democracy are based upon authority, defined as a belief in legitimacy. Where authoritarianism and democracy differ is how a belief in legitimacy is obtained. These differences and similarities are explored with reference to the four dimensions of political power, which consist of agency, structure, social epistemology and social ontology.

KEYWORDS:

• Kleptocracy
• authoritarianism
• democracy
• authority
• political power

1. Introduction

In this article we will explore kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power. As theorized by Weber (1949), a sociological ideal type is a distillation from empirical reality, which clarifies the essence of social phenomena, as interpreted from a particular theoretical perspective. In this case, the perspective is a four-dimensional understanding of political power. The dimensions of power are as follows: agency (first dimension), structure (second), social epistemology (third) and social ontology (fourth).

Kleptocracy is theorized as an ideal type of government which uses coercion as its primary means of gaining power-over compliance. Authoritarianism and democracy are both ideal types of political systems that use authority as their primary source of political power. However, they differ in how they each socially construct a belief in the legitimacy of authority, with reference to the four dimensions of power.

In terms of structure, the article opens with a brief exposition of the four dimensions of power. Those who are familiar with Haugaard (2020 or Haugaard 2021), may wish to skim read this section. Then kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy are each theorized as ideal types of political power: exploring each one through the four dimensions of political power. A brief conclusion follows, which includes a four-by-three table of the main findings. There is a note on method, as an Appendix.

2. The dimensions of power

In contrast to Lukes’ three-dimensional analysis, which is largely normative (see Hayward and Lukes 2008, Haugaard 2008), this account is primarily based upon sociological theory, influenced by balanced accounts of agency and structure (such as Giddens (1984) and Bourdieu (1990)). The four dimensions correspond to 1) agency, 2) structure, 3) social knowledge and 4) social ontology. These dimensions should be thought of as perspectives upon a social phenomenon, rather than separate isolated elements. They are analogous to the four dimensions of an architect’s plan of a house (plan, elevation and two end elevations); they are different aspects of the same thing, which in their totality give a full picture. For this reason, each dimension naturally flows into the next.

2.1. First dimension: agency

Following Weber (1978), Dahl (1957, 1968), Pettit (2008), and Lukes (1974, 2021) in the power debates an assumption prevailed that power is always exercised over someone. Furthermore, the exercise of such power-over is against the interests of the less powerful. This is a normative gloss, which equates power with domination. However, as argued by Parsons (1963), Giddens (1984), Morriss (2002), Pansardi (2012) and Forst (2015), power is normatively neutral. The exercise of power simply refers to actors intervening in the world, to make something happen that would not otherwise have happened if it were not for their action, which is agency.

Following the work of Allen (1998 and Allen 1999), Morriss (2002) and Pansardi (2012), we should distinguish between power-to, power-over and power-with. Power-to is the core of agency, which refers to actors’ transformational capacity and/or exercise of that capacity. A subset of power-to is power-over, which refers to actors’ capacity, or exercise of that capacity, to make other actors do something which they would not otherwise do. The most usual purpose of power-over is to facilitate collective power-to, which is sometimes (Allen 1999) referred to as power-with. Those in authority in organizations exercise power over persons in subordinate positions in order to facilitate an organization, its members, or themselves, to do something. While power-over can be dominating it is not necessarily so. All organizations involve some levels of hierarchy and decision-making, yet the power-over that follows from this is only dominating if it is used contrary to the interests of those who follow the power-over commands. If the organization pursues collective goal and/or facilitates the power-to of the responding compliant actors, then the power-over exercised within that organization empowers those who comply.

As argued by Dahl (1957 and Dahl 1968), the exercise of power should be distinguished from power resources. Resources are potential power but require agency, someone doing something, to become actualized as an effect upon the world. There are three primary sources of power: coercion, authority and economy. To simplify, politicians primarily use coercion and/or authority as resources, while capitalists use economic resources. For the purposes of the focus of this article, which is political power, the emphasis will primarily be on coercion and authority. Although, political use of economic resources will be discussed.

As a source of power-over, coercion enables the powerful actor A to make the less powerful, responding, actors B, do something that they would not otherwise do, by threatening B with potential violence, or other deprivation, in the case of non-compliance. Typically, violence is used once coercion fails. Violence works directly upon the body of the less powerful making them powerless to resist. Violence is coercion spent, which often renders the powerful less powerful, as they lose authority from the use of violence.

Arendt (1970) argued that violence is the opposite of power. As we are about to see, Arendt was describing authority, as theorized here. Authority is a qualitatively different resource from coercion. As observed by Weber (1978, p. 213), authority is based upon the responding actors’ beliefs in the legitimacy to command of those who exercise power-over. While in everyday speech, actors frequently use the concept of authority to refer to relationships where compliance is based upon coercion, for the purposes of sociological exposition, we will follow Weber, in conceptualising authority in terms of belief. Such belief in legitimacy may be manipulated by the elite, so this does not necessarily mean that it is democratic or normatively desirable (as observed by Pitkin 1972, p. 284).

Authority resides in a specific social role occupied by the individual giving the command (Haugaard 2018). In everyday perceptions, while authority may appear as an intrinsic quality of the person, it is a social construction that reflects the beliefs of those who respond to authority. As Barnes (1988) has argued, this belief constitutes a ring of reference, which gives that authority meaning. As Searle (1996) expresses authority: an X (person – e.g. Joe Biden), counts as Y (authority position – President) in circumstances C (ring of reference that constitutes the political system – US political system). An authority position is essentially a signifier within a socially constructed system of political power. These signifiers define persons as institutional facts that confer differential access to political power (see Andersson 2007).

In everyday usage, the signifier authority typically refers only to official positions, or political office, such as president. Sociologically, the term has a wider sense, to refer to any social role, including everyday ones like, parent, female, male, consumer and citizen, which can be characterized as Y type everyday authority positions that social actors regularly perform (see Mik-Meyer and Haugaard 2020). Each of these positions has certain resources associated with them, which are qualities that render a certain scope of power a reasonable command, relative to the responding actors’ beliefs, as a ring of reference. Any individual (an X) frequently shifts between authority positions (Ys); often occupying compound versions of these positions (Y1, Y2 and Y3), where one position may affect the power of the other – e.g. gender or race may affect the authority of a professional Y status, depending upon the beliefs of those who constitute the ring of reference.

Authority positions are not fixed; they are in constant flux relative to the shifting beliefs of society. Citizenship is an authority position, which reflects the belief that sustain democratic societies. The authority position of citizen did not exist in feudalism. Today, citizens’ authority is often so taken-for-granted that people only become aware of its significance through its absence, when they become refugees (see Haugaard 2020, pp. 29–32). Parents have the power to decide the care of their children but in modern society they do not have the scope of power to inflict physical punishments or decide who they can marry when adult, which were powers parents had in feudal or caste systems. In modern democratic societies women have the same scope of powers as men with respect to work and the economic spheres, yet these powers are only recently won; therefore, they exist in principle, while not entirely in practice, as the beliefs of many responding others, who define the ring of reference, still contain elements of feudal patriarchy.

Authority is a performance, and the belief in legitimacy on the part of the responding actor manifests itself in their response to the performance. Following Austin’s (1975) terminology, when social actors affirm an authority command as legitimate, we refer to that as felicitous, while if they respond by deeming it illegitimate that is infelicitous. Over time, as the beliefs of actors change, what is considered felicitous or infelicitous changes. With reference to the examples above, what may be felicitous within the context of feudal or status-based societies becomes entirely infelicitous in democratic citizenship societies.

From a power perspective, political movements, such as #MeToo, are about changing the beliefs of actors; attempts to shift the ring of reference that define the scope of power associated with different authority positions. Regarding authority position of women, #MeToo empowerment means the authority to refuse sexual advances from men becomes a felicitous performance that is heard and responded to through compliance.

It is often assumed that power, especially power-over, is a zero-sum phenomenon. As argued by Read (2012), power is variable-sum. Coercive power is often (though not always) zero-sum but power-over that is based upon authority has high potential to be variable sum. Democratic leaders, who exercise power-over in a manner that is perceived by the citizens to be in their interests, gain a capacity for action, or power-to, from that exercise of power. Consequently, these citizens are willing to grant further authority to such leaders, which results in an expansion of power within the system (see Parsons 1963, Balestri 2023). Conversely, if authority is exercised outside what is considered the appropriate scope, relative to the ring of reference, then authority declines in potency.

2.2. Second dimension: structure

The second dimension of power refers to structural aspects. Following Bachrach and Baratz (1962), the second dimension concerns the structural bias of any interaction. When effective, structural constraint makes certain exercises of power within the condition of possibility and precludes others. When reproduced routinely, social structures embody the status quo, which empowers certain actors and disempowers others. Essentially, the structure entails the mobilisation of bias in favour of certain exercises of power and against others.

In Bachrach and Baratz (1962) it was assumed that structural constraint was normatively undesirable, in line with liberal thinking that social institutions should be ‘neutral’ and that citizens should be ‘free’ of structural constraints. However, sociologically, all social structures include certain actions as reasonable or felicitous and preclude others as infelicitous. So, none are neutral, in the sense of without constraints. Because all individuals are social actors who reproduce social structures, they are constrained in one way or another, so not ‘free’ in any absolute sense. Sociologically, these liberal normative assumptions are too strong.

While structural constraints preclude certain freedoms, they are also enabling (Giddens 1984). The structural constraints that preclude discrimination based upon gender are enabling for social actors who reproduce the female authority position in combination with other authority positions. More fundamentally, all interaction presupposes that others respond relatively predictably, which facilitates mutual power-to. The liberal idea of freedom as freedom-from interference from others (Pettit 1996, Berlin 2002) constitutes a fundamental underestimation of everyday structural constraint. Indeed, the more empowerment-oriented concept of freedom, as the freedom-to do something (Morriss 2009), is sociologically more accurate (Haugaard 2016). Contrary to the assumption that power is antithetical to power (Pettit 1996), power also facilitates freedom. With democratic citizenship social actors become empowered (they gain authority power-to do things) based upon comprehensive structural constraints.

