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Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology
The Authoritarian Dynamic
What are the root causes of intolerance? This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory of what determines intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: individuals' innate psychological predispositions to intolerance ("authoritarianism") interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, particularly resonant in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include, most critically, great dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in political leaders. Using purpose-built experimental manipulations, cross-national survey data and in-depth personal interviews with extreme authoritarians and libertarians, the book shows that this simple model provides the most complete account of political conflict across the ostensibly distinct domains of race and immigration, civil liberties, morality, crime and punishment, and of when and why those battles will be most heated.
371 pages, Paperback
First published July 25, 2005
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About the author
Karen Stenner
2 books15 followersKaren Stenner is a political scientist specializing in political psychology. Stenner has studied the political activation of authoritarian personality types, and how that activation explains the contemporary success of some authoritarian political figures as well as enduring conflicts between some individuals and the broad tolerance that characterizes liberal democracy.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 22, 2016
Karen Stenner's proposition of an "authoritarian dynamic" inherent in human society has complicated ramifications but rests on a simple idea: politics is not an expression of political ideas. Rather, it is an expression of personality, and context, and fears.
This isn't revolutionary, of course, and if the complexities are not taken into account it can feel like this book is simply stating the obvious. At it's core: there are certain people, across cultures and across times, that have an authoritarian predisposition (measured, here, but their attitudes towards child-rearing and their selection of preferred words). These people, in certain contexts, are indistinguishable from the rest of the population. They do not align neatly with any particular political party. However, in the case of "normative threat" - particularly in cases when there is the sense of diversity of belief or poor leaders in command - their authoritarianism becomes activated and manifests as racial, political, and moral intolerance. It was written in 2005 and amidst the current American elections it feels very prescient.
I found two things to be really great about this book. The first was its intense care about terminology (that sounds *thrilling* I know). The rhetoric of American politics - especially on the popular level - is so messy, and words like "conservative," "fundamentalist," and "authoritarian" are thrown around without definition, and as if they mean the same thing. Stenner is very careful about this, and a large chunk of her book sets out to prove that authoritarianism is its own thing, and only aligns with terms like "conservative" is ambivalent, complex ways. There's a clarity and care for specificity that I found really refreshing.
Her final conclusions are also rather fascinating: she posits the idea that this "authoritarian dynamic" she's proposed has a rather sobering implication. First, authoritarianism is not taught, and cannot really be untaught. If you expose an authoritarian to different cultures, and different beliefs, it doesn't open his/her mind to different views. It instigates fear, and a sense of danger, and is likely to make that person more intolerant. On a more macro-scale: democracy imposed upon countries with large degrees of difference - whether from the remnant of imperialism, artificially-imposed borders, or something - will likely create an atmosphere of chaos, distrust, and rampant intolerance. As Stenner states, "democracy does not produce community, it requires community."
The book is unfortunately a big jargon-y, and can be rough going for people without experience in social sciences and data analysis (I am included in this camp). I am not qualified to say whether her experiments are set up in a particularly solid way, but I found them to be, on the whole, fairly convincing. I think it would be fairly easy to pick apart details in the experiments and surveys Stenner discusses, but her results on the whole are clear enough to be pretty persuasive.
There was discussion throughout of a "companion piece" that discussed how this authoritarian dynamic has played out in recent history, but I haven't been able to find it or determine if Stenner ever actually wrote it? I hope she did, because this is such an interesting and important idea, and I think a book like that would have a better chance of reaching a wider audience.
This isn't revolutionary, of course, and if the complexities are not taken into account it can feel like this book is simply stating the obvious. At it's core: there are certain people, across cultures and across times, that have an authoritarian predisposition (measured, here, but their attitudes towards child-rearing and their selection of preferred words). These people, in certain contexts, are indistinguishable from the rest of the population. They do not align neatly with any particular political party. However, in the case of "normative threat" - particularly in cases when there is the sense of diversity of belief or poor leaders in command - their authoritarianism becomes activated and manifests as racial, political, and moral intolerance. It was written in 2005 and amidst the current American elections it feels very prescient.
