Autocracy
Autocracy
In political writing, “autocracy” suggests a government or polity in which a single governor has or claims unlimited power. The word “autocrat” has been used infrequently by social scientists, who have preferred to refer to the unlimited or unrestricted governor as a dictator or a despot. Although interest in the problems of autocracy has recently been revived by communism and Nazism, the theory of autocracy has received too little attention from contemporary writers. The features and the background of “totalitarian autocracy” have been described, but these descriptions have usually depended upon such undefined and imprecise concepts as “unlimited or unrestricted power.’ “irresponsibility,” and “not subject to rules.”
An abstract concept. Autocracy is an abstract concept that corresponds to no past or present government. Its meaning depends upon a logical extension of certain governmental tendencies, and when this meaning is stated and explained, it should provide a standard to which all governments can be compared and ranked according to the degree of power possessed by their most powerful members. This ability to compare actual governments to the hypothetical concept of autocracy should help the student of politics understand the reasons why governments exhibit greater or lesser concentrations of power.
If we take “autocracy” to mean government dominated by a single governor, its definition depends upon a definition of government. Although there has never been agreement upon a definition of government, it appears acceptable to postulate that the function of governing implies the intentional affecting of human activity, and that all governors are able to affect some activities by the use, or threatened use, of physical coercion. When the autocrat is said to have “unlimited power,” it is implied that this is power to affect human activity, but not necessarily by any specific methods.
Power and authority. Although the word “power” has several different meanings, when we speak of the autocrat’s power we refer to his ability or potential to affect human activity, rather than to his actual effects upon it. An understanding of this potential depends upon an understanding of the two ways—to be called “control” and “influence”— in which one person can affect the activity of another. When a person influences another’s activity, he evokes a response that is freely performed; when he controls it, he acts so that the respondent has no alternative reaction.
Every governor is able to influence and able to control, and his total power is a combination of these two abilities—his ability to persuade, for example, combined with his ability to imprison. The power to control is greater than the power to influence, because it is more likely that an exercise of control will elicit the response that the governor desires. The likelihood of obtaining such responses is an index of the governor’s power. His ability to use physical coercion gives him power to control, and the use of coercion is in fact his principal method of control. The governor’s total power increases as more human activities and more human beings become subject to his coercive power, exercised either through law or arbitrarily and at random.
Writers on autocracy have not always distinguished the governor’s actual power from his authority or right to a certain amount of power. Dictionaries define an autocrat as “a governor with absolute power” or “a monarch ruling with unlimited authority,” but these definitions are incompatible. A man is an authority when other people believe he has a special ability to do what is correct; hence a governor’s authority depends upon the acceptance of his subjects. This dependence on their belief that he has a special ability to govern sets a limit to his actual power. The Russian tsar’s “unlimited right to govern” was based on, and thus limited by, the Russian people’s belief in his competence to rule in conformity with their conception of government. The possession of authority will add to the power of a relatively weak governor, but it will also hinder the indefinite increase of his power.
The extent of the autocrat’s power. The activities under the control of the autocrat are those of his subjects, and they can include not only overt bodily actions but beliefs, thoughts, and values as well. The degree of a governor’s power depends upon both the number and the importance of the activities he can control. The governor who is able to control basic beliefs and actions, such as those associated with love and religion, is more powerful than the governor who controls superficial activities, such as styles of clothing and modes of locomotion.
The unlimited power of the autocrat implies that he is independent of his fellow governors as well as of his subjects. Autocracies are absolute governments, that is, they are governments with complete power over their subjects. There are, however, other absolute governments consisting of a multiplicity of men all dependent for their power upon one another. An autocrat cannot allow anyone else to have any power whatever; he must depend on no one, and thus he must be able to dispense at any time with any of his subordinates. All absolute governments tend to develop toward autocracy, and the less the principal governor depends upon his subordinates, the more closely he approaches the status of an autocrat.