Social structure should not be taken as an external given, like a kind of skeleton that externally determines action. Structures are reproduced through social interaction with others. When a social actor regulates their actions, relative to certain cultural norms, that is an act of structuration (Giddens 1984). Social structures only exist systemically, when responding others recognise and affirm the validity of the social structure. Not all acts of structuration are validated as shared social structures; some are rejected as deviant. The validation of structuration by a responding actor, we refer to as confirm-structuration, (Haugaard 1997, 2020, Javornicky 2020).

The successful performances of authority are paradigmatic instances of the reproduction of social structure. The acts of structuration that others validate, by deeming felicitous, are part of the powers of the authority position, while those performances that are rejected, deemed deviant, or infelicitous, constitute areas beyond the scope of power of that authority position. To adapt an example from Dahl (1957), when university professors tell students to write essays for certain dates, the students are likely to respond to such request as felicitous, thus within the powers of university professors, therefore confirm-structure. When the traffic police tell them where they can or cannot park their cars, similarly they will respond to those requests as felicitous, and confirm-structure. However, if the university professors were to attempt to tell them where to park their cars, and the traffic police were to set essays, both would find their acts of structuration deemed infelicitous, therefore not collaboratively reproduced, or de-structured.

The differences in constraint that go with scopes of power associated with authority positions, reflect the external reality of which acts of structuration are likely to be confirm-structured or de-structured. While dependent upon individual actions, these parameters shift, reflecting systemic change. So, for instance, the #Me-Too is essentially aiming for systemic change with respect to the authority position of female gendered authority in interaction with male gendered authority.

In any interaction there is either structural reproduction or a failure of structural reproduction, which can indicate deeper structural conflict. If the latter, the responding social actor only responds as desired when coerced. This lack of willingness to confirm-structure suggests a lack of shared interpretative beliefs in legitimacy, regarding authority. Without authority, power-over becomes largely based upon coercion.

Deep structural conflict means that actors cannot agree shared rules of the game. In contrast, shallow conflicts work within the agreed parameters of structural constraint, and therefore do not require coercion. The democratic process is essentially a shallow conflict where the fundamental structures are reproduced (structuration and confirm-structuration), even when the power-over policy stakes are high.

2.3. Third dimension: epistemic social knowledge

Shallow conflict, resulting in successful structural reproduction, presupposes shared beliefs, which concerns the epistemic aspects of power. Lukes’ original (Lukes 1974, 2021) formulation was a development of Gramsci’s (1973) concept of hegemony and Lukacs (2000) understanding of ‘false-consciousness’. The model developed here avoids the concept of false consciousness, as theoretically problematic (Haugaard 1997, p. 18 and Haugaard 2008). In this model the third dimension of power refers to two phenomena: the tacit nature of practical knowledge and reification.

Following Giddens on practical consciousness knowledge (Giddens 1984, p. 45) and Bourdieu on habitus (Bourdieu 1977, p. 78; and 1990 52–65), social actors are extremely knowledgeable about social life. That knowledge may be discursive but is largely subconscious. In everyday action much of the structuring of everyday life is carried on using subconscious knowledge. Think of language as the exemplar: when a native speaker utters complete sentences, these are incredibly complex, yet this is done with remarkable fluency, without discursively reflecting upon the rules of language. The same applies to all sorts of aspect of everyday interaction, including the institutional facts of authority positions. This knowledge constitutes a kind of reflex taken-for-granted knowledge that is interpreted by social actors as the natural-order-of-things. We will refer to this as practical knowledge. In critical situations, social actors may reflect upon practical knowledge, and attempt to make it discursively conscious. This may be accidental, when confronted by an unusual social situation where they wonder how to go on, or it may be because of a more deliberate decision to understand and critique power relations.

The subconscious aspect of practical knowledge facilitates interaction with similarly minded others. Yet, because of its subconscious nature, in reproducing the taken-for-granted natural-order-of-things actors inadvertently reproduce a structural bias in favour of a specific group or identity – gender, race and class. However, actors have the capacity to raise their practical knowledge to the discursive level, which is the first stage of social critique. Actors perceive the differences in power, therefore start to reflect upon how acts of structuration and confirm-structuration contribute to these inequalities. When the natural-order-of-things becomes discursive, it is not so ‘natural’ after all; social structure appears as social construction. As suggested by Foucault (1988, p. 36), when social structures are understood to be made, or socially constructed, it follows that they can be unmade, or deconstructed.

Consciousness-raising is the foundation of social critique. Yet, on its own consciousness-raising is not necessarily sufficient to challenge the status quo. For the more powerful, the second line of defence is reification. Social structures can be changed if understood to be social constructions, therefore reflections of contingent life-forms. However, if social structures are reified, they are no longer understood as social constructions; therefore, as de-constructable.

In traditional societies the most effective reification is to claim that social structures are sacred, ordained by a deity. As Durkheim (2008 [1915]) argued, social actors create God in an image that represents their own idealized sense of the collective self. Actors then reflect those social norms back, as the work of God. Therefore, the norms of society appear transcendental; hence not socially constructed; thus unchangeable.

Secular societies have their own forms of reification. Nietzsche’s death of God hypothesis and Foucault’ s account of the use of Truth claims (Foucault 1980, p. 66), interpreted sociologically, are claims to the effect that as interpretative beings, social subjects have replaced God with scientific Truth (see Haugaard 2020, pp. 114–7). If social structures can be linked to Truth, this performs the same reifying function as God claims, making socially constructed norms appear transcendental.

As a qualification of the Nietzsche/Foucault hypothesis, it is important to add that there exist scientific practices in which truth claims are presented as falsifiable tentative hypothesis (truth with a small t), which are not reifying practices. However, in much of everyday life, due to a quest for uncontested authority, social actors prefer Truth to truth.

A common form of secular reification is essentialism, whereby social actors maintain that there is an essential Truth associated with a specific identity. This essence can be associated with many forms of identity, including sex, gender, race, ethnicity or nation. These claims have power implications, as it is typically suggested that because of this essence, such persons are less or more capable of certain authority positions.

2.4. Fourth dimension: the social construction of social ontology

The fourth dimension of power concerns the social ontology of the social subject or their being-in-the-world. Central to Weber ‘s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1976) is the hypothesis that the spirit of modern capitalism was an unintended consequence of Protestant religious piety. Essentially, Protestantism removes the ritual and magic of Catholicism and creates a direct relationship between the faithful and God. According to sola fide, salvation is solely a matter of individual faith and doubt a sign of eternal damnation. There was an ‘extreme inhumanity’ in this doctrine, which resulted in ‘a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual’. (Weber 1976, p. 104). In short, the result was a deep inner ontological insecurity, which made these social subjects opt for compulsive self-discipline, which primed the pump of capitalism. So, while an ideology (third dimension) was the source, it was not the ideological substance (which was otherworldly); rather, the transformation of the being-in-the-world of the social subject (fourth dimension) that resulted in the creation of self-disciplined social subjects who embodied the work ethic of early capitalism.

The idea that social ontology is fundamental to the constitution of social order is core to Elias’ account of the relationship between sociogenesis and psychogenesis (see Mennell 1989: 50). Essentially, Elias (1995) argued that the transition from medieval feudal to modern society should be understood as a process of social transformation that resulted in a process of psychological transformation. To simplify, using Bourdieusian terminology, essentially, from the 11^th to the 20^th century, a competition took place between classes for self-restraint, which they understood as distinction, thus cultural capital (Bourdieu 1989). Certain forms of self-restraint and manners were socially constructed as ‘good manners’ or ‘civilization’, which created a race for self-restraint. Overall, this class competition resulted in a transformation of social ontology, whereby deep psychological dispositions were changed.

Extending Elias’ hypothesis, this internalized self-restraint had a significant elective affinity with the modern world of bureaucratic administration and the pursuit of meritocratic advancement. Delayed gratification, when applied to education is rewarded by certificates of merit – educational qualifications. Arguably, in the second half of the 20^th C. the pursuit of educational capital replaces the pursuit of esoteric manners associated with, so-called, ‘civilization’. Competition for educational capital creates social actors with psychological dispositions towards self-restraint that are functional to the smooth functioning of a modern complex society.

Foucault’s accounts of Panoptical discipline and governmentality are similar in the attention to self-discipline as functional to modernity. The Panopticon was essentially a large socialisation machine that instilled discipline through visibility, which leads to self-surveillance (Foucault 1979, p. 200). Governmentality is government through the conduct of conduct, which means instilling certain norms of self-guidance or self-regulation into everyday behaviour (Dean 2010, pp. 10–11), which results in self-surveillance of structuration and confirm-structuration. However, despite claims that there is no centre of power (Foucault 1982), the Foucauldian model is more intentional and top-down than Weberian, Eliasian or Bourdeusian models. The disciplined social subject is a docile body that is made subject to power (Foucault 1982, p. 777), which suggests someone or something (power?) driving subjection/abjection. This makes the model more suited to description of authoritarianism than the dynamic of complex bureaucratic democracies. Regarding the latter, what is missing is the social construction of subject positions based around unintended effects of structural reproduction, driven by actors’ own agency-based pursuit of cultural or other symbolic capitals, through distinction (see Haugaard 2022).

Butler (1997) and Allen (1998, and Allen 2021a) have shown how disparities of power between men and women are in part explicable through socio-psychological ontological creation of the category of female identity. Essentially, in early socialization women are rewarded for forms of self-restraint that confer distinction with respect to socially constructed virtues associated with the performance of femininity. These self-restraints become part of an ontological predisposition to security in positions of less power. When confronted with competition for positions of great authority women feel ontological insecurity, as the norms of high-status authority are at variance with the norms of femininity; they are conflicting Y performances. Thus, the unintended effect of the pursuit of female subject distinction is a social ontology that disadvantages women when in competition with men for political authority. Such analysis can be extended to encompass several subject positions, including race and the phenomenon of ‘orientalism’ (Said 2003).

In conclusion, the fourth dimension of power concerns the social construction of social subjects through discipline that creates a specific social ontology with elective affinity to the structured power relations of a given society. This is achieved by intentional disciplining (Foucault) and/or through the competitive pursuit of self-restraint as a form of distinction or cultural capital (Weber, Elias and Bourdieu), which creates a psychological attachment to identities or subject positions (Butler and Allen).

