What is the appropriate balance between group authority and conformity vs. individual freedom and difference? There are two distinct but interdependent elements here: (i) social process: how we want the world to operate (group authority or individual freedom); and (ii) end-state: how we’d like the world to turn out (conformity or difference). These two elements are intertwined. If my heart yearns for conformity and consensus, I must allow the authority (coercion, constraint) needed to achieve this. If I cannot abide imposing such restrictions on individual freedom, I must be willing to tolerate the diversity (racial, moral, political) this is bound to produce…. At its core, then, authoritarianism is usefully conceived as “difference-ism.”
1. Authoritarians want to minimize difference
Authoritarians look out at society and want to minimize difference in all its forms: racial, moral, political. They seek to establish and defend certain institutions, policies, customs and norms, all of which have the effect of reducing the diversity of people, beliefs and behaviours with which we are confronted.
If we switch our perspective from end-state to social process, we can understand authoritarianism as extreme “groupiness.” The groupiness and difference-ism go hand in hand and are mutually reinforcing. The comforting oneness and sameness that authoritarians seek are attributes of the collective rather than the individual.
They cannot be achieved without a shared concept of the boundaries of that collective (who is “us”)—typically rooted in some legend or lore about what and how “we” are—and of the authorities, rules, customs and norms by which we exert collective control over other people’s behaviour.
In the end, authoritarians are relentlessly sociotropic boundary maintainers, norm enforcers and cheerleaders for authority whose classic stances all concern themselves with securing and defending those boundaries, norms and authorities. Often the collective will be demarcated based simply on some concept of shared race/ethnicity/nationality. But even there, a great deal of authoritarians’ energy will be invested in distinguishing, glorifying and privileging “us,” while excluding, disparaging and discriminating against “them.”
Beyond simple racial order, authoritarians concern themselves obsessively with what I call “normative order.”
In diverse and complex multicultural societies, the things that make us an “us”—that make us one and the same—are common authority and shared values. Having institutions and leaders we respect and revere, and consensus on core beliefs and values, is a large part of how we all understand “us” and derive a sense of identity, meaning and belonging. For the “groupiest” among us, this is an even more important part of understanding oneself, making sense of the world and feeling safe and valued within it.
Perceived threats to this normative order are then critical catalysts that activate otherwise latent authoritarian predispositions, and increase their expression in intolerant attitudes and behaviours. I call this “the authoritarian dynamic” and it has been my central contribution to our understanding of intolerance. Across decades of research, I’ve found that expressions of intolerance are principally a function of the interaction between one’s predisposition to authoritarianism and conditions of “normative threat.”
So, authoritarians express their intolerance to a greater degree under conditions of normative threat, and in reassuring conditions might hardly be distinguishable from anyone else. Likewise, societies can experience “sudden” flare-ups of racism and intolerance that seem to “come out of nowhere,” when the (always present but normally latent) predispositions of the populace are activated by threatening societal conditions. And this is where we are right now.
2. So, what makes someone authoritarian?
Studies of identical twins reared together and apart (the “gold standard” for separating the influence of nature and of nurture) indicate authoritarianism is about 50 per cent heritable. (This does not mean the rest is socialization—there is much unexplained variance.)
Thus we all come into the world pre-disposed: wishing (with varying intensity) for oneness and sameness or freedom and difference. From there, our environments and experiences modify us mostly at the margins, and influence the way we express our predispositions under varying conditions.
There appear to be two critical determinants of author-itarianism. The first is lack of “openness to experience” (one of the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions, itself substantially heritable). The second is best described as cognitive incapacity.
Lack of openness, and cognitive incapacity predispose one to authoritarianism by reducing one’s willingness and ability, respectively, to deal with complexity. People lacking openness to experience dislike variety, novelty, diversity and complexity, and are averse to the unconventional and unfamiliar. Those with cognitive limitations will naturally likewise prefer simplicity and be ill-equipped for complexity.
It’s easy to imagine such characters struggling mightily with the cacophony of modern liberal democracy: frequent elections at multiple levels of government, all of them hotly contested; bitter partisan conflict and disagreement; searing media critiques of the authorities and endless political scandals; citizen protests and rowdy dissent; a variegated, polyglot populace of mixed morals and lifestyles, from every corner of the earth, each day all contending anew for status, advantage and improvement.
A more congenial system for authoritarians is one where leaders are installed by decree and rarely overturned; their decisions are never scrutinized or challenged; issues are resolved in backrooms with no debate; citizens obey the rules without question; society is conventional and familiar; life is orderly and predictable; and everyone knows (and stays in) their place.
This brings us back to the issue most critical to understanding our current moment, and finding a just and peaceful way through it: the impact of “threats to the normative order.” The vibrant society and polity sketched out above—which many of us don’t just tolerate but actually celebrate—is a perfect storm of normative threat for the authoritarians in our midst. And there are very many of them.