I found two things to be really great about this book. The first was its intense care about terminology (that sounds *thrilling* I know). The rhetoric of American politics - especially on the popular level - is so messy, and words like "conservative," "fundamentalist," and "authoritarian" are thrown around without definition, and as if they mean the same thing. Stenner is very careful about this, and a large chunk of her book sets out to prove that authoritarianism is its own thing, and only aligns with terms like "conservative" is ambivalent, complex ways. There's a clarity and care for specificity that I found really refreshing.
Her final conclusions are also rather fascinating: she posits the idea that this "authoritarian dynamic" she's proposed has a rather sobering implication. First, authoritarianism is not taught, and cannot really be untaught. If you expose an authoritarian to different cultures, and different beliefs, it doesn't open his/her mind to different views. It instigates fear, and a sense of danger, and is likely to make that person more intolerant. On a more macro-scale: democracy imposed upon countries with large degrees of difference - whether from the remnant of imperialism, artificially-imposed borders, or something - will likely create an atmosphere of chaos, distrust, and rampant intolerance. As Stenner states, "democracy does not produce community, it requires community."
The book is unfortunately a big jargon-y, and can be rough going for people without experience in social sciences and data analysis (I am included in this camp). I am not qualified to say whether her experiments are set up in a particularly solid way, but I found them to be, on the whole, fairly convincing. I think it would be fairly easy to pick apart details in the experiments and surveys Stenner discusses, but her results on the whole are clear enough to be pretty persuasive.
There was discussion throughout of a "companion piece" that discussed how this authoritarian dynamic has played out in recent history, but I haven't been able to find it or determine if Stenner ever actually wrote it? I hope she did, because this is such an interesting and important idea, and I think a book like that would have a better chance of reaching a wider audience.
November 25, 2020
Stenner's Authoritarian Dynamic is simple, but effective: there is some innate quality in certain people that can be triggered by a perceived threat, generally involving growing diversity in their environment, which creates the desire for uniformity. And furthermore, the desire for a government to enforce this uniformity.
Stenner then proves this around 509 times through this book which, while interesting to read, causes one to feel a little dim on the future of our democracy. The final thought she musters is that there is a very large segment of the population who can't deal with difference of opinion in society and that instead of authoritarianism being a feature of the past, it's set to be a large part of our future.
She wrote that in 2005, so it would appear she knows what she's talking about.
Stenner then proves this around 509 times through this book which, while interesting to read, causes one to feel a little dim on the future of our democracy. The final thought she musters is that there is a very large segment of the population who can't deal with difference of opinion in society and that instead of authoritarianism being a feature of the past, it's set to be a large part of our future.
She wrote that in 2005, so it would appear she knows what she's talking about.
January 20, 2021
Full review here: https://badsocialscienceanalysis.com/2021/01/20/the-atomised-individual-dynamic/ Summary of critique given below.
Stenner identifies the fundamental psychological driver behind authoritarianism as a psychological need for oneness and sameness, but she argues the predisposition is content neutral beyond this point: authoritarianism merely means that “whatever it is that we stand for, we must all stand for it” (p.142). Symmetrically, libertarianism is merely the fundamental desire for “freedom and difference” (p.81), and it is that per se that libertarians desire. But it is obvious in neither case why these would be fundamental psychological needs in the first instance—leaving aside briefly libertarians’ need for freedom, there is no obvious reason why anyone would have a need specifically for oneness and sameness, nor for difference. Perhaps appropriately given its title, The Authoritarian Dynamic provides no account of why libertarians would desire diversity other than that they are “excited and engaged” (p.217) by difference. For authoritarianism, however, we see a slightly more fleshed-out picture. Modern liberal democracy engenders a “diversity of lifestyles and beliefs… [which] may be frightening, overwhelming, or isolating for many individuals, who may wish to divest themselves of the fear, stress, or loneliness of their own freedom, and/or to avoid the diverse and unpredictable consequences of the freedom of others” (p.143). This effect is compounded by authoritarians’ tendency to score lower on cognitive tests: in a sense, the diversity of modernity is more cognitive load than they can handle.