3. Kleptocracy

3.1. First dimension: agency

Regarding the first dimension of power, kleptocracy is theorized as the ideal type of a political system in which the main power resource is coercion. Kleptocracy is a system where power-over delivers empowerment for the powerful at the expense of the compliant other.

Kleptocracy is the closest political system to the ideal type of power as domination or oppression, with no basis for legitimacy in the mind of the responding actor. As suggested by Gellner (1989), kleptocracies are political systems in which the extraction of economic resources take place through the coercive threat of violence. Consequently, there are no separate economic and political realms. Essentially, bandit leaders have managed to monopolize theft, by creating a state with a monopoly of coercion (Olson 2000, p. 10).

In kleptocracies the objective of coercion is to despoil the less powerful, therefore the responding party only complies out of a fear of sanctions. When coercion fails and the powerful impose violent punishments, violence treats the body as a physical thing to be imprisoned or killed. Typically, the use of violence represents the failure of coercion as a mode of deterrence. In that sense, the constant use of violence by kleptocratic leaders represents weakness, rather than stable power.

Kleptocratic leaders often use the trappings of authority, such as uniforms or other ritual aspects of authority, in order to claim legitimacy. If the responding others are purely responding for fear of coercion, this is still kleptocracy. However, if some members of the system obey because of belief instilled by these trappings, then there are elements of authoritarianism present. Often, what are largely kleptocracies, contain groups around the power elite, who view the system consistently with authoritarian principles. Thus, many actual systems are on a scale between pure kleptocracy and authoritarianism.

3.2. Second dimension: social structure

Regarding the second dimension of power, the kleptocratic status quo entails an extreme structural bias in favour of the powerful. As the exercise of power of the powerful is entirely at the expense of the less powerful. Structural relationships are binary, dividing society into the powerful and powerless. Under such circumstances the exercise of power-over is zero-sum. Slavery is the closest to this ideal type.

In kleptocracy there is relatively limited structural constraint upon the powerful because coercive power is a highly fungible power resource. As the desires of the less powerful are disregarded, the more powerful can make the less powerful do whatever they desire. The only structural constraint the powerful confront is the possible failure by the dominated to respond to threats, which occurs when the oppressed are so dominated that they start to feel that they have nothing to lose by resistance. Bar this extreme, kleptocratic leaders have greater freedom of choice, are less structurally constrained, than either authoritarian or democratic leaders.

In contrast to the elite, the powerless find themselves highly constrained. Traditionally, slaves were those vanquished in war, who the victors had a right to kill but spared in exchange for submitting to coercive power, thus becoming a tool for the victors (Patterson 1982, p. 5). In modern societies, slavery is typically a form of debt bondage, where the powerful are owed a debt that binds the powerless to them in a manner whereby their physical survival is at the behest of the powerful. Alternately, modern slaves are often illegal immigrants, whose absence of correct papers deprives them of protection from the law; often they can be killed with relative impunity.

Following the model of slavery, kleptocratic coercion is based upon the fact that powerful have the equivalent of a life or death right to the body of the powerless. In kleptocratic political systems, where the powerless are not literally slaves, punishment is a public event, which demonstrates political power as the right to life and death. The gruesome public execution described by Foucault in the opening of Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979), would be paradigmatic. The performance of the death penalty in public performs a similar function – e.g. public hangings. In smaller units, such as organized crime, the powerful couple death with torture, to advertise their life and death coercive powers.

The life-and-death aspect of kleptocratic coercion also contains its weakness: because of the absence of any buy-in from the dominated, the latter are continually potentially revolutionary. The moment the powerful backs are turned, the dominated are likely to disobey, maybe kill their oppressors. For kleptocratic leaders the danger point occurs when those they oppress feel that their circumstances are so terrible that they have nothing to lose by rebellion. When death loses its deterrence value, the circumstances are ripe for revolution.

In more complex kleptocratic political systems, the leaders require accomplices, which requires the creation of groups in-between the kleptocratic leaders and the dominated. These social actors often have extreme loyalty, as the collapse of the system means death from the revolutionaries. Within this in-group the system is authoritarian. Another variant is for dominating elites to create in-between groups that are expendable, to be sacrificed, to avoid revolution by the masses. For instance, hated tax collectors are punished, to protect the system. For this reason, in some societies those occupying these roles are often conscripted from a minority, who are socially constructed as objects of collective hatred (e.g. Jews in feudal Europe).

For kleptocratic elites divide-and-conquer represents the best strategy to manage the inherent systemic instability that comes from lack of any belief in legitimacy on the part of the responding oppressed mass of the population. The division of society into groups, some of whom gain, and who are deeply suspicious other groups, creates a kind of balance of oppression, which can provide some stability. However, without significant transition to authoritarianism, through buy-in ideologically from the dominated, kleptocracy is inherently a structurally unstable form of rule. Once the power elite understand that stability can be obtained by making concessions, kleptocracy shifts from the pure ideal type to a hybrid form of kleptocracy-cum-authoritarianism. Arguably, avoidance of the potential for revolution creates a natural impetus for the power elite to transition from kleptocracy to authoritarianism. Although, against that, as authority replaces coercion, the powerful become more constrained in their ability to despoil their subjects.

3.3. Third dimension: social epistemology

Regarding the third dimension of power, in kleptocracy the function of epistemic power is different from either authoritarianism or democracy. Typically, the function of ideology is to obtain the buy-in from the less powerful, so compliance becomes (somewhat) voluntary. In kleptocracy ideology does not serve this buy-in function. Typically, there is not one shared ideology but two: that of the powerful and that of the oppressed.

On the part of the powerful, their ideology constitutes a rationalisation intended to obscure the zero-sum oppressive relationship. Most elites, even kleptocratic ones, do not admit that their rule is entirely self-serving. Typical are arguments to the effect that the oppressed are not capable of agency; therefore, their powerlessness is entirely justified. An Aristotelian type of justification of slavery would be typical (Aristotle 1941, pp. 1130–1, 1.3). The elite are rational beings, who are capable of their own telos. However, those they govern are lesser beings, akin to animals, who are not capable of their own telos, therefore are best sacrificed for the wellbeing of those who have a telos (the powerful). Following Patterson’s account of a slave as someone who is ‘dishonoured’ (Patterson 1982, p. 10), given the association between honour and authority, a slave is denied the authority to be able to speak, as a felicitous act of structuration. In modern autocracies, where the social subjects are not literally slaves, they are analogous to slaves in the sense that they are precluded from the authority to speak for themselves through politics.

A modern variant would be forms of racism (or misogyny) that claim that the oppressed are innately inferior. To be clear, there are two types of racism that must be distinguished: crude racism that does not seek the buy-in of the oppressed and the subtle kind that does. In crude versions the social construction of other is overtly derogatory, as there is no attempt to seek the buy-in form the oppressed. For instance, the Nazis did not seek the buy-in of the Jews into Nazi ideology.

From the perspective of the oppressed, their domination is obvious to them. They don’t suffer anything analogous to incorporation into dominant hegemonic practical knowledge. However, they often have a subaltern ideology of their own. As described by Scott (1990: 108), they develop an ideology, which is not a justification of the system, rather a way to make it bearable. Often such oppressed peoples are attracted to evangelical religious beliefs that emphasize the omnipotence of God. When confronted with blatant injustice they accept it as fate or the ‘will of God’ (Yazdaninasab and Khademnabi 2023). This makes their total lack of control over their abject condition more bearable, along stoic lines (there is nothing we can do, so just accept it). Added to that, in the Abrahamic monotheistic faiths, there is an afterlife in which every injustice perpetrated against the oppressed will be resolved – the powerful will be punished, while the oppressed will be rewarded for accepting God’s will (Scott 1990: 43).

3.4. Fourth dimension: social ontology

The fourth dimension of power has a different function in Kleptocracy than in authoritarianism or democracy. The objective of discipline is not to facilitate a desirable forms of agency. Rather, in kleptocracy the objective is to shape social ontology in a manner that undermines most forms of agency. Typically, slaves are subjected to violence, to impress upon these social subjects that they are slaves (Patterson 1982, p. 3). The result is a form of ‘social death’, which has three aspects. First, the social actor loses any form of authority (Patterson 1982, pp. 36–7). While they can speak, literally, anything they say, beyond servile obedience, is treated as infelicitous. Any structuration that could confer agency to them is de-structured as infelicitous. As observed by Arendt, they are incapable of setting anything in motion (Arendt 1958, p. 177). Their role is merely as obedient subjects who follow the directives of others

The second aspect of social death concerns the social bonds of the social subject. Social death takes the form of deliberately separating kin from each other. In Caribbean and US colonial slavery families and tribe members were separated. In modern slavery phones and means of access to the internet are confiscated. The idea is to render the social subject incapable of collective agency with others. Isolation from others means that the social subject only has access to the social system of the oppressor. This applies in wider kleptocratic political systems (not literally slaves), where independent social organizations and contact, including the internet, are deemed a threat, as potential sources of agency.

Thirdly, social death takes the form of removing the emotions associated with social bonds, such as trust, and replacing them with fear and distrust. Driven by fear-based emotion, social subjects are made incapable of collective action with their fellow oppressed.

The overall objective of the kleptocratic ontological strategy is to undermine the agency, as the independent organizational capacity, of the dominated. Generally, part of attaining social agency is a process of learning the repeated patterns of structural reproduction. Predictability of other is enabling for the purposes of collaborative interaction. Psychologically, the routine of structural reproduction is highly conducive to ontological security (Giddens 1984). Authority is a highly structured resource, which means that it is enabling and conducive to ontological security. In contrast, coercion is highly fungible with the result that systemic routinization is the exception; the only ‘norm’ of the system are the whims of the kleptocratic autocrats. Coercively based systems are inherently conducive to fundamental insecurity of the being-in-the-world of the self. As outward predictability is required for psychological survival, the oppressed social subjects will search for order and realize that the only order are the whims of the powerful. This may result in, so called, Stockholm syndrome, whereby identification with the oppressors delivers some sense and meaning to the being-in-the-world of the oppressed (Giddens 1984, p. 63), exemplified by some inmates of the Nazi camps who survived by internalizing a Nazi world-view self (Levi 2013, p. 217). This identification with the dominating other results in self-effacing sycophancy as a respite from arbitrariness: a route to ontological security in circumstances of structural incoherence.

