1991/10/01 by Paul C. Sondrol · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Authoritarianism #Brazilian cultural history and politics #Democracy #Dictatorship #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #Economic history #Foreign policy #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #History #Humanities #Ideology #Law #Nazism #Philosophy #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1017/s0022216x00015868
openalex publication_date 1991/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Personal dictators remain a key feature of contemporary regimes termed ‘authoritarian’ or ‘totalitarian’, particularly in their early consolidating phases. But there is still disagreement over the seemingly ideological, polemical and indiscriminate use of the term totalitarian dictatorship as an analytic concept and tool to guide foreign policy formulation. Jeane Kirkpatrick elevated the taxonomy to a vociferous level of debate with a 1979 Commentary article. Entitled ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards’, the work raised anew semantic hairsplitting concerning the qualitative differences between all previous tyrannies and those bearing organisational similarities with the Nazi, Fascist or Stalinist prototypes.