There is a strangeness to this case, however, compounded by her specific operationalisation of authoritarianism and her definition of normative threat. In one operationalisation, authoritarianism was measured by choosing the following as important (against the alternative in brackets) on a list of childrearing qualities :
• “that a child obeys his parents” (“that he is responsible for his own actions”)
• “that he has good manners” (“that he has good sense and sound judgment”)
• “that he is neat and clean” (“that he is interested in how and why things happen”)
• “that he has respect for his elders” (“that he thinks for himself”)
• “that he follows the rules” (“that he follows his own conscience”)
Recall that Stenner defines authoritarianism as a fundamental preference for oneness and sameness, but a cursory glance over these items appears to bear minimal resemblance, if any, to oneness and sameness so much as to a tendency towards “interdependence” instead of “independence”, to use Markus and Kitayama’s terminology (alternately, towards “collectivism” instead of “individualism”). Stenner may well argue that to define authoritarianism in terms of preference for collectivist over individualist childrearing values is to make our operationalisation “tautological with the dependent variables it is designed to explain” (p.21), as she does for the Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, but there are two responses to this. The first is that this does not address the substantial independence of her operationalisation and any measure of “oneness and sameness”. But the second relates to what Stenner claims to measure, namely the desire for “oneness and sameness” at the level of the polity. In some meaningful sense, a necessary condition for a group’s being a community is that it be defined by a “oneness and sameness” about something: a religious community cannot be a religious community without a substantially shared religious outlook, a town community cannot be a town community without a substantially shared set of social norms, and so on. It is intuitive that individuals who value interdependent childrearing values would value strong collectivism at the local level (i.e. for their immediate community); it is not obvious that they would generalise this to the level of the polity as a whole. Stenner’s analysis of how childrearing values predict authoritarian attitudes, then, would show that individuals who are more interdependent at the local level are also more interdependent at the political level—i.e., individuals tend to see both their local environs and their polities as communities in the sense of “united under one and the same normative framework”, or they tend to see neither as communities in this sense. That her measure of authoritarianism appears to be measuring the desire to have one’s polity be a community becomes doubly apparent when one remembers that Stenner’s definition of normative threat included not only divergence of public opinion, which is a per se threat to oneness and sameness, but also questionable authorities, which are not a per se threat to oneness and sameness but are a per se threat to a community in the thick sense of the word.
This seemingly minor distinction matters immensely when we recall Stenner’s claim that “the targets and content, though not the general form and function, of [authoritarianism’s] expression can vary depending on who ‘we’ are and what ‘we’ stand for” (p.142). This claim will only be true necessarily if it is oneness and sameness per se that they value. If what they value instead is that their polity be a community, then the specific contents of the community’s norms and values will substantially influence which normative orders will cause them to man the barricades.
Note that most of Stenner’s analysis would apply as well to the above framing as to hers—I am not seeking to dispute her empirical results, which are formidable. It is very plausible that those with lower cognitive ability would rely more heavily on the predictability that comes from individuals’ sharing a single normative framework in the one community. If we account for the fact that race has for the past several centuries been an unfortunate dividing block of populations into sub-communities, much of her “difference-ism” analysis is perfectly transparent as “anti–non-community-member–ism”. And, perhaps most importantly, it makes the explanandum of her political psychology far easier to answer: the question becomes less “why are there authoritarians (qua collectivists)?” and more “why are there libertarians (qua WEIRDos)?”.