4. Authoritarianism

4.1. First dimension: agency

Regarding the first dimension of power, the main power resource is authority. Coercion is present but the objective of coercion is to augment authority. Authority depends upon the belief in legitimacy. In general, there are two ways to achieve the requisite belief: one is informed understanding of the power-related benefits of compliance (democracy), while the other is for the powerful to shape the practical knowledge and social ontology of the less powerful, so they are predisposed to perceive the system as legitimate (authoritarianism).

While in kleptocracy power is zero-sum, in authoritarianism power either is positive sum or appears so, even when it is not. The less powerful obey out of a perception that authority is in their interests. Rational choice type logic suggests that this perception cannot be entirely correct, for if it were, those in authority would not have to work hard to instil a supporting practical knowledge belief or social ontology. However, in societies with a long tradition of authoritarian rule, it is not implausible that the power elite will govern in this manner even when power-over is positive sum, leading to tangible power-to benefits for those who obey. In short, authoritarianism may be a logical choice, genuinely believed to be legitimate, for historical-cum-cultural reasons. Authoritarianism can also be perceived as attractive when compared to kleptocracy. So, transitioning from one to the other confers some belief in legitimacy (a version of Hobbes’ (1914 [1651] argument for absolute sovereignty).

Authoritarianism presupposes that the other has agency, even though that agency is carefully choreographed by the more powerful. So, rather than use the powerful versus powerless binary dichotomy, in most circumstances it is appropriate to characterize this relationship in terms of more powerful and less powerful social actors.

As suggested by Arendt (2004, p. 450), while authoritarianism often relies on significant use of coercion, it is unlike kleptocracy in that this resource is not simply used for the purposes of gaining compliance. Rather, coercion points beyond the immediate context of the interaction to wider epistemic and ontological aspects of authoritarian power. So, while coercion is relatively common, the objective is the reinforcement of authority.

Complex authoritarian states practice complex division of labour, which means that political power and economic activities are often separated in practice but there is in principle no separation between authority and economic resources. Those in authority claim legitimacy based upon how well the economy is doing, which makes direct access to economic resources consistent with belief in legitimacy. As political authority is understood as an expert discipline, beyond the grasp of the ordinary subjects, they are cast in the de facto role of economic producers. So, in practice ordinary subjects are solely homo economicus, while the elite can avail of both authority and economic resources. In situations where authoritarianism replaces kleptocracy, this ability to be homo economicus, without the constant threat of coercion, may appear a liberation to the less powerful, conferring a belief in legitimacy.

4.2. Second dimension: structure

Regarding the second dimension, both authoritarianism and democracy share the structural characteristic that the foundational power resource is authority, which means that both are grounded upon a belief in legitimacy. However, where they differ is in the relationship between that belief and the position of the authority elites. Democracy is based upon a principle of the circulation of authority holders. When the people no longer have the requisite belief in the legitimacy of elite authority, political elites are changed for different elites who inspire greater belief in legitimacy upon voters. Elections are essentially competition between politicians to see which elites can garner the greater belief in legitimacy from the voters (Balestri 2023). In authoritarianism the elites do not circulate, so the elites must choreograph the beliefs of the less powerful subjects over whom they exercise power.

Authoritarian elites are more constrained than kleptocratic elites because their power is based upon belief in legitimacy. They are constrained performatively by having to structure their actions in a manner consistent with their message. The discovery of performative contradiction between ideology and elite action is a threat to legitimacy. As argued by Goffman (1971), social action typically involves frontstage and backstage performances, which differ. In authoritarianism the difference between frontstage and backstage performances are often significant because the economy and polity are not that clearly separated, which creates a constant temptation to use authority for backstage wealth. Yet, authoritarian leaders who come to power through egalitarian revolutions must lead frontstage lives that accord with dominant egalitarian ideology. Consequently, privilege and wealth must be kept strictly backstage, which can only be achieved through careful control of investigative journalism.

Authoritarian leaders are not structurally constrained by the power of the law, as they make the law, and in so doing are the exception to it, consistent with the views of Nazi legal theorist Schmitt (2006). In current actual democracies, political leaders of an authoritarian bent, will seek to make the judiciary subject to the authority of the polity. They often seek belief in legitimacy for this by claiming that they represent the voice of the people, fighting enemies of the people, including, so-called, ‘liberal elites’ or the ‘deep state’ (Muller 2023).

4.3. Third dimension: social epistemology

The third dimension of power is crucial for the creation of the beliefs necessary to sustain the legitimacy of authoritarian power. Authority is essentially performative. When persons in authority exercise power, the response of other is key. If the other responds by compliance, the performance is felicitous but if the responding other rejects the order as unreasonable, or deems it infelicitous, then genuine authority is not reproduced. The belief in the legitimacy of authority can be based either upon full information concerning the implications of compliance (democracy), or the belief may be the consequence of carefully managed epistemic perceptions (authoritarianism). Authoritarian leaders will try to make the belief in their authority part of the natural-order-of-things. There are three common ways of creating legitimacy epistemically: tacit knowledge, reification, and exclusion of a plurality of viewpoints.

Routinized reproduction of structure takes place with ease when the less powerful operate largely from tacit or subconscious practical knowledge. Education through rote learning is a highly effective way for knowledge to by-pass discursive critique. In traditional societies sacred texts and associated (so-called) ‘wisdom’ are learned by rote. In more secular societies, a heavy emphasis upon recall of detailed information, as against understanding of underlying principles, tested through competitive examinations, are an effective method for keeping knowledge on a subconscious level.

More crudely, social subjects can be taught to rehearse patriotic phrases, that include praise of the leadership, which in many ways are secular version of prayers. In Chinese re-education camps the day is punctuated with constant repetitions of phrases such as: ‘Thank you to our great country. Thank you to our party. Thank you to our dear President Xi Jinping’. (Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Morgat 2021). Repeated knowledge becomes part of the natural-order-of-things, which leads to a reflex affirmation of authority as felicitous.

Authoritarian leaders try to create a total reality, which is made sacred through reification. In theocracies it is the will of God, interpreted through sacred texts, that reinforces belief in authority. In secular totalitarian systems this role is performed by quasi-sacred texts, such as Xi Jinping’s Governance of China (Jinping 2018), which is the successor to The Quotations of Mao Tse-tung (Tse-Tung 2018). Both these texts attain a belief in legitimacy from the Marxist claim that Marxism is scientific, which is a Truth claim. Simultaneously, they draw belief in legitimacy from the traditional quasi sacred authority of the ancient teachings of Confucius. The latter stems from an understanding of knowledge as something derived from wisdom of thinkers who are socially constructed as charismatic authorities. As suggested by Weber (1978, p. 241), charismatic authorities are socially constructed as exceptional, with attributed qualities such as: ‘sage’, ‘prophet’ or ‘genius’. The critique of pronouncements by such individuals is infelicitous - ‘profane’, ‘disrespectful’ or ‘unreasonable’. Charismatic authority doesn’t simply pertain to living persons but to texts and material artefacts left behind or associated with charismatic leaders, which later leaders can use to reify their authority.

Routinization of charismatic authority is difficult, but not impossible, and accomplished by reification, through claimed access to Truth. In modernity the sacred charismatic Truth of traditional society is replaced by expert authority Truth. Essentially, government is considered a realm in which experts exercise power based upon access to scientific Truth. This includes sources of knowledge, such as, academic journals with high status, exemplary models, reified by expert endorsements, or other sources, including the media (Alasuutari 2018). Obviously, such sources are not inherently reified. This depends upon the authority performance, which can either suggest that these are fallible hypotheses or Truth claims.

Marxism claims to be scientific, therefore a source of Truth claims. Similarly, especially among neo-liberals, economics is often successfully constructed as a source of Truth. Consequently, authoritarian leaders typically base their legitimacy claims upon their capacity to manage the economy. Hence, typically, economic growth is key to the maintenance of the belief in authority – GDP achievements are highly celebrated. The image of authoritarian scientific management of problems extends to healthcare provision. Consequently, Xi Jinping insists that China is better able to deal with Covid than Western democracies. Currently, this makes it impossible for him to replace less effective Chinese vaccines with Western ones, without damaging his claim to legitimate authority (Guardian 2022). Similarly, the claim is made that authoritarian regimes, such as China, are better able to deal with climate crisis (Mann 2013, pp. 361–399). The core idea being that authoritarian systems are better equipped to implement the Truth than democracies, where the people cannot agree upon the Truth (in fact, they reject the idea of Truth, as something incontestable, altogether).

Another technique of reification is to postulate a scientific theory of history (Popper 2003). If history is contingent, it can be done differently. However, if history is a manifestation of scientific laws of history, then there is nothing contingent about political events. Authoritarian leaders can claim that they represent the climax of this historical evolution. This claim is prominent in Marxism (Marx and Engels 2020) but is also found in liberal traditions when, for instance, it is claimed that the unfettered rule of market forces and liberal democracy represent the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 1992).

In contrast to reification, fallible truth claims are socially constructed hypotheses, which are never fully justified, therefore must be constantly tested and falsified (Popper 2002, p. 22). This makes truth claims on a scale, from worse to better hypothesis. Newtonian physics is partially true (perfect for everyday engineering), while relativity theory is truer but is not the Truth, as it will be falsified. However, in the logic of authoritarian reification, Truth is binary, which mirrors the sacred/profane distinction (Alexander 2013). As secularism is of relatively recent date, this binary method of constructing Truth claims is easily socially constructed as part of the natural-order-of-things. However, binary thinking makes the idea of reasonable disagreement, where actors agree to disagree, outside the conditions of possibility. Those who disagree with authority are simply uttering something False and deserve correction. The plural world of competing truth claims makes no sense in a binary frame logic. Therefore, it appears reasonable to control all information, to ensure that social subjects are educated in the Truth; not misled by what is False. Therefore, binary thinking lends itself to the social construction of what Arendt (2004) characterized as a ‘total society’, where the social construction of the collective practical consciousness is the business of the state.

