Authoritarian governments are often based on raw power sustained by fear of punishment and hope of reward. This text identifies common characteristics of such r

5. Actors and contexts

Muhammad bin Salman Al-Saud and Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the respective princely strongmen of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have torn up the old rules. They ha

Originally a chapter in the "Handbook of Political Science," this analysis develops the fundamental destinction between totalitarian and authoritarian systems.

For centuries, oligarchs were viewed as empowered by wealth, an idea muddled by elite theory early in the twentieth century. The common thread for oligarchs acr