In case this last remark seems bad-faith, Stenner appears to define as authoritarian anything other than a purely morally relativist individualist liberalism. For instance, Stenner includes as authoritarian coercion a desire for “favourable treatment for those conforming with conventions” (p.90; this would seemingly include, for instance, only extending marriage rights to monogamous couples), sees any religious belief “beyond personal faith and individual codes of conduct… that is, a need to regulate other people’s behaviour” as necessarily authoritarian (i.e. she defines all religious belief as it has always been traditionally understood by religions themselves as necessarily authoritarian), and explicitly includes several items endorsing moral realism in the abstract under her measure of authoritarianism . Stenner explicitly cites a example of how one paradigmatic libertarian (i.e. an individual who selected mostly individualistic childrearing values) differed from the authoritarians in interviews: “I don’t think that people are any more or less moral by today’s standards than people a hundred years ago were by their standards. I just think our standards have changed” (p.235).
If this is her exemplar of authoritarianism’s negative, then it is hardly ambiguous why one might be attracted to Stenner’s formulation of authoritarianism. It is comprehensible (and not at all obviously “authoritarian” in the conventional sense) why a citizen would not want the government to be completely agnostic on the question of the good life. It is comprehensible why a citizen would want the polity to be (even if at a minimal level only) a community, and not simply a legal structure with associated institutions. Stenner argues that “authoritarians are never more tolerant than when reassured and pacified by an autocratic culture” (p.334), but in light of the above, this is perfectly limpid—her statement is equivalent to noting that authoritarians do not want their government (i.e. the body that determines their schools’ curricula, has an outsized impact on social norms, and determines funding decisions for key norm-making bodies) to be wholly morally relativistic. In Stenner’s analysis, only an individual willing to wholly abandon community at the political level and willing to wholly embrace atomised-individualistic politics will register as truly non-authoritarian.
This does not repudiate that authoritarians in the sense Stenner describes—i.e. those who have no allegiance to any specific normative order but merely oneness and sameness per se—do in fact exist. We simply have no means in Stenner’s operationalisation of distinguishing them from those with an intuitive sense of moral realism, from those who adhere to any collectivist set of norms, or even merely those who do not want their government to be entirely neutral on conceptions of the good. As such, perhaps our takeaway from The Authoritarian Dynamic should not be determining how to address “the negative consequences we all suffer on account of [authoritarians’] neglect and discomfort” and instead should be to consider that some of them might have a point.
Stenner identifies the fundamental psychological driver behind authoritarianism as a psychological need for oneness and sameness, but she argues the predisposition is content neutral beyond this point: authoritarianism merely means that “whatever it is that we stand for, we must all stand for it” (p.142). Symmetrically, libertarianism is merely the fundamental desire for “freedom and difference” (p.81), and it is that per se that libertarians desire. But it is obvious in neither case why these would be fundamental psychological needs in the first instance—leaving aside briefly libertarians’ need for freedom, there is no obvious reason why anyone would have a need specifically for oneness and sameness, nor for difference. Perhaps appropriately given its title, The Authoritarian Dynamic provides no account of why libertarians would desire diversity other than that they are “excited and engaged” (p.217) by difference. For authoritarianism, however, we see a slightly more fleshed-out picture. Modern liberal democracy engenders a “diversity of lifestyles and beliefs… [which] may be frightening, overwhelming, or isolating for many individuals, who may wish to divest themselves of the fear, stress, or loneliness of their own freedom, and/or to avoid the diverse and unpredictable consequences of the freedom of others” (p.143). This effect is compounded by authoritarians’ tendency to score lower on cognitive tests: in a sense, the diversity of modernity is more cognitive load than they can handle.