Reification through essentialism works by claiming that the other has some special characteristic that renders them unfit for political authority. In kleptocracy we encountered crude racist essentialism that does not seek the buy-in from the dominated, who are therefore characterized entirely negatively. However, there are more subtle forms of essentialism that characterize the other in positive terms, with (so-called) ‘virtues’ that make them unsuitable for political authority. As observed by Mary Wollstonecraft (2014 [1792], p. 33), women are in fact dominated through ‘mistaken notions of excellence’. Similarly, Bader Ginsburg argues that many forms of discrimination are presented as for women’s benefit and protection (Ginsberg in Cohen and Dull 2023). So, for instance, according to such stereotypes, women are socially constructed as more governed by the ‘heart’, therefore more compassionate and caring, while men are governed by the ‘head’, suggesting calculation or reason. From these binary virtues it follows that women are better at care and men at political leadership (Auerbach et al. 1985, p. 159). Regarding colonialism and race, the ‘oriental’ are thought to be artistically creative but incapable of self-government (Said 2003, pp. 32–3).

Reification works by denying social construction and claiming that-which-is can only be that way. As theorized by Anderson (1983) and Gellner (1983), the nation is a social construction of recent date. However, in reified nationalism this hypothesis is considered a profanation. Following Durkheim, (2008 [1915]), in traditional societies, society worships itself through God, in nationalism society worships itself directly. In primordial nationalism the nation is a sacred essence that is projected back into the mists of time, which defines the soul of a people. Instead of a Prophet who reads the mind of God, the authoritarian leader is socially constructed as reading the collective consciousness of the culture of the nation. For instance, in November 2021 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party declared the thoughts of Xi Jinping’s the ‘essence of Chinese culture’ (NPR 2021). This claim is also typified by the words attributed to the Irish nationalist leader Eamon de Valera: ‘If I wish to know what the Irish want, I look into my own heart’.

The nation is both internal and external; it is both a historical and identity Truth claim. This belief means that those who wish to critique the system are socially constructed as no longer true to their national identity, which is a kind of ‘higher’ self (Berlin 2002). Difference is a betrayal of both the nation and self. Therefore, re-education, through reform of the social subject, true to its national essence, can be socially constructed as liberation.

Authoritarianism is collectivist, constantly sacrificing its individual members to the greater good of the whole. As the power relationship is largely to the cost of the less powerful, the calculation of the costs and benefits of obedience to authority is deemed profane. The individual who calculates the cost and benefits of obedience to authority is deemed to be acting from their lower self (socially constructed as ‘selfish’ or ‘egoistic’). Altruism is equated with the willingness to identify with, and sacrifice for, the collective whole. Hence, the focus is deflected away from power implications for the individual of compliance to authority.

Following binary logic, authoritarian nationalism reinforces collective identity in an oppositional way. The nation is sacred, opposed to profane enemies. This opposition is used to reinforce the nation as a total society, where everyone agrees. Those that critique the regime become socially constructed as agents of the dangerous other, whose views are not just False but a profanation conspired by the enemy/profane other. In China and Russia, the enemy is the U.S.A; in Iran the profane other are Zionists (aided by the U.S.A).

When addressing the people of Tibet, China’s President Xi Jinping constantly emphasises that he seeks ‘to realize the traditional Chinese ideal of harmony within the borders of Tibet’. (Isackson 2020). The concept of harmony is an ancient concept within Chinese culture, which goes back to the writings of Confucius. As argued by Hagstróm and Nordin, in practice harmony means a process of harmonizing of the members of society, so that ‘everybody in a harmonious society should fulfil the will of their leaders’. (Hagstróm and H 2020). Anyone who disagrees with Xi Jinping’s vision of what harmony might entail is socially constructed as a ‘splittist’, who wants to break with the collective – an agent of outside enemies. Similarly, those who argue in favour of democracy in Hong Kong are excluded as they are not ‘patriots’.

In authoritarian systems the objective of coercion is not simple obedience. Coercion is a vehicle for reinforcing ideological incorporation. As such coercion is a means to another end: to create the beliefs necessary for authority. ‘Splittists’, such as the Uighurs, are sent to re-education camps. So called ‘education’ attempts to instil the routinization of patriotic practical knowledge, with all its associated reifications, such as, ‘I wish for my great country to develop and have a bright future. I wish for all ethnicities to form a single great nation … . Long live President Xi Jinping’. (Haitiwaji and Morgat 2021).

It is hard to gauge to what extent re-education achieves its full objectives, as dissent is punished, using coercive resources. As suggested by Scott (1990), failure to instil the desired authoritarian belief system often results in a split consciousness. There is public discourse, which structures the public performance of obedience to authority, while simultaneously there exists a supressed subaltern discourse that is kept backstage, away from the eyes and ears of those with coercive power. In contrast to kleptocracy, because the less powerful have some agency, the subaltern discourse will not simply be one of resigned acceptance. Rather it promotes social change of the here and now. To counter this threat, authoritarian leaders must ensure that such counter-hegemonic discourse does not have space to develop and proliferate, therefore control of the media and internet are crucial. Plurality of opinion must be obliterated, including from the outside world. To the extent authoritarianism fails to suppress counter-hegemonic ideology, the power structure is unstable, potentially leading to the moment when backstage ideology become public, in direct revolutionary confrontation. In such circumstances coercive responses undermine the belief in the legitimacy of the power elite. For the powerful the use of coercion constitutes a slippery slope toward kleptocracy.

4.4. Fourth dimension: social ontology

The fourth dimension of power concerns the creation of a social ontology appropriate to the system of authority. Authoritarian leaders prefer subjects who are docile, created through panoptical type institutions, whereby the body internalizes habituative reflex responses. The model of military training is paradigmatic for panoptical society (Foucault 1979, p. 162). The body is understood as a machine-like tool that responds appropriately to orders given. In the wider society, parades with precision movement are given high status, to be emulated. In Chinese re-educational institutions, there is rigorous ‘physical education that was tantamount to military training’ (Haitiwaji and Morgat 2021).

Subjecting the body to exacting drills has synergy with the ideas of nationalist collectivist beliefs of authoritarianism. The docile body is trained to fit the collective, in much the same way that a cog is part of a machine. When made part of nationalism, a sense of self is constructed which is strongly communal, therefore not focused upon the individual. From childhood onwards, authoritarian systems encourage membership of collectivist organisations that combine nationalism with disciplinary training (for a Soviet example, see Short 2022: 44). This creates social subjects with a disposition toward reflex obedience to commands made in the name of the collective.

Following Durkheim’s account of altruistic suicide (Durkheim, 1989 [1897]), the individual with a high sense of collective self, low individual self, is the desired social subject of reified nationalism. The social subject becomes willing to sacrifice their life for the collective identity. In death they become socially constructed as ‘martyrs’, who have a sacred status and meld into the collective memory of the nation. Through the ultimate sacrifice, the social subject reinforces the authority of the powerful who, in turn, socially construct themselves as speaking for the sacrificed dead of the nation. Thus, the dead martyrs serve as a source for authoritarian reification, which has deep emotional purchase upon the population – disagreement is socially constructed as disrespect for the sacred dead, which is shameful.

A strong collective sense makes for a social subject who feels at home in dense social relations, which are not places of individual introspection or critique. Typically, authoritarian societies have strongly developed community events, where social subjects become melded into the collective self. This includes both clubs and societies but also large public events, parades and so on, whereby the individual becomes one with the collective social subject, overawed by the sui generis feeling of being part of something bigger than the individual self.

Authoritarian states are rich in symbols of exemplary individuals who embody the essence of willingness to sacrifice for the nation. The ultimate sacrifice being those ‘exemplary’ individuals who value community not only over self but are also willing sacrifice family members for the higher good. This is exemplified by the paragon of Stalinist virtue, comrade Pavlik, a teenager who denounced his father for hiding grain, during the collectivisation campaign of the 1930s (Short 2022: 43). The desired effect (not always successful) is to inspire deep ontological insecurity with respect to traditional social bonds (including the family), for the purposes of redirecting those social bonds to state institutions. Often, authoritarian leaders assume the titles of kindship, with respect to the population. In the Catholic Church, a paradigmatic authoritarian organization, the priest is referred to as ‘father’ and is the trusted repository of the deepest secrets, shared in confession; thus, creating deep social bonds.

As argued by Butler (1997) and Allen (2012), the social construction of the subject dispositions of femininity creates a psychological dependence upon those supposedly essential characteristics. When child is socialized to perform femininity, this means internalizing self-effacing traits, such as being ‘modest’ and ‘considerate’. Similarly, extending this, self-effacing bodily behaviour is part of most of the rituals of the Abrahamic faiths. Being deemed ‘faithful’, entails self-abjection of the body in the presence of source of ultimate authority. Attributes, such as confessing yourself to be a ‘sinner’, while begging for ‘forgiveness’ or prostration in prayer as a sign of humility, are presented as desirable traits, which confer distinction among the faithful.

Over time, ontological security becomes associated with self-abasement. As argued by Pettit (Pettit 2012, Haugaard and Pettit 2017), the ability to look the powerful in the eye is symbolic of equality, while the downward gaze in the face of authority is an inextricable part of the inequality central to the social ontology of authoritarian systems. Through socialization the downward gaze becomes part of the being-in-the-world of the social subject. Once the downward gaze becomes internalized, questioning authority inspires ontological insecurity, a feeling of alienation, or ‘not for the likes of us’ (Bourdieu 1990: 56). Hence, self-effacing religiosity is a highly effective source of authoritarian power. In secular societies, self-effacing behaviour can be trained into the social subject through the rituals of organizations or public events (e.g. mass parades where social subjects display their ability to behave as perfectly choreographed automatons). Such performances confer distinction/cultural capital upon those participating yet result in a self-deprecating social ontology.

5. Democracy as legitimate authority

Power has a dual quality, resulting in either domination or empowerment. For most theorists, including Lukes (2021), the dominating aspect is primary. However, there is another tradition of power theory, which emphasizes the democratic empowering side of political power, including Arendt (1958, 1970), Parsons (1963), Giddens (1984) and Barnes (1988). The works of Haugaard (1997 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021) are, in part, an attempt to bring these two traditions together, arguing that political power is both enabling and dominating.