I generally find about a third of the populace is predisposed to authoritarianism, right across liberal democracy. This is according to a “child-rearing values” measure: a “bare bones” measure of authoritarian predisposition rather than authoritarian attitudes. The results here depend simply on asking respondents: “Which is more important for a child to have? Independence or respect for elders? Obedience or self-reliance? Consideration for others or good behaviour? Curiosity or good manners?”
This measure clearly reflects what I described as the core of authoritarianism: our conception of the appropriate balance between group authority and conformity vs. individual freedom and difference. And it does so not by referring directly to political issues but by invoking our first and foundational model of individual submission to group authority: the relationship between parent and child.
This child-rearing values measure also has the virtue of not confusing authoritarianism with conservatism. This confusion has hindered both theoretical and practical progress, causing many to misunderstand the true nature of the beast and driving away potential conservative allies, who feel wrongly maligned and undervalued.
There are two things often called “conservative” that we can readily distinguish from authoritarianism. The first is “laissez faire conservatism,” an enduring preference for free markets and limited government vs. government intervention and redistribution. In decades of cross-national research, I’ve rarely seen anything but a small negative relationship between authoritarianism and laissez faire conservatism. Those who object to government intervention in economic matters are inclined to reject interference in all affairs of the individual, including their moral choices, political beliefs and activities.
Second, authoritarianism is only weakly related to “status quo conservatism,” a deep-seated aversion to change, and preference for social stability. Authoritarianism is primarily an aversion to difference across space (diversity, complexity) while status quo conservatism is primarily an aversion to difference over time (change).
Thus the two dispositions share some general distaste for difference. Slowing the rate of social change does tend to reduce the variety and complexity of things we will encounter. Likewise, limiting the diversity of people, beliefs and behaviours will generally impede the pace of social change. Thus, the concerns and preferences of these two characters might often coincide (hence their modest relationship).
But, the two characters still differ in whether they find diversity or change more objectionable. And at momentous turning points, such as now, that distinction is absolutely critical. Why? Because authoritarians can embrace massive social change and blithely overthrow established authorities and institutions if these seem no longer to provide the normative order they crave… especially if someone charismatic is promising greater oneness and sameness just the other end of the “shining path.”
In contrast, status quo conservatives will definitely not be on board for this “authoritarian revolution.” In this way, true conservatives can be a liberal democracy’s strongest bulwark against the dangers posed by intolerant social movements at moments just like this. The contemporary “left” would be well advised to recognize these crucial distinctions and stop alienating potential allies.
3. And what about those concepts of “left” and ”right”? Are they just empty labels?
For our purposes, the critical thing to note is that “left/right” is not a fundamental and enduring dimension of human psychology. For want of a more elegant way to express this, the fact that certain stances “go together” in contemporary politics does not mean they go together in humans. And if they don’t necessarily (i.e., naturally) go together in humans, then the things from which the “left” and the “right” have traditionally been constituted can always be reassembled. There is reason to suspect some such reassembly is underway, at least across Western liberal democracies…
One’s self-designation as “left-wing” or “right-wing” is almost completely unrelated to whether one is predisposed to authoritarianism (according to that unobtrusive child-rearing values measure). Authoritarians are slightly more inclined to call themselves “right-wing” than “left-wing” (and non-authoritarians the reverse), but just barely.
The apparent independence of authoritarianism from laissez faire conservatism, from status quo conservatism, and from the “left/right” spectrum (as commonly understood) means virtually everything is “up for grabs” in any realign-ment to come.
There is certainly scope for things to line up differently. As intimated earlier, some traditional policy alignments can be seen as illogical if not unnatural, such as the incongruent conservative/right-wing stance of being strictly ‘hands-off’ regarding the economy but keen for government to intrude into people’s moral choices.
Likewise on the left, where the zeal for economic “levelling” sometimes has a real “oneness and sameness” vibe, and under the right conditions might sit comfortably alongside demands for racial homogeneity, political repression, moral constraints, and punitiveness toward anyone who “steps out of line.”
The realignment I foresee is one in which freedom/constraint replaces equality/inequality as the primary dimension along which parties and voters are arrayed. Simply put, a sizeable portion of the electorate seems to want government involved not merely in redistributing wealth and providing social services but also in coercing and controlling individuals to enforce oneness and sameness, in all domains: racial, moral and political….
Authoritarians are actually remarkably malleable and can ‘turn on a dime’. If one side of politics is making them feel perpetually panicked, and the other is conveying a reassuring message of oneness and sameness—united against a common foe—some portion of those authoritarians might comfortably transfer their devotion to the new normative order.
This is more likely if effective appeals can be made to sacred values that we share. If one doesn’t dig too deeply, most of us agree on most things at the surface level… this is often all that’s required for the appearance of unity. We really must stop trying to save people’s ‘souls’ in politics and convert everyone to our own ‘faith’. I cannot emphasize this enough.