There is a strangeness to this case, however, compounded by her specific operationalisation of authoritarianism and her definition of normative threat. In one operationalisation, authoritarianism was measured by choosing the following as important (against the alternative in brackets) on a list of childrearing qualities :
• “that a child obeys his parents” (“that he is responsible for his own actions”)
• “that he has good manners” (“that he has good sense and sound judgment”)
• “that he is neat and clean” (“that he is interested in how and why things happen”)
• “that he has respect for his elders” (“that he thinks for himself”)
• “that he follows the rules” (“that he follows his own conscience”)
Recall that Stenner defines authoritarianism as a fundamental preference for oneness and sameness, but a cursory glance over these items appears to bear minimal resemblance, if any, to oneness and sameness so much as to a tendency towards “interdependence” instead of “independence”, to use Markus and Kitayama’s terminology (alternately, towards “collectivism” instead of “individualism”). Stenner may well argue that to define authoritarianism in terms of preference for collectivist over individualist childrearing values is to make our operationalisation “tautological with the dependent variables it is designed to explain” (p.21), as she does for the Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, but there are two responses to this. The first is that this does not address the substantial independence of her operationalisation and any measure of “oneness and sameness”. But the second relates to what Stenner claims to measure, namely the desire for “oneness and sameness” at the level of the polity. In some meaningful sense, a necessary condition for a group’s being a community is that it be defined by a “oneness and sameness” about something: a religious community cannot be a religious community without a substantially shared religious outlook, a town community cannot be a town community without a substantially shared set of social norms, and so on. It is intuitive that individuals who value interdependent childrearing values would value strong collectivism at the local level (i.e. for their immediate community); it is not obvious that they would generalise this to the level of the polity as a whole. Stenner’s analysis of how childrearing values predict authoritarian attitudes, then, would show that individuals who are more interdependent at the local level are also more interdependent at the political level—i.e., individuals tend to see both their local environs and their polities as communities in the sense of “united under one and the same normative framework”, or they tend to see neither as communities in this sense. That her measure of authoritarianism appears to be measuring the desire to have one’s polity be a community becomes doubly apparent when one remembers that Stenner’s definition of normative threat included not only divergence of public opinion, which is a per se threat to oneness and sameness, but also questionable authorities, which are not a per se threat to oneness and sameness but are a per se threat to a community in the thick sense of the word.
This seemingly minor distinction matters immensely when we recall Stenner’s claim that “the targets and content, though not the general form and function, of [authoritarianism’s] expression can vary depending on who ‘we’ are and what ‘we’ stand for” (p.142). This claim will only be true necessarily if it is oneness and sameness per se that they value. If what they value instead is that their polity be a community, then the specific contents of the community’s norms and values will substantially influence which normative orders will cause them to man the barricades.
Note that most of Stenner’s analysis would apply as well to the above framing as to hers—I am not seeking to dispute her empirical results, which are formidable. It is very plausible that those with lower cognitive ability would rely more heavily on the predictability that comes from individuals’ sharing a single normative framework in the one community. If we account for the fact that race has for the past several centuries been an unfortunate dividing block of populations into sub-communities, much of her “difference-ism” analysis is perfectly transparent as “anti–non-community-member–ism”. And, perhaps most importantly, it makes the explanandum of her political psychology far easier to answer: the question becomes less “why are there authoritarians (qua collectivists)?” and more “why are there libertarians (qua WEIRDos)?”.
In case this last remark seems bad-faith, Stenner appears to define as authoritarian anything other than a purely morally relativist individualist liberalism. For instance, Stenner includes as authoritarian coercion a desire for “favourable treatment for those conforming with conventions” (p.90; this would seemingly include, for instance, only extending marriage rights to monogamous couples), sees any religious belief “beyond personal faith and individual codes of conduct… that is, a need to regulate other people’s behaviour” as necessarily authoritarian (i.e. she defines all religious belief as it has always been traditionally understood by religions themselves as necessarily authoritarian), and explicitly includes several items endorsing moral realism in the abstract under her measure of authoritarianism . Stenner explicitly cites a example of how one paradigmatic libertarian (i.e. an individual who selected mostly individualistic childrearing values) differed from the authoritarians in interviews: “I don’t think that people are any more or less moral by today’s standards than people a hundred years ago were by their standards. I just think our standards have changed” (p.235).