5.1. First dimension: agency

Democracy shares with authoritarianism the idea that it is a political system based upon legitimate authority. Democracy differs from authoritarianism in that the foundation of belief in legitimacy is the circulation of elites, coupled with the principle of informed understanding of the implications of obedience. The responding, less powerful actor, has a belief in legitimacy because they believe that confirm-structuring a structuring performance of authority will deliver power-to in either the short or long run. In democracy, when the political elite are no longer acting in accordance with the beliefs of the citizens, they are replaced, through elections.

Democracy shares with authoritarianism that the powerful have recourse to coercive power but coercion is used to reinforce the structures of the democratic system, when either elites or citizens default from those agreed structures, as stipulated in law. The political elites are accountable through the supreme court, when they deviate from the democratic process.

In democracy neither elites nor citizens have direct access to coercive power. The belief in the legitimacy of democratic power is based upon it being non arbitrary (Pettit 1996, 2012). Therefore, the private use of coercion between citizens is precluded because it is arbitrary. The democratising process entails the removal of citizens’ access to coercion as a power resource. This includes within the home, where domestic violence is considered beyond the scope of legitimate power. Even parental power, which is asymmetric (Fives 2018), should be based upon authority, not coercion. Obviously, this trend is more marked in some actual democracies than others, with the U.S.A as an outlier in the extent that private violent coercive is tolerated (Mennell 2009), which means that this actual democracy falls significantly short of the ideal type.

The relationship between political authority and economic resources is a complex one. Gellner (1989: 177) observes that modernity is characterized by a division between coercion and production. To qualify slightly: in kleptocracy coercion is used by the power elite to extract wealth from producers. Consequently, the economic realm and political realm are entirely fused. In contrast, in democracy there are strict, yet complex rules dividing the economic and political. In the liberal traditions of the libertarian variant, it is claimed that the economy must not be interfered with by those endowed with political authority. However, from the perspective of the belief in legitimacy the picture is more complex.

The beliefs that sustain democratic authority preclude the use of political authority as a tool of wealth production. The state is precluded from becoming a capitalist entity. Yet, there are state companies, such as water and electricity providers, but those companies must not be seen to generate wealth for the political class, even indirectly (for instance, from the awarding of contracts). Sustaining the belief in legitimacy precludes the use of political power to gain economic resources, beyond a regular salary, commensurable with what would be considered consistent with the beliefs concerning what constitutes a ‘fair wage’. So, in that sense, consistent with liberal tradition, there is a division between political power and the economy.

In contrast to the liberal tradition, in social practice, most social actors don’t view the legitimacy of the political system as entirely separable from the economy because the rules of the game of the economy are set by the polity. Hence, the relationship between political authority and the economic rules-of-the-game must be perceived to be fair both in its procedures and outcomes, which brings us to the second dimension of power.

5.2. Second dimension: structure

Regarding the second dimension of power, democracy can be conceptualized as the transition, over hundreds of years, from deep conflict, where there is little agreement to the rules of the game, to social systems where all power relations, including class-based conflicts, are managed within a set of shared structural constraints. This means that structural constraint is highly pervasive.

In democracy constraint increases with political responsibility. The belief in legitimacy increases to the extent to which the powerful are seen to be constrained. Those in authority can create a positive-sum dynamic by adhering to constraints, while they damage their sustaining ring of belief by using power outside the appropriate scope (Parsons 1963, Balestri 2023). This dynamic creates an incentive to use authority in accordance with the beliefs of the responding others.

The key to democratic belief in legitimacy is the idea that citizens have a right to the justification of any power exercised over them (see Forst 2007, p. 77). Justification enables compliant actors B to balance the cost of power-over compliance against the power-to personal capacity for action. Any exercise of power-over which is purely for the benefit of the elite is damaging to the belief that sustains authority, while power-over that delivers power-to for citizens reinforces the belief in legitimacy.

The citizens’ right to justification entails that exercises of power are transparent and accountable. Therefore, legitimacy concerns not simply specific institutional procedures, such as elections. Rather, the legitimacy of all state structures is measured against the extent to which they make political power transparent and accountable. This means that, for instance, when dealing with bureaucratic authority, staffed by non-elected bureaucrats, what renders such interaction democratic is the fact that the powerful exercise power in a transparent and accountable manner. Conversely, elections only confer belief in legitimacy if they make power transparent and accountable, which depends upon the electoral system relative to population cleavages. In societies with permanent minorities, majoritarian electoral systems render a certain section of the population permanent losers, therefore that section of the population will not have a belief in the legitimacy of the electoral system. For them, the system is coercive – kleptocracy or authoritarian. To make such a system truly democratic, proportional and/or consociational systems are necessary (Lijphart 2008).

The most straightforward justification of authority is in terms of joint ventures, which suggests a kind of collective power-with (Allen et al. 2021b, p. 499). Large complex bureaucratic organizations are an inextricable part of modernity and are legitimate to the extent to which positions of authority can be justified to its members, and relevant others in terms of power-with for the collective goals. So, for instance, any exercise of power in a hospital or a health service is justifiable relative to the goal of providing medical assistance to those in need.

In contrast to authoritarian systems, in democracy justification relative to the individual over whom power is exercised can override the collective goals. Citizens consider themselves as an end in themselves, with attendant demands for justification. So, individual power-to can trump collective power-with. The only exception to this rule is the armed forces, where individuals are sacrificed for the collective but, arguably, in actual modern democratic states this is a sphere of social life which has never become truly democratic.

In authoritarian societies collective goals are defined by the power elite, leading to supposed consensus. In contrast, democracies accept plurality, therefore disagreement, as inevitable. Disagreement and conflict, rather than consensus, are the assumed norm: actors agree to disagree. This means that those endowed with political power typically represent only a section of the population, who constitute a temporary majority at the time of elections. However, the losing minority still regard the elected power elite as legitimate when those with political power only have power of a highly limited scope. Those in authority are empowered to pursue public policies based upon the vision of the good life of their supporters but they do not have the scope of power to disempower those who lost the election. Those who lose can only sustain a belief in the legitimacy of the process to the extent to which they feel confident that the election is only a single event in an iterative, or repeat game, of elections (plural).

In evaluating power-over one must look both at the exercise of power and the power resources. The exercise of power is a momentary episodic moment of power, whereas structures of the democratic process constitute dispositional power (Clegg 1989), which is available as a power resource to all social actors, winners and losers. While the episodic exercise of power may be zero-sum (with winners and losers), confirm-structuration by the loser results in the reproduction of the social structures of the democratic process, which is a shared dispositional power resource. The democratic process should be thought of as a game, in which there is open disagreement concerning the most desired outcome (who wins) episodically, yet every time the game is played, it remains evenly balanced between competing players, which confers shared dispositional power. To sustain the belief in legitimacy on the part of the losers, it should not matter how many times you play the game; the outcome is evenly balanced. Obviously, if one group keeps losing, that is no longer the case, and the belief in legitimacy evaporates.

Playing and replaying the democratic game presupposes that the winner should not change the rules of the game to advantage themselves for the next game. Therefore, politicians must be answerable to the judicial system. All law enacted by parliament must be subject to judicial review, which is binding. The judiciary must not be in fear or favour of the political authority. Consequently, politicians should have no hand, act or part in the appointment of judges to the supreme court, as the ultimate protector of the structures of the democratic process. In contrast to this ideal, currently it is noticeable that several authoritarian leaders find it intolerable to be subject to the powers of judiciary and are attempting the change the system accordingly (currently, Netanyahu, in Israel, is a prominent example).

Rights can be considered the foundation of the dispositional powers of the losers. As argued by Arendt (2004, pp. 296–97), democratic citizenship is the ‘right to have rights’. In democratic theory it is often suggested (for instance by Mounk 2018) that rule by the people (the democratic decision-making process) is in tension with liberal rights, which limits the decision-making powers of majorities. However, if democracy is regarded from the perspective of belief in legitimate authority, that is not the case. Unfettered majority rule undermines the circulation of elites, which in turn damages the belief in the legitimacy necessary to consent to defeat. To preserve such belief, citizens’ rights must limit the power of political authority in such a way that power remains positive sum: preserving the dispositional power of the losers. Beyond an independent judiciary, these rights also include freedom of speech, assembly and a non-majoritarian electoral system.

The relationship between political power and economic resources is complex and has high potential to destabilize the belief in legitimacy. Politicians cannot use political authority for economic gain; yet, the rules of the game are decided by the polity, which means that economic fairness impacts the belief in legitimacy of political power. What is considered fair by the responding citizen actors is partly culturally specific, yet there are certain obvious rules. Not only must political authority not deliver economic resources, but the political elite should not be seen to favour the economic elite. There cannot be perceived to be special relations between the political and economic elites. Minimally this requires that those with political authority cannot accept personal donations from the economic elite. Structurally, it means that political parties should be funded by the taxpayer or by donations that are strictly limited to amounts within the means of the average citizen. In short, the structural arrangements must be such that political elites cannot be bought by the economic elites.

Second, on a wider structural level, the rules of the game of the economy must be such as are perceived as fair, relative to the perceptions that inform the beliefs in legitimate authority of the citizen body. Citizens only consider the rules of the game fair if, in principle, they are equal players, which means that everyone has the same level of opportunity. At the core of meritocracy is an idea not dissimilar to the consent to defeat in elections. Essentially, the appointment to positions of authority and economic privilege must be based upon a free and open contest, in which each candidate competes with other candidates fairly, measured relative to their educational qualifications and relevant experience. At the end of the processes of selection, it should be transparently the case that whoever is the winner won based upon the qualification for the job in question. This should be apparent even to the losers, in much the same way as losing elections hinges upon the losers consenting to defeat. Hence, any appointment based around essentialist criteria (gender, class, race or ethnicity) or privileged access (social networks) are an anathema to meritocracy.