The autocrat’s methods. In order to obtain and maintain complete power over his subjects and governmental associates, the autocrat must follow a rather inflexible course of action. He cannot have the power to control every activity of every person unless he constantly exercises it; he can never rest without allowing his power to become circumscribed. His ability to control his subjects’ economic behavior, for example, can easily become restricted without continual use, because an extended period of unaffected production and distribution generates habits and expectations that become difficult or even impossible to control. Prolonged regularity in any aspect of his subjects’ lives is the principal impediment to the governor’s power over them. Such regularity provides the basis of what is called “constitutionalism.”
The autocrat must not only be in continuous action, but his actions must be both necessary and sufficient to bring about his subjects’ reactions. His power is exercised when his action is sufficient to evoke a certain response, but his power is not increased unless his action is also necessary for the response—that is, unless the response would not have occurred in its absence. When, for example, a governor forbids his subjects to embrace a religion that is repugnant to them, his only effect may be to reinforce the regularity of their lives. This reinforcement may then prevent his gaining the power to control them in other areas against their will.
If the autocrat is constantly to affect everyone in a way that admits of no alternative responses, he must act as arbitrarily as possible. The necessity for arbitrariness can be seen most clearly in his relationship with the few governmental associates whose minimum cooperation is indispensable to him. To maintain his undiluted power over them. he must never allow them to have any stable relationships among themselves or between them and any segment of the governed. To prevent such stabilization, he must make sure that none of them stands in a stable relationship to him, and he can accomplish this only by behaving toward all of them as arbitrarily as he can. For a single governor to monopolize power, he must constantly control everyone else in a completely unpredictable way. The autocrat is always in action, and no one can anticipate how he will act.
The circumstances of autocracy. The social circumstances required for the existence of autocracy can be inferred from the preceding account of the nature of the autocrat’s power and the techniques necessary to gain and hold it. The social circumstances underlying autocracy are those that prevent stability and regularity among the governed. These conditions first create the division between governors and governed that results in absolutism. The tendency of absolutism to develop into autocracy becomes more marked as social conditions become more disrupted; the less stability there is among the governed, the more instability there is likely to be among the governors. If the governors share a single idea of authority, for example, it will be more difficult for an autocrat to rise above them.
There are several basic causes of intense social irregularity and instability. A stable pattern of interactions, expectations, and recognized obligations is difficult to establish among a culturally heterogeneous population, and the difficulty increases with the size of the population. When life is a continuous struggle for food, a community of interests and values strong enough to check great governmental power is unlikely to develop. The chances for such a community are equally small when the people’s livelihood depends upon a few men who monopolize control of natural resources or employment. The ignorance and superstition that often accompany these conditions further impede communication among the governed and thus contribute to the social fragmentation.
A people that has stable beliefs about natural, supernatural, and human affairs possesses a barrier to excessive governmental power. The belief that the community is responsible to God or to its ancestors, for example, provides a standard for government and thus limits governmental power. The conscience of the chief or the king, normally a product of the beliefs of the whole society, creates a similar limitation. When people are dominated by a sense of fatalism anything is considered possible, and the governor is bound by no expectations of regularity and consistency; indeed, the opposite expectations may prevail.
Periods of economic and social disruption are conducive to the sense of insecurity that encourages increases in the government’s power to control. Revolution and warfare have always been favorable to the rise of absolutist governments and autocratic governors. It is no accident that the twentieth century—with its wars, delicate economic system, loss of faith in transcendent standards, and advanced organizational forms and techniques of coercion—has produced, in the leaders of its great totalitarian regimes, governors who have come very close to the abstract concept of the autocrat.
C. W. Cassinelli
[See alsoDictatorship; Power; Totalitarianism.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Cassinelli, C. W. 1966 Free Activities and Interpersonal Relations. The Hague: Nijhoff. ? For concepts of control, influence, power, authority, and governing, see especially Chapters 3, 4, and 5.
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