If this is her exemplar of authoritarianism’s negative, then it is hardly ambiguous why one might be attracted to Stenner’s formulation of authoritarianism. It is comprehensible (and not at all obviously “authoritarian” in the conventional sense) why a citizen would not want the government to be completely agnostic on the question of the good life. It is comprehensible why a citizen would want the polity to be (even if at a minimal level only) a community, and not simply a legal structure with associated institutions. Stenner argues that “authoritarians are never more tolerant than when reassured and pacified by an autocratic culture” (p.334), but in light of the above, this is perfectly limpid—her statement is equivalent to noting that authoritarians do not want their government (i.e. the body that determines their schools’ curricula, has an outsized impact on social norms, and determines funding decisions for key norm-making bodies) to be wholly morally relativistic. In Stenner’s analysis, only an individual willing to wholly abandon community at the political level and willing to wholly embrace atomised-individualistic politics will register as truly non-authoritarian.
This does not repudiate that authoritarians in the sense Stenner describes—i.e. those who have no allegiance to any specific normative order but merely oneness and sameness per se—do in fact exist. We simply have no means in Stenner’s operationalisation of distinguishing them from those with an intuitive sense of moral realism, from those who adhere to any collectivist set of norms, or even merely those who do not want their government to be entirely neutral on conceptions of the good. As such, perhaps our takeaway from The Authoritarian Dynamic should not be determining how to address “the negative consequences we all suffer on account of [authoritarians’] neglect and discomfort” and instead should be to consider that some of them might have a point.
December 8, 2022
Somehow, despite the past 7 years, this remains *the* work exploring authoritarianism in modern society.
The author is writing a dense sociological work demonstrating the evidence for her thesis: the existence, prevalence, and nature of the authoritarian posture in modern society. The author was able to identify the libertarian - authoritarian axis based not on answers to political questions but regarding parenting and children: essentially which characteristics parents thought should be inculcated into children, to conform to norms ("authoritarian") or to be completely open to new experiences and show no inherent deference to authorities ("libertarian").
The author explores the spectrum of these views and throughout will compare and contrast the authoritarian and libertarian extremes. The insights which come from the research prove important: "authoritarians" may seem like everyone else in society until there is some kind of "threat activation," at which point their inclinations toward insisting on cultural sameness and conformity will become prominent. The author spends a lot of time disentangling "authoritarianism" from "conservatism": there are points of convergence, of course, but the differences are stark, for conservatives will tend to be skeptical of change while authoritarians will be quite happy to see changes if they enhance cultural sameness.
Whereas the field generally separates out racial, ethnic, and moral conceptions of difference and discrimination, the author came to see how with "authoritarians" it was less about racism, etc., as much as "differenceism". "Authoritarians" are activated by perceptions of "difference" more than explicit racism, classism, etc.; in fact, when confronted with an extraterrestrial threat, most "authoritarians" will focus on the "sameness" of all humans in light of the threat from The Other. In this perspective, a lot of behavior that seems racist from authoritarians is really driven by perceptions of difference more than race per se.
All of this is reinforced by the social research done by the author which is explained and set forth well. There is some correlation between authoritarianism and age (more authoritarian as one gets older) and educational background (the more educated, the more "libertarian" or "cosmopolitan," ability to appreciate difference; the less educated, generally less so).
But the author's conclusion is bleak. She understands "authoritarianism" as a deep impulse which cannot be rectified and will be activated whenever difference is greatly celebrated. She recognizes the impulse as not democratic; "authoritarians" do not appreciate the constant focus on disagreement and what divides and does not want to celebrate diversity but sameness. Furthermore, "authoritarians" are more than happy to support a strongman or any kind of leader who will advocate for their perspective no matter what they may do to democratic norms. According to the author there is no ability to encourage reconsideration or change among authoritarians; they will always be a "fifth column" uneasy and uncomfortable with pluralist democracy.
