15 Examples of Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism and Democracy

There are numerous ways to government of nations. Depending on how many freedoms they guarantee to their citizens, how plural is the representativeness of the different ruling sectors and to what degree of subjection they have with respect to the rest of the government system, we can talk from democracy, authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

Although its limits are fuzzy and it is often not so simple to distinguish one from the other, we could define them as follows:

Examples of authoritarianism

1. The Mugabe government. This military regime, ruled with an iron fist by Robert Mugabe since 1987, a politician and hero of the independence of the country whose The personalist government has sentenced its country to severe economic conditions and the same government fraudulently supported for 30 years.
2. The trujillato. One of the most atrocious dictatorships in Latin America, which took place in the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961, the year in which finally its only leader, the military officer Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, was murdered. He was known as “El Chivo” and his excesses have been portrayed in literary works by authors such as Vargas Llosa or Junot Díaz.
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3. The Cuban Revolution. Fruit of the revolution socialist led by the military Fidel Castro against the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959), a regime calling itself the "Cuban Revolution" was established on the Caribbean island. Castro has ruled Cuba from 1959 to the present day and is accused of numerous executions, forced exiles and violations of the human rights.
4. Pinochetism. This is the name given to the military dictatorship that overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and ruled the country with a regime of terror until 1990. Its supreme leader was Augusto Pinochet, president of a military junta responsible for almost 30 thousand victims of political imprisonment and torture, almost 2300 executed and around 1200 disappeared.
5. Francoism. In 1936 a turbulent period in Spanish history began, known as the Civil War, when a conservative military leadership led by Francisco Franco gave a coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic and led to a social and military confrontation that would last three years and cost the lives of almost half a million people. From this conflict, Franco would emerge as the leader and caudillo of Spain, and thus he ruled until 1975.

Examples of totalitarianism

1. Maoist China. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949 by the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Tse Tung, after a civil war. And this totalitarian order, of intense intervention of the State in the lives of citizens and ordering of the whole society around communist ideology, is remains in force, although there have been changes in the leadership of the single party since the brutally repressed protests in 1989, which cost the lives of hundreds of people.
2. Nazi Germany. The best known example of contemporary totalitarianism, led by Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933, as it began the emergence of the so-called III Reich and later the beginning of the Second World War. This regime militarized almost the entire society, distinguished citizens by their race and their adherence to the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi party), the only party in existence, and resorted to enslavement and the genocide systematized of the "inferior races" as State policy.
3. Fascist Italy. Dictatorial in nature, the government of Benito Mussolini (known as the Duce) started in Italy in 1922 is an example of fascism characterized by nationalism, militarism and struggle against communism and liberalism. He employed semi-clandestine shock troops, the "black shirts", to intimidate and attack his political rivals, establishing through the "Fascist Revolution" his de facto government that lasted until 1945, when he was shot publicly.
4. Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a Cambodian guerrilla group that seized power in the country in 1975, after the overthrow of the military dictatorship that ruled it since 1970 and the Vietnam War. Led by the dictator Pol Pot, they established a Maoist model of state that sought to evacuate the cities and force the emergence of a radical agrarian model. They were the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide, in which more than a million people lost their lives during his four years of rule.
5. Chavista Venezuela. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) was the product of the anti-colonialist, nationalist government, militarist and popular Hugo Chávez, who attempted a failed coup against oil democracy in 1992. During the years of Chávez's government, which were particularly difficult for Venezuelan society, there was a radical polarization that led to a attempted coup and massive popular protests, to which the PSUV responded by strengthening its control of all state institutions, modifying the Constitution to allow infinite reelection, and exercising a seizure of public powers that yielded not a few suspicions about the 2013 election of his successor, Nicolás Maduro, after Chávez died of cancer that same year.

Examples of democracy

1. Nordic Wellness Model. Known for their stability and high standard of living, the democratic republics of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland are often offered as examples of high-investment, functional democracies. Social.
2. American democracy. Far from being an ideal model, it is a two-party democratic system (Democrats vs. republicans) with deep capitalist and liberal roots, which operates on the consumption sustained and to the economic push as a result of its numerous international warlike interventions.
3. European democracies. United around a project of economic coexistence, the nations of the European Union are all democratic, since elect their authorities through free elections, with great partisan plurality and audit of the rest of the powers public.
4. Latin American democracies. Imperfect, reeling, still carrying the difficulties of the failed post-independence states and the numerous dictatorships of the Cold War, the Latin American democracies struggle to constitute modern and more or less plural states, amid great inequalities and recurring trends autocratic.
5. Canada. While its form of government is a federal parliamentary monarchy, it is one with strong democratic traditions, breadth of parties and simple and direct elections for the members of the House of Commons that make up the parliament.

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