A large portion of the “progressive” side of politics is always seeking to either win over or triumph over the out-partisans—to convert them to our own faith, or failing that, to condemn and exclude them forever. It is critical that progressives become far more effective at expressing our own objectives in the language and symbols of our opponents: strength, dignity, honour and respect. This is all about ‘hitting the right notes’ for people whose entire being resonates to a very different tune than our own.
So, I come back to the central observation with which I began: liberal democracy has now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate it. None of the momentous challenges we now confront can be overcome until we address this…. In every domain of life—social, political and economic—people actually need less information, fewer choices, and greater support to make decisions that are in their interest.
Some people have a deep need for oneness and sameness. They can no more change this than we can change our own love of diversity and complexity. Forcing their exposure to more diversity than they’re innately equipped to handle actually pushes them not to the limits of their tolerance but to their intolerant extremes.
A true democracy ought to be able to accommodate this. We have to provide authoritarians the assistance they require to live in peace and comfort with the rest of us. This will likely require significant redesign of social and political processes to reduce the cacophony of modern liberal democracy.
Society could certainly benefit from a greater abundance of unifying institutions and rituals. And we don’t need to be always loudly celebrating multiculturalism and amplifying complexity and diversity. This will surely sound like a step backward. But liberal democracy is most secure, and tolerance maximized, when we design systems to accommodate how people actually are. And some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy.
4. A different way of being human
We must recognize that authoritarians are not inherently evil—it’s just a different way of being human. We must tolerate diversity of personalities just like we tolerate all other kinds of difference. We cannot enemify or exclude a third of the population. At least, we can’t do these things while claiming to be a democracy. We can’t do these things and be a well-functioning society either. Human communities require some folks that seek out novelty, diversity and complexity, and others who will monitor and guard against strange and foreign and unfamiliar things. It’s the balance between us that strengthens the whole.
It is worth remembering that no outcome can be guaranteed by freedom, including freedom. If people are free to choose, they’re free to choose unfreedom. The needs and preferences of authoritarians are of equal weight to our own and must be attended to and appropriately accommodated. They’re owed this much just as citizens in a democracy, but it’s also in our own interests to help them live in peace with everyone else.
A great deal of heat is taken out of political debates if we understand a lot of what we call racism is actually difference-ism. We cannot simply shut down these discussions and refuse to give diverse viewpoints a proper hearing. It only drives people underground or to extremes. We must allow people to engage in honest discussions about race and immigration in a multicultural society.
We urgently need open discussion in mainstream political processes of how to do this well; of the rate at which, and means by which, immigrants from very different cultures can be effectively integrated into society; of where and when this could most usefully and effectively happen; and especially of what kinds of resources and supports it will require to do it well (the answer is: significantly more).
We must keep in mind that authoritarians are better able to tolerate racial and ethnic diversity if we increase, by whatever means possible, the appearance and feeling of oneness and sameness. This might be merely visual and superficial. It might require something more significant such as language proficiency. But somehow it must happen.
Well-supported and well-resourced local efforts to integrate and assimilate immigrants, especially if this involves the acquisition of native language proficiency, are critical. This is a very hard pill for many of us on the “progressive” side of politics to swallow, and feels uncomfortably like “blaming the victim”—making them responsible for ameliorating someone else’s character defects. But it nevertheless remains the strategy most likely to enhance tolerance and minimize harm, increasing peace and well-being overall.
If such strategies set in motion more contact, more positive interactions and relationships and rising levels of interpersonal and intercommunal trust, the beneficial effects should be widespread and durable.
One of the most important things a society can do to enhance tolerance is to increase economic equality, which is a kind of oneness and sameness we should all be able to get behind. Apart from anything else, inequality undermines the possibility for shared experiences and shared lives. Greater economic equality—particularly security of income and healthcare—is then a critical support to domestic peace and tolerance.
Most of all, we need to reduce our enemies list. We cannot set purity tests and simply reject and exclude all who fail them with even the merest taint of something untoward. We should not write off true conservatives: they are, after all, our bulwarks against authoritarian revolution. But we can’t write off authoritarians either. Authoritarians are simple-minded avoiders of complexity more than closed-minded avoiders of change.
In exactly these kinds of circumstances, authoritarians can embrace massive societal change that brings us greater oneness and sameness (including economic equality). They are very malleable, for better or worse—we need to make that work for the better. We must exploit the communal experience of suffering and our shared vulnerability in this awful moment to completely alter the boundaries of “us,” and forge a common identity that brings us the kind of meaning and belonging that end-stage capitalism and our badly frayed social contract have resoundingly failed to deliver.
Karen Stenner is a political psychologist and behavioural economist and the author of The Authoritarian Dynamic (Cambridge University Press, 2005). This is an excerpt from “Authoritarianism” originally published by HOPE Not Hate, January 2020.
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