I'd like to think we can find ways to de-demonize certain groups made out to be The Other and that we can find ways to lessen the temperature and "threat activation," and want to have a bit more hope than the author does. However, the past few years have certainly demonstrated the authoritarian / libertarian contrast in perspective and the potent, even if minority, force which authoritarians can manifest when activated and made active participants in a political coalition.
It would be great for there to be more work done on authoritarianism which would not require such digging through dense analysis.
The author is writing a dense sociological work demonstrating the evidence for her thesis: the existence, prevalence, and nature of the authoritarian posture in modern society. The author was able to identify the libertarian - authoritarian axis based not on answers to political questions but regarding parenting and children: essentially which characteristics parents thought should be inculcated into children, to conform to norms ("authoritarian") or to be completely open to new experiences and show no inherent deference to authorities ("libertarian").
The author explores the spectrum of these views and throughout will compare and contrast the authoritarian and libertarian extremes. The insights which come from the research prove important: "authoritarians" may seem like everyone else in society until there is some kind of "threat activation," at which point their inclinations toward insisting on cultural sameness and conformity will become prominent. The author spends a lot of time disentangling "authoritarianism" from "conservatism": there are points of convergence, of course, but the differences are stark, for conservatives will tend to be skeptical of change while authoritarians will be quite happy to see changes if they enhance cultural sameness.
Whereas the field generally separates out racial, ethnic, and moral conceptions of difference and discrimination, the author came to see how with "authoritarians" it was less about racism, etc., as much as "differenceism". "Authoritarians" are activated by perceptions of "difference" more than explicit racism, classism, etc.; in fact, when confronted with an extraterrestrial threat, most "authoritarians" will focus on the "sameness" of all humans in light of the threat from The Other. In this perspective, a lot of behavior that seems racist from authoritarians is really driven by perceptions of difference more than race per se.
All of this is reinforced by the social research done by the author which is explained and set forth well. There is some correlation between authoritarianism and age (more authoritarian as one gets older) and educational background (the more educated, the more "libertarian" or "cosmopolitan," ability to appreciate difference; the less educated, generally less so).
But the author's conclusion is bleak. She understands "authoritarianism" as a deep impulse which cannot be rectified and will be activated whenever difference is greatly celebrated. She recognizes the impulse as not democratic; "authoritarians" do not appreciate the constant focus on disagreement and what divides and does not want to celebrate diversity but sameness. Furthermore, "authoritarians" are more than happy to support a strongman or any kind of leader who will advocate for their perspective no matter what they may do to democratic norms. According to the author there is no ability to encourage reconsideration or change among authoritarians; they will always be a "fifth column" uneasy and uncomfortable with pluralist democracy.
I'd like to think we can find ways to de-demonize certain groups made out to be The Other and that we can find ways to lessen the temperature and "threat activation," and want to have a bit more hope than the author does. However, the past few years have certainly demonstrated the authoritarian / libertarian contrast in perspective and the potent, even if minority, force which authoritarians can manifest when activated and made active participants in a political coalition.
It would be great for there to be more work done on authoritarianism which would not require such digging through dense analysis.
September 10, 2025
This book is the perfect example of how to prevent good information from spreading because of handicapping the medium. What I mean by that is the findings Karen Stenner presents in this book are fascinating, yet written and compiled in a way that is fully inaccessible to the masses. That is a tragedy because her findings could have provided crucial insight to explaining America's slide into authoritarianism.
The Authoritarian Dynamic describes how a large segment of the population has a predisposition toward authoritarianism. Crucially, although it can overlap, this population is seperate from what Stenner refers to as "status quo conservatism" and "laissez faire conservatism" (what we would now call neoliberalism). These three populations politick under the mantle of "political conservatism"; the Republican Party in the United States. Although she wrote this in 2005, her research offers fantastic insight to what has happened in the U.S. since. Throughout the book, she offers many predictions that came true irrespective of the fact she didn't know how certain factors like social media would factor in.
