POL 101W Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Absolute Monarchy, Electoral Fraud, Benito Mussolini
6 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
In historical records, democracy either did not exist or was viewed as undesirable. At least 75 states can be considered to have non democratic governments. People do not have a voice or control their governments in an effective way. The only reason people have power is because we consent to it. In non-democratic regimes, consent is broken at a broad level. Authoritarian regime: non-democratic governing systems that feature absolute rule over the population: people are prevented from choosing their government and influencing its decisions. Hybrid regimes: governing systems that are a mixture of democratic and non-democratic rule: hybrid governments typically gain and keep power through electoral fraud, corruption and legal manoeuvres. The principle difference between democracies and non-democracies is that only in the former can citizens change their government through a vote in a regularly scheduled election. In non-democratic systems, only organizations strongly aligned with the regime are allowed to operate.
