landscape. To elaborate a bit on these eight forms before concentrating on populist illiberal democracy:
Authoritarian absolutism, populist or technocratic, is a simple and familiar regime. Revolutionary dictatorships like the Jacobins, Fascists and Communists achieved power by manipulating populist social movements but tended to grow technocratic with age. Before the regime becomes entrenched and stable, authoritarian revolutionaries may attempt to mobilize popular support and cater to some populist passions for revenge retribution and violence. Military coups imposed authoritarian absolutist technocracies to replace populist democracies numerous times in Latin America and most recently in Thailand and Egypt.
| Populist | Technocratic | |
| Liberal Democracy | Democratically elected governments that function within limits set by liberal institutions to implement populist policies. For example, Greek governments, which accumulated foreign debt to finance party patronage before 2008. | The post-Second World War liberal democratic model. For example, the British and French states with their professional civil services. |
| Authoritarian Absolutism | Revolutionary dictatorships based on popular mobilization. Typically, in their early stages, for example, the Jacobins. | Bureaucratic dictatorships; for example, Napoleon’s Empire and late-Communist bureaucratic socialism. |
| Liberal Authoritarianism | When liberal institutions are backed by the nobility or rising bourgeoisie, the monarch or dictator may adopt populist policies to ally with commoners against them; for example, in Wilhelmine Germany. Authoritarian liberal governments can generate populist protest from below; for example, in late Habsburg Austro-Hungary. | Authoritarian technocratic states limited by liberal independent institutions. For example, Habsburg Austro-Hungarian post-1848 state and contemporary Singapore. |
| Absolutist (Illiberal) Democracy | Populist democratically elected governments without liberal institutional constraints; for example, classic Greek and Roman democracies. | Democratically elected governments, unchecked by liberal institutions and led by technocrats; for example, the post-totalitarian democracies in Central Europe during 1990–2010. |
The liberal or Whig tradition traces its origins back to Magna Carta in the Middle Ages. It was theorized by Montesquieu, and put into practice by the founders of the United States in the eighteenth century. Liberalism was developed as a check on absolutism. Initially, this absolutism was monarchic. But liberal independent institutions limit and check any government, democratic, populist, or technocratic. Liberalism is particularly useful in checking the self-destructive aspects of populism. For example, the introduction of an independent Central Bank was an expansion of liberalism to check inflationary populist policies that democratic governments indulged in with abandon as late as the 1970s.
Liberal authoritarian governments are not elected and accountable. Political participation remains within prescribed local or sectoral bounds. Yet, the government is constrained by traditions and laws enforced by an independent judiciary. The press, religion, and civil society may be free and independent and check the power of the state. Liberal authoritarian regimes can be populist or technocratic, and are sometimes both, on different social and political levels: Since authoritarian rulers do not need to win elections, they can implement technocratic unpopular policies, for example fight populist racism and painfully restructure and modernize the economy. But since the subjects cannot affect policies and political parties cannot have real political power, they can express extreme populist political passions without having to worry about their potentially self-destructive effects.
Populist politics can express protest against authoritarian technocracy. Liberal authoritarianism can result in political bifurcation between powerful technocratic elite and populist powerless populace. For example, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least since 1848, was liberal and authoritarian. The liberal elite respected the rule of law, protected minorities, and encouraged political and social integration in a multi-ethnic empire, economic modernization, and social mobility. At the same time, the disenfranchised multitude was free to harbor and express ethnic passions and rage without the risk of suffering political consequences, at least until the First World War and the rise of populist absolute democracies from the ashes of the empire, followed by populist absolute authoritarian regimes (with the exception of Czechoslovakia, which remained democratic, multi-national and quite liberal). Singapore is a contemporary technocratic liberal authoritarian state. Like Austro-Hungary it is a multi-ethnic society where a liberal technocratic elite suppresses both populism and democracy while respecting the rule of law (Rajah 2012). To different extents, Asian “tigers” like South Korea and Taiwan were also authoritarian liberal technocracies, though they had different degrees of liberalism and have moved by different degrees toward democracy. These countries became prosperous because they had competent technocratic elites that managed liberal institutions, not because they were authoritarian.
Democratic absolutism (in other words illiberal democracy) is the topic of this book. In the absence of robust liberal institutions, this is a ‘winner takes all’ democratic majoritarian political system, where the decisions of the majority or of a decisive significant minority are not balanced or checked by liberal institutions. A representative majority is not encumbered by tradition and law, and can suppress minorities unprotected by rights. The popular assembly or representative body can continuously change the law, case by case, to fit its momentary interests or passions. Absolute democracy can transition smoothly to authoritarianism in the absence of liberal institutions to slow or stop the slide. A temporary majority can change the rules of democratic elections to impose the perpetual rule of a minority. One of the reasons for majorities to respect minority rights is the prospect of becoming a minority in the future. If the majority expects to be permanent, it loses a reason for self-constraint. As Huey Long put it: “There is no dictatorship in Louisiana. There is a perfect democracy there, and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship” (quoted in Signer 2009, 120). The modern twist on this old, old, story is a new type of transition, from populist liberal democracy, gradually through illiberal democracy, to the old authoritarian destination.
Before the emergence of the liberal-democratic synthesis, all democracies were absolutist. Classical absolutist democracies had elaborate election systems, including random choice by lottery, and governing bodies to check the powers of individuals, but no liberal institutions to check the powers of majorities and of the state. Populist absolute democracy typically led through social conflict to authoritarianism. Liberalism developed in England to limit the powers of the monarchy. By the time democratization had progressed gradually in the long nineteenth century, the liberal institutions had already been entrenched and established in England and its former colonies for centuries. By contrast, the national democracies that succeeded the multi-national empires after the First World War had no such entrenched native liberal institutions, norms, and political habits. They had to try to establish liberalism and democracy at the same time, quickly. With the exception of Czechoslovakia and Finland, they failed at both.
Illiberal democracies can be technocratic or populist. Technocratic illiberal democracies can enact rationalizing reforms quickly without the constraints of checks, balances, and active civil society. The post-Communist transplanting of liberal democracy appeared deceptively easy because it encountered no resistance, but it had no liberal social foundations either. Totalitarianism handed over a political blank slate because it had eliminated all political power centers that could have resisted reforms. Post-totalitarian states inherited the absence of rule of law, checks and balances, and an atomized, ineffective civil society (Tucker 2015). These illiberal properties facilitated radical, and painful