In the article author pays attention to the basie Polish definitions of authoritarianism and provides references to his own basie works in this field, which were published in Polish and several foreign languages. In reflection on contemporary political systems, author notes that in Europę of inereasing globalization nothing looks like revival of historical nineteenth-century or twentieth-century authoritarian and totalitarian states. Author is considering that that right-wing extremism has become the greatest threat to Western Europę. But the dam for them (rather unbreakable at the moment) are making nonextremistic leftand right, united in the name of memory of the twentieth century - century of destruction.
The article presents main theoretical approaches to the concepts of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, simultaneously confronting them with the assumptions and essence of democracy. The comparative method was used in the text allowed to show the most significant differences between authoritarianism, totalitarianism and democracy. Highlighting the main differences between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is one of the results of the analysis. Absence of a homogenous ideology, lack of mobilization of society, acceptation the existence of the opposition, the possibility of multi-state leadership, tolerant or affirmative attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church - are significant in the case of authoritarianisms. For every conceptual category typology of the multiple and etymological significance is presented. The article shows the concepts for the definition of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in terms of such theorists like Hannah Arendt, Zbigniew Brzeziński, Juan Linz, Robert A. Dahl.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.