Psychological and social aspects of the support of authoritarian politics

Abstract

_{The main question of the article concerns the explanation of the phenomenon of suport for authoritarian politics in Polish society. Authoritarian politics is understood as a system of government in which formal democratic institutions (elections, Parliament, political parties, nongovernment organisations) exist but their role is diminished. The ruling party tries to maximise its power in every sphere of social life. Co-opting, repressing, propagandising, intimidation, and censoring – there are the rules of authoritarian government [Levitsky, Way 2010; Inglehart, Norris 2016; Przeworski 2017]. Two studies conducted on a representative sample of adults Poles in 2016 (study 1, n = 1019; study 2, n = 1063) where three measurements of support of authoritarian politics were used: the Repression Potential Scale [Marsh, Kaase 1979], What Can a Government Allow Itself To Do – Scale 2 [Skarżyńska, Radkiewicz 2018], and the Agreement to a One-party System (Scale 3). The results of regression analyses (study 1) showed that the following psychological variables are significant predictors of the level of support of authoritarian politics: 1) a conservative worldview, 2) right-wing authoritarianism (results on the RWA Scale, Altemeyer 1981), 3) collective narcissism, 4) unlimited personal freedom. The results of study 2 showed additional psychological characteristics as significant predictors of support for authoritarian politics: authority, in-group loyalty, and purity as moral rules [see: Graham, Nosek, Haidt 2011] are positively related to a greater acceptance of authoritarian politics; harm/care and justice as moral rules are negatively related to support of those politics.}