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What is "authoritarian"

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authoritarian
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
authoritarian
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an authoritarian regime (=with very strong control)
▪ The post-war authoritarian regimes of eastern Europe have been replaced by democratically elected governments.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
more
▪ A more authoritarian regime could have simply imprisoned the organizers.
▪ Oddly, her outlook was more authoritarian than her chief's.
■ NOUN
government
▪ What is clear is that current constitutional arrangements do suit an authoritarian government well.
▪ They damned the no-nonsense, authoritarian government, which peremptorily squashed even the smallest perceived threat to social peace.
regime
▪ There had been some authoritarian regimes that were also populist and had been sustained by votes not repressive force.
▪ A thorough comparison of authoritarian regimes.
▪ It may be easier for an authoritarian regime than for a democratic one to carry out economic restructuring.
▪ It connoted a rational, efficient method of organization-something to take the place of the arbitrary exercise of power by authoritarian regimes.
▪ The temptation simply to continue with presidential rule would be enormous and another authoritarian regime would be born.
▪ Citizens are not permitted to question the political institutions, procedures, or value allocations of an authoritarian regime.
▪ An alliance between workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie necessitates a bureaucratic authoritarian regime. 2.
▪ Totalitarian regimes, even more than authoritarian regimes, depend upon extensive coercion for their survival.
rule
▪ Both had been determined to overcome authoritarian rule from Addis Ababa and had worked closely together to achieve this end.
▪ It is a liberal city, home ground to Kim Dae Jung, a longtime leader of opponents of authoritarian rule.
▪ He held the post during Milosevic's authoritarian rule.
▪ It was a radical departure from the past, an interlude of democracy in an otherwise unbroken line of authoritarian rule.
▪ These transitions are likely to differ from recent western transitions from other types of authoritarian rule in a number of key respects.
▪ In either case, the end result was the emergence or a strong centralized state under authoritarian rule.
▪ That civil war has been the rationale for the authoritarian rule Suharto and the military have enforced over the decades.
state
▪ Even in more authoritarian states public opinion could be a real force.
▪ Britain is not yet an authoritarian state.
▪ As Reich puts it: The reactionary middle-class man perceives himself in the Fuhrer, in the authoritarian state.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ an extreme right-wing, authoritarian regime
▪ His management style has been criticized as authoritarian.
▪ Many people are now demanding a more democratic and less authoritarian form of government.
▪ Their father was authoritarian in the home, insisting on total obedience.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And my excessively tidy and authoritarian behaviour shows that I was striving to be the person the school wanted me to be.
▪ Citizens are not permitted to question the political institutions, procedures, or value allocations of an authoritarian regime.
▪ His real style, they believe, is authoritarian and his policies excessively sympathetic to the armed forces.
▪ It is also authoritarian and hierarchical.
▪ Once discredited in economic terms, authoritarian regimes tend to lose their grip.
▪ The concept of authoritarian population implies, for Jessop etal., a monolithic, relatively stable and widely supported form of government.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
authoritarian

authoritarian \authoritarian\ n. 1. 1 behaves like a tyrant.

Syn: dictator

authoritarian

authoritarian \authoritarian\ adj.

  1. characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty; -- of governments or rulers; as, an authoritarian regime

    Syn: autocratic, dictatorial, despotic, tyrannical

  2. 1 expecting unquestioning obedience: "he was imperious and dictatorial"; "the timid child of authoritarian parents"; "insufferably overbearing behavior toward the waiter"

    Syn: dictatorial, overbearing

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
authoritarian

1862, "favoring imposed order over freedom," from authority + -an. Compare authoritative, which originally had this meaning to itself. Noun in the sense of one advocating or practicing such governance is from 1859.

Wiktionary
authoritarian

a. 1 Of, or relating to, absolute obedience to an authority. 2 Characterised by a tyrannical obedience to an authority; dictatorial. 3 Tending to impose one's demands upon others as if one were an authority. n. 1 One who commands absolute obedience to his or her authority. 2 One who follows and is excessively obedient to authority.

WordNet
authoritarian

  1. adj. characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty; "an authoritarian regime"; "autocratic government"; "despotic rulers"; "a dictatorial rule that lasted for the duration of the war"; "a tyrannical government" [syn: autocratic, dictatorial, despotic, tyrannical]

  2. likened to a dictator in severity [syn: dictatorial]

  3. expecting unquestioning obedience; "he was imperious and dictatorial"; "the timid child of authoritarian parents"; "insufferably overbearing behavior toward the waiter" [syn: dictatorial, overbearing]

authoritarian

n. a person behaves in an tyrannical manner; "my boss is a dictator who makes everyone work overtime" [syn: dictator]

Usage examples of "authoritarian".

So Gingrich was an authoritarian who wanted to be obeyed because he supported a policy also supported by Teddy Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, and Stephen Breyer.

So instead of producing the authoritarian institutions that were the inevitable outcome of the ferocious power struggles and ideological confusions characteristic of social evolution on Earth, Jevlenese society developed as a kind of patronized anarchy, secure in the guarantee of unlimited goods and products indefinitely, and the total absence of threats.

Hitler became a strong, authoritarian leader and many of the German people accepted his control.

Authoritarian parents tend to produce dominated children who become Authoritarian parents.

Because they feel weak, authoritarian personalities believe it is important to have a powerful leader and to be part of a powerful group.

Maybe there are parts of an authoritarian personality inside all of us.

Lightning, like all authoritarian Judeo-Christian heresies, had its own share of this typically Occidental straight-line mystique, which was why even the Jews among them, like Zev Hirsch, accepted the symbol first suggested by Atlanta Hope: that most Euclidean of all religious emblems: the Cross.

Every homosexual is a latent heterosexual, every authoritarian cop is the shell over an anarchistic libido.

Furthermore, the logogram of any authoritarian society remains fairly inflexible as time passes, but everything else in the universe constantly changes.

The Illuminati, and all authoritarian types in general, dislike such ages so much that they try to prevent any records of their existence from reaching the general public.

Thus, even though it is the first stage chronologically, it is never linked with 1 in magic sense, because 1 signifies the erect penis, the male principle in isolation, and such authoritarian games as monotheism, monopoly, monogamy, and general monotony.

The synthesis of Hodge and Podge, and especially of biogram and logogram, in such cultures is indicated by the amazement of explorers from authoritarian societies when first encountering them.

Families, churches, lodges, clubs, and corporations are either more authoritarian than libertarian or more libertarian than authoritarian.

Over sandwiches, several participants discussed the oddity of working with countries like Pakistan--an authoritarian regime with a secret police force of significant size and vast latitude.

In all these cases the form of rule imposed from above was authoritarian, similar in kind to that found in many other parts of the world.