Unfortunately, this brilliant work was undone by the composition of the book. It is fully possible to make an academic book readable. I've read plenty of them that while dense, are still engaging. This work however is not only dense, but highly repetitive. I would estimate half of it could be eliminated without sacrificing any of the findings. It reads as an extended journal study, filled with metrics that would have been better relegated to an appendix. I can't give it any more than 2 stars because despite its brilliance, it will remain largely unknown.
I would instead recommend reading the article Stenner would put out over a decade later with Jonathan Haidt (someone who does know how to turn scholarly research into riveting books). It covers the important parts without 350 pages of tedium.
The Authoritarian Dynamic describes how a large segment of the population has a predisposition toward authoritarianism. Crucially, although it can overlap, this population is seperate from what Stenner refers to as "status quo conservatism" and "laissez faire conservatism" (what we would now call neoliberalism). These three populations politick under the mantle of "political conservatism"; the Republican Party in the United States. Although she wrote this in 2005, her research offers fantastic insight to what has happened in the U.S. since. Throughout the book, she offers many predictions that came true irrespective of the fact she didn't know how certain factors like social media would factor in.
Unfortunately, this brilliant work was undone by the composition of the book. It is fully possible to make an academic book readable. I've read plenty of them that while dense, are still engaging. This work however is not only dense, but highly repetitive. I would estimate half of it could be eliminated without sacrificing any of the findings. It reads as an extended journal study, filled with metrics that would have been better relegated to an appendix. I can't give it any more than 2 stars because despite its brilliance, it will remain largely unknown.
I would instead recommend reading the article Stenner would put out over a decade later with Jonathan Haidt (someone who does know how to turn scholarly research into riveting books). It covers the important parts without 350 pages of tedium.
September 29, 2022
The Authoritarian Dynamic is an academic text that makes for difficult reading and brings out some compelling information. Dr. Stenner states that Authoritarianism is a personality disposition, and intolerance seems to be the primary stimulus for Authoritarianism.
The significance is that the book uses three data surveys, and the results were similar using each data source; and Repeatable results confirm Dr. Stenner's conclusions. Many statistics in this book might confuse readers. The text refers to several appendixes, but these did not appear in the book.
This book adds plenty of food for thought. I realized that some of my thoughts about this subject are confirmed, and you can see this playing out in our business, religious, and political leaders. It is a challenge to read, but it has its rewards.
The significance is that the book uses three data surveys, and the results were similar using each data source; and Repeatable results confirm Dr. Stenner's conclusions. Many statistics in this book might confuse readers. The text refers to several appendixes, but these did not appear in the book.
This book adds plenty of food for thought. I realized that some of my thoughts about this subject are confirmed, and you can see this playing out in our business, religious, and political leaders. It is a challenge to read, but it has its rewards.
Want to read
August 10, 2021Haven't read the book yet, but am looking forward to it. It ties into the wisdom of historian Lord Acton, who said - "When there is an accumulation of money and power into fewer and fewer hands, people with the mentality of gangsters come to the fore. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I believe Acton's 'people with the mentality of gangsters come to the fore' is the same dynamic as Stenners 'authoritarians can be triggered into extreme behaviors'. I'll be looking for any thoughts from her on the role of such inequality.
Want to read
July 5, 2017My explanation for why this has been added to my reading list is evidenced here on Quora.
March 16, 2011
An important book for researchers in this area-- I just wish it weren't so tedious to read.
August 20, 2016
Important results for understanding the current rise of right-wing populism
December 14, 2016
asked for ILL today
see http://righteousmind.com/the-key-to-t...
see http://righteousmind.com/the-key-to-t...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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