Unregulated meritocracy has a potentially self-destructive aspect not dissimilar to the dangers of unconstrained rule by the demos. Unfettered, it can lead to the most successful despoiling the rest, which undermines the position of the worst off. The belief in the legitimacy of meritocratic competition is premised upon sustaining the belief that everyone has an equal chance, not just in principle but in practice. This necessitates a highly developed social democratic redistributive state, which ensures that the worst off can still compete. Essentially, all social actors require the resources necessary to realize agency (Sen 2001), as the power-to realize reasonable life choices. Detailing such capacities and policies (e.g. Nussbaum 2011, pp. 33–4) is beyond the scope of this essay, however, suffice it to say that empirical evidence suggests a correlation between redistributive social democracy and belief in legitimacy. As argued by Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), relative equality of wealth means that all citizens consider themselves to have a stake in the system. The fairness of the political system does not exist in splendid isolation from the economic social structures. Echoing the sentiments of Wilkinson and Pickett, it is noticeable that, with a few exceptions, the most redistributive social democracies have the highest levels of trust (Ortiz-Ospina and Rose 2020) and happiness (Happiest Countries Index 2022). While not an exact measure, for the lack of a better one, trust and happiness suggest belief in the legitimacy of authority.

5.3. Third dimension: social epistemology

We saw that in authoritarian systems the belief in legitimacy arises from careful management of three- and four-dimensional power – ‘harmony’ that is created by the ‘harmonizing’ of the cognitive and ontological process of social subjects. Instead of harmonizing, democracy aims for a political order based upon a well-informed assessment of the relative gains and losses of obedience to authority. In an authoritarian system the telos of the citizens is subsumed into the telos of the whole – the nation. In contrast, in a democratic system it is assumed that all actors have different tele (plural), which the political system channels into an arena of open, yet constrained, conflict. By channelling conflict, rather than suppressing it, the political system is structured in such a manner that the political system itself is considered a collective resource. Instead of nationalism, the citizens value the political process, which means that nationalism is replaced by patriotism (Habermas 2001, Muller and L 2008).

An authoritarian society is premised upon the idea of an absolute Truth, which overrides everything else. In authoritarian systems education entails the instilling of a practical consciousness, whereby these Truths are the natural-order-of-things. This entails rote learning. In contrast, democracy is premised upon the constant justification of all knowledge. There are no self-evident Truths, only provisional truths, which must be constantly tested. The justification of authority means the justification of all knowledge claims. Rather than rote learning, knowledge acquisition is based upon understanding underlying principles of knowledge. In authoritarian systems examinations test learned-off knowledge, while in secular democracy examinations and other forms of assessments (such as project work and so on) test understanding.

While authoritarianism makes constant use of reification through essentialism, the practical knowledge of the democratic citizen is suspicious of all essentialist claims. Reflecting plurality, all truth claims are a socially constructed hypothesis, therefore could be otherwise. In that sense, the spirit of democracy is profoundly deconstructivist. Currently anti-essentialist social movements, wishing to deconstruct the social construction of essentialist categories of social subjects, including race and gender, are symptomatic of this spirit of democracy.

In practice, this trajectory is not even, with some social actors attempting to reconstruct new essentialist categories of identity, making previously negatively attributed identities positive. While egalitarian in intent, this is contrary to the spirit of the deconstruction because it simply reverses reifying essentialist (e.g. racist or misogynist) ways of thinking. As observed by Arendt (1958, p. 17) in her critique of Marx’s reversal of the Hegelian dialectic, the problem with reversing a way of thinking is that the way of thinking is still reproduced.

As has been argued by the pragmatist philosopher Dewey (1998), there is a direct correlation between the spirit of scientific inquiry and the practical knowledge underpinning democracy. Contrary to immediate impressions, this is consistent with the Foucault-Nietzsche critique of social practices where secular Truth claims (supposedly based upon science) have replaced God claims. When experts claim incontestable access to Truth, thus foreclose debate, as a will-to-power, this strategy both denies the right to proper justification and is contrary to science, as a commitment to fallibilism, based upon conjecture and hypothesis.

Fallibilism entails an admission that the practical knowledge underpinning knowledge construction is perspectival. Not just relative to the situatedness of the speaker but also as disciplinary modes of description socially constructed for different pragmatic purposes. The various subject disciplines of modern education (physics, biology, sociology, philosophy, economics and so on) are different ways of describing reality which are often incommensurable, yet each represent a local truth. They are paradigms (Kuhn 1970, 1977), which are analogous to lenses that make certain aspects visible, at the expense of suppressing others. External reality is filtered through concepts, which are socially constructed systemic structures, as paradigms of interpretation. Paradigms are incomplete pictures; yet enabling, as they exclude alternate interpretations not relevant for a specific pragmatic purpose; thus, simplifying and clarifying. To remain fallible, the members of the discipline should always be aware that exclusions are made, which have the potential for inclusion as the basis for rival truth claims. Therefore, the exclusions should always be viewed as temporary methodological brackets imposed upon reality. This translates into an overall tolerance of esoteric viewpoints. In short, democratic belief in legitimacy requires free inquiry, which means a free press.

Subject disciplines are paradigms that constitute an assemblage of conceptual tools that enables the observer to unlock some perspectival aspect of reality, which they consider useful, delivering power-to solve problems. Regarding the world-out-there, this means that knowledge claims are not binary, either/or. Rather, they are always both/and claims because reality can be refracted through different paradigms or disciplines, and the potential of the inclusion of exclusions can never be ignored. Binary logic is an anathema to democracy.

Disciplinary division has a strong elective affinity with democratic authority both epistemically and ontologically. Democratic authority entails extreme constraint. The democratic leader essentially enters a specific paradigm, the democratic or professional paradigms, in which there are certain descriptions of reality that exclude other descriptions. So, for instance, as an individual the social actor has various friendships and kinship relations, which are hugely important to them, constitutive of the everyday, at home, self. However, the moment that social actor becomes a person with political authority (an X who becomes a Y in circumstances C), they are transformed into authority figures who methodologically bracket friendship or kinship perceptions of others, interpreting those others simply as citizens, all of whom are on an entirely equally footing to every other citizen.

As observed by Gellner (1989: 47), modernity entails a move from multi-stranded ways of thinking to multiple distinct single-stranded ways of thinking. The Priest or Prophet of a traditional society could pronounce upon morality, medicine and the physical world. Modernity entails a compartmentalization of knowledge into disciplines, which means a proliferation of experts with the authority to make truth claims of limited scope. Like the Priest or Prophet, the authoritarian leader can exercise power in a multiplicity of spheres without damaging perceptions of legitimacy. In contrast, authority figures within a modern complex society claim only knowledge and expertise within a highly limited sphere. This applies not only to elected leaders but to all who occupy positions of authority within the wider bureaucracy. The doctor can only advice the patient on their health, and often only a highly confined aspect of the latter, in accordance with their specialization. Consistent with this, current attempts to make authority more accountable (whether it be politicians, film directors, university professors or other professionals) concern limiting their scope of power, using discipline specific criteria. Of course, this doesn’t happen easily, and is constantly policed by accountability through free access to information.

5.4. Fourth dimension: social ontology

In modernity, the discipline of the social subject and knowledge discipline are related phenomena. With reference to an epistemic paradigm (e.g. economics, physics or sociology), the use of the discipline refers to the phenomenon of self-discipline associated with such knowledge. Explaining things in a non-disciplinary way entails few rules and constraints. Learning a discipline means being socialized into local, discipline specific, ways of description, involving inclusion and exclusion. A discipline is not simply a system of knowledge, it entails a community of like-minded thinkers sharing social dispositions. Essentially, schooling in disciplines (physics, biology, history and so on) is a process of learning the self-discipline of paradigmatic disciplinary communities. This process of self-discipline, as state-sponsored education, is unique to modernity (Gellner 1983).

Moving beyond childhood socialization, becoming an authority within any of those communities, means being able to speak for the community and being heard, in the sense of being taken seriously, as someone who makes felicitous remarks within the discipline. Being qualified to speak means subjecting self to specific constraints, or subject formation, which is continually assessed by those who already have that authority. This applies not only to academia, but it is also characteristic of all professional authority, including political authority. To take an example, diplomats socialized within a democratic context have a sense of what can be said and what cannot, which contrasts with representatives from authoritarian states who are more likely to speak in an unconstrained way. The discipline of thinking in disciplines and the self-discipline of social practice are inseparable. Democratic authority presupposes deeply internalized codes of professional conduct as a condition of possibility for authority to be confined in scope.

This is analogous to the argument, central to On Suicide (Durkheim 1989 [1897]), that the tragedy of suicide, which is fraught with emotion, becomes dispassionate, as a suicide statistic, when refracted through the interpretative lens of the discipline of sociology. This refraction entails massive methodological bracketing off, or excluding, of the affective emotional paradigms. Similarly, once in a position of authority, social actors are expected to discipline themselves to suppress such affective ties.

In the Foucauldian model discipline creates docile bodies, social actors who behave in predictable way appropriate to authoritarian power structures, paradigmatically represented in the downward gaze. In Weber’s, Elias’ and Bourdieu’s formulations we see an account of social actors who self-discipline in order to give themselves distinction, thereby commanding the self-confident gaze of authority. Modernity is characterized by a unique socialization (Gellner 1983), ultimately validated by the state, whereby social actors pursue qualification after qualification. From early childhood onwards, social actors acquire skills which give them distinction within a marketplace where qualifications confer access to greater authority and economic resources. That quest not only presupposes internalising the internal discipline of the acquired disciplines: it means deferral of gratification in everyday life. Most social actors subject themselves to the avoidance of immediate pleasure for the long-term acquisition of these qualifications.

This self-discipline results in the creation of social subjects capable of the self-restraint necessary to exercise authority of constrained scope. As suggested by Elias’ model of the relationship between sociogenesis and psychogenesis, this self-restraint is endowed with emotional content, whereby social actors feel a sense of shame at transgressing disciplinary norms. Regarding authority, this translates into feeling shame at being perceived to have exercised power outside of the correct scope. Democratic authority is dispassionate, yet simultaneously endowed with emotion surrounding the transgression of these norms.

In contrast, in current actual democracies the tendency for certain authoritarian leaders not to feel that shame at being found to be in breach of these norms, suggests democracy falling short of the ideal type, tending toward authoritarianism or kleptocracy.

While in authoritarianism individualism is socially constructed as selfish, therefore as a normatively undesirable trait, in democracy individual achievement is socially constructed as linked to high self-esteem, which is considered a virtue. It is this self-esteem that enables the democratic social subject to look authority in the eye, thus pass the eye-ball test (Haugaard and Pettit 2017). Looking authority in the eye is a fundamental condition of possibility for the citizen social subject to be able to hold political power to account or to have the courage to demand justification of political power.

