Authoritarianism describes a political system in which power is concentrated in a leader or small group without democratic accountability, and in which political opposition is suppressed. It is a broader and less specific concept than totalitarianism: all totalitarian regimes are authoritarian, but not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian.
The distinction from totalitarianism
Juan Linz’s influential distinction (1975) identified authoritarianism as characterised by limited political pluralism, a lack of elaborate guiding ideology, the absence of extensive political mobilisation, and a leader who exercises power within loosely defined but predictable limits. Totalitarianism, by contrast, demands active ideological commitment, mass mobilisation, and the abolition of any private sphere.
Franco’s Spain after the mid-1940s is the classic example of authoritarian but not totalitarian rule: Franco suppressed opposition, maintained power without democratic accountability, and tolerated no political competition, but he did not attempt to transform Spanish society according to a revolutionary ideology. The Catholic Church retained significant autonomy; private life was largely left alone. This is why Paxton and Griffin agree that late Francoism was not fascist — the mobilising, transformative dimension had been dropped.
How to use it in an answer
The distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is analytically precise and marks essays that use it correctly. Describing Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, or Salazar’s Portugal as ‘totalitarian’ is an error that signals conceptual imprecision. These were authoritarian regimes. Distinguishing them from genuinely totalitarian states (Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR, Maoist China) demonstrates that you understand both concepts and can deploy them accurately.
Further reading: Totalitarianism · Fascism · Hannah Arendt
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