Political Regimes: Democratic and Authoritarian

Political regimes are broadly categorised as democratic or authoritarian. The democratic regimes hold regular, free and fair elections to elect their governments, whether that be led by a president or the leader of the parliament, a prime minister. In the parliamentary system, the head of state is either a hereditary constitutional monarch or an elected ceremonial president. The United States has a presidential system with the separation of powers between the three branches of government. The United Kingdom is a parliamentary monarchy - a combination of a constitutional monarchy, a democratic parliament, and responsible ministers. India is a parliamentary republic with an elected president, parliament and council of ministers. The authoritarian regimes are of many types - dynastic monarchy, one-party dictatorship, military dictatorship, theocratic supervisorship or elective autocracy. Saudi Arabia and most other Gulf states have a single family-run monarchical government. China and North Korea are examples of one-party dictatorships, with the latter combining dynastic and party dictatorships. Myanmar has a de jure military junta, while Pakistan has a de facto military-supervised parliamentary government. In Iran, a presidential government is under the supervision of Twelver Shia clerics, led by the Supreme Ayatollah. Russia and Turkey are examples of elected governments headed by strongmen who have eliminated all genuine opposition through exile, assassinations and imprisonments. 

There has been an observable trend of democratisation since the beginning of the 20th century, termed by Samuel Huntington as the three waves of democratisation, because of which most countries of the modern world have democratic systems. As the people of the world become more educated and travel around the world, their awareness of democratic values increases, and they begin to demand democratic rights for themselves. Sometimes, such demands are suppressed brutally, e.g., the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China. Sometimes, the local culture cannot sustain democratic values, e.g., Afghanistan, Syria or Egypt. Sometimes, democratic movements are used as tools of regime change to destabilise a country and install puppet regimes, e.g., colour revolutions, but they often bring calamity to the country, e.g., Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen.

Published as “Political Regimes: Democratic and Authoritarian”, VideshNeeti, 16 May 2024, 1 (3):4.