The coming together of the competitive aspects of meritocracy, leading to self-disciplined social subjects did not happen as the consequence of an intentional utopian normative project. In a manner analogous to Weber’s account of the elective affinity between puritanism and capitalism, the modern self-disciplined social subject was the unintended effect of competition for distinction, which conferred authority. The elective affinity is paradigmatically represented by the analogy between the democratic subject’s ability to consent to defeat in election and candidates for jobs accepting that much-desired positions should be awarded upon merit, even when such a process results in an outcome that is episodically detrimental to self.

In this context it is perhaps worth noting that this characterization of the modern social subject as behaving in a disciplinary way, through the structuring of reality by discipline-specific concepts relates to the debate between Rawls and Sandel. In his critique of Rawls (1971), Sandel (1984) argued that Rawls’ characterization of veil of ignorance, presupposes an implausible ‘unencumbered self’. In essence, such a social subject is argued to be implausible sociologically. Contrary to Sandel, I am suggesting that modernity entails the social construction of a social subject who from early school socialization onwards is trained in self-discipline, which creates the ontological disposition to methodologically bracket, to exclude as irrelevant, certain data and emotions. Consistent with Rawls, justice is a discipline which includes and excludes (the veil of ignorance) exactly like any other discipline. Due to unique social circumstances (disciplinary schooling followed by meritocratic competition), the modern social actor is a disciplined social subject capable of such methodological bracketing.

The above is not a description of the social construction of social actors in general, feudal social subjects would be incapable of adopting the self-discipline necessary for democracy. This is one of the reasons why the attempted rapid transition from a traditional society to democracy rarely results in a political system close to the ideal type of democracy, underpinned with genuine belief in legitimacy. Furthermore, the self-discipline necessary to sustain a belief in the legitimacy of democratic authority is a very high bar, which we are currently falling short of in many actual democracies.

6. Concluding comments

By way of conclusion, I have summarised key findings in a three-by-four table below of kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power. We will not reiterate the points highlighted in the table, as they should be clear from the previous text (see Table 1 below).

Table 1. 4x3 table of kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power.

Dimension/ideal types	Kleptocracy	Authoritarianism	Democracy
First dimension, agency	Resource: Coercion Power-over is zero-sum	Resource: Authority Power-over appears positive-sum.	Resource: Authority Power-over is positive-sum.
Second dimension, structure	Power relations structurally oppressive. Binary: powerful and powerless. Powerful have near monopoly of power Scope of coercive power highly fungible. The less powerful akin to the status of slaves. Deep structural conflict, as all obedience is based upon coercion. Unstable system prone to revolution.	Leaders retain power by managing the belief in legitimacy of the less powerful. The elites stay, while the beliefs circulate as choreographed by the elites. Sustaining belief imposes some constraints upon the powerful. However, as they control those beliefs, they have fewer restraints than democratic elites. Strong private realm for the powerful, maintained by control of information.	Leaders are circulated, so those who command the greatest belief in legitimacy are in power. The powerful circulate. Political leaders in constant competition for this belief. Citizens have a right to justification of power-over. The powerful have limited scope of power, as limited by rights of the less powerful citizens. Powerful under constant scrutiny through open information.
Third dimension: social epistemology.	The objective of the ideology is not the buy-in of the powerless into the system. Rather, there are two ideologies. That of the powerful, which is self-justification and is highly derogatory of the powerless – e.g. crude racism. In response the powerless have low self-esteem and embrace fatalistic ideologies, to make their absence of power bearable. Powerless attracted to religions that emphasize their otherworldly redemption.	The elites strongly interventionist in order to control practical knowledge, choreographing the belief in legitimacy. Emphasis upon taken-for-granted natural-order of things, thus upon rote learning and ritual. Reification: social order is sacred and/or according to the Truth. Information limited to what is considered Truth, while the False is excluded. Binary logic pervasive. Re-education justified as exclusion of False/profane ideas. Nationalism strong. Differences of opinion socially constructed as conspiracy by enemies. Prone to group think.	Practical knowledge constantly subject to discursive scrutiny. Emphasis upon understanding, rather than rote learning or ritual. Reifications constantly deconstructed. There is nothing sacred. All truth is fallible and socially constructed hypothesis – truth with small t. There are no essences or Truths. Open societies with limitless access to information. Logic is plural; exclusions require justification. Nationalism replaced by patriotism: loyalty towards institutions/practices that are understood as empowering.
Fourth dimension: social ontology	The powerful seek to socially construct the powerless to have a low level of independent agency. Akin to slaves. Powerless in survival mode, as the powerful have the right of life and death. Violence used to instil a subservient mentality, whereby the less powerful are deeply ontologically insecure. As the whims of the powerful the only certainty, results in self-deprecation and sometimes in self-identification with their needs or Stockholm syndrome.	The powerful seek to socially construct social subjects through panoptical power. Discipline makes them docile bodies, effective as cogs in the machine. Disciplinary military type ritual highly esteemed. Low sense of individual self or rights, while a highly developed sense of public duty. Individualism socially constructed as profane (selfish etc). Discipline results in willingness to sacrifice for the collective (martyr). Downward gaze typical of bodily disposition when confronted with authority.	The social subject is self-disciplined leading to self-restrained forward planning, in order to maximize power-to. Discipline is not imposed, rather an unintended effect of constant competition for distinction or cultural capital that confers status and economic advantage. Strong sense of individual self and rights. Individualism constructed as self-esteem (a virtue). Self-discipline results in willingness to consent to defeat in elections and in meritocratic competition. Passes the eye-ball test, looks authority in the eye.

As a reflection on current events, I would like to end with some contrasts between democratic leadership and the emergence of a new authoritarian leadership style within actual democracies, associated with figures, such as, Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Erdogan, Orban and Netanyahu. According to the ideal type, a democratic leader should willingly accept defeat, in actual democracies we observe the emergence of leaders who refuse to accept their own defeat, often constructing their defeat as a conspiracy. Democratic leaders accept that political decision-making is subject to a rule-bound system of justice, while these authoritarian leaders see the power of the judiciary as a threat to decision-making. Democratic leaders accept significant structural constraint upon their power, while such leaders constantly break rules, wishing to expand their powers. Similarly, such leaders view democracy in majoritarian terms, playing down the significance of minority rights. The democratic leader makes appointments based upon disciplinary expertise, these authoritarian leaders upon loyalty and kinship. These authoritarian leaders often adopt a style that expresses contempt for expert authority, as defined by disciplinary knowledge, preferring so-called ‘common sense’ and ‘intuition’, which they claim for themselves and associates. Consequently, they typically portray themselves as plain-speaking, with apparently unrestrained dispositions, often manifest through essentialist performances of maleness.

Just as in other political systems, the politics of actual democracy are unstable, sometimes tending towards the ideal type, increasing stability, but at other moments moving away from the democratic ideal type, towards authoritarianism and kleptocracy. Today, we are in the latter moment.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the organisers and audience of the 8th International Power Conference Helsinki, 2022 for their comments upon the original oral presentation of this paper. Special thanks Pertti Alasuutari, Risto Heiskala, and Mona Lilja for their comments upon an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Haugaard

Mark Haugaard is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Galway, Ireland. He is the founder editor of the Journal of Political Power, published by Routledge. He has published extensively upon power and his recent publications includes: The Four Dimensions of Power: understanding domination, empowerment and democracy, 2020, Manchester University Press.

Appendix

In terms of method, this is sociological theory inspired by the classical tradition. Like Durkheim and Weber, the objective is to theorize the essence of social phenomena, while methodologically bracketing normative judgement. This differentiates the approach from the democratic theory tradition, which approaches these political systems from a normative angle, with kleptocracy and authoritarianism as normatively undesirable, while democracy is endorsed. In this text, when normative words occur, such as should, it is not should with reference to normatively desirable or egalitarian norms: it is should relative to the effective exercise of power. If leaders want to maintain power in such and such a situation, they should do such and such. Where this difference in vocabulary is also evident is with respect to the word legitimacy, which in the political theory tradition suggests normative desirability, while in sociological theory, following Weber, it is a statement of fact concerning the beliefs of social actors.

Where this approach diverges from the classical tradition is that no positivistic scientific claims are made. Influenced by Kuhn (1970 and Kuhn 1977) and the later Wittgenstein (1967), theoretical frameworks are paradigms that constitute socially constructed ways of interpreting the world, according to specific criteria, as conceptual tools. Influenced by the pragmatism of Dewey (1998), the value of these conceptual tools is considered in practical terms: how useful these descriptions are relative to a given problematic – understanding political power. Following Bohr (1949), the claim is not that one description of the world trumps all others; rather, that these are competing descriptions each with their specific heuristic value. Rather, than either/or logic, this is both/and logic. The claim is not that this sociological paradigm replaces the more usual normative approaches. As suggested by Weber (2009) on the ethic of responsibility, this sociological theorization adds to (rather than competes with) normative democratic theory. As the approaches are different, the article methodologically brackets extended dialogue with normative democratic theory.

Kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy are explored as sociologically constructed ideal types (Weber 1949), which concern the exercise of political power, based upon either coercion or authority. In actual social life these ideal types rarely exist in their pure form. Each ideal type is a paradigmatic social construction of the consequences of the use of either coercion or authority as primary sources of political power. The linguistic terms used are not isomorphic with everyday speech, where, for instance, authoritarianism and kleptocracy are often used interchangeably. The objective is to distil the essence of certain forms of government based upon strategies of power. Relative to actual political systems, the result are scales between the three ideal types. For instance, many societies that are commonly referred to as kleptocratic (e.g., Russia under Yeltsin) are also on a scale with authoritarianism and, to a lesser extent, scalar with democracy. Actual political systems change over time, sometimes they become unstable with increasing tendencies towards other ideal types. Recently, some actual democracies (e.g., USA, Brazil, Turkey, Hungary and Israel) are, or were, challenged by authoritarian leadership styles (e.g., Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Orban and Netanyahu), with the consequences that these systems move down the scale (away from) the ideal type of democratic power and toward the ideal type of authoritarianism. Similarly, currently, Russia is moving from authoritarianism toward kleptocracy under Putin’s presidency and the same for Iran under the supreme leadership of Khamenei.