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This article traces the roots of the Authoritarian Personality (AP) project in the neo-Freudian/phenomenological tradition of the Frankfurt School (FS). It focuses on three of its major proponents (Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse) and examines the construction of the F-scale. It outlines how, according to FS-influenced scholars, the AP arose from the disciplinary measures inflicted on late 19th and early 20th century German middle-class youth, and details the sado-masochistic political style of the prototypical AP. It covers the critical reception of this characterization and explanation of authoritarianism by Bob Altemeyer and Anglo-American positivism. It concludes by arguing that in overlooking the inner life of the AP, positivism blinds us to compelling truths, about authoritarianism, and also about ourselves.

One of the Cold War's commonplaces about Russia was its abiding embrace of authoritarianism. Across the centuries, successive regimes, whether Tsarist or Communist, have been characterised by Western scholars as highly centralised, personalised power structures, with an intolerance of dissidence that too easily descended into barbaric brutality. Living on Europe's farthest edge, Russia's peoples are said to have been bypassed by Enlightenment modernity, the rise of liberal constitutionalism and the gradual entrenchment of individual rights and democratic freedoms. For those commentators inspired by such Cold War thinking, it is a legacy that continues to shape contemporary politics. The assumption is that Putin's reclaiming of the presidency in 2012 is emblematic of an inevitable reversion to authoritarianism. Drawing on research in Russia during the March 2012 election, this article takes a critical look at the plethora of global statistical surveys that point to authoritarian trends under the current regime. It concludes that the conceptual framework underpinning the West's revelations about the descent into authoritarianism in contemporary Russia is neither clear nor convincing.

One of the Cold War's commonplaces about Russia was its abiding embrace of authoritarianism. Across the centuries, successive regimes, whether Tsarist or Communist, have been characterised by Western scholars as highly centralised, personalised power structures, with an intolerance of dissidence that too easily descended into barbaric brutality. Living on Europe's farthest edge, Russia's peoples are said to have been bypassed by Enlightenment modernity, the rise of liberal constitutionalism and the gradual entrenchment of individual rights and democratic freedoms. For those commentators inspired by such Cold War thinking, it is a legacy that continues to shape contemporary politics. The assumption is that Putin's reclaiming of the presidency in 2012 is emblematic of an inevitable reversion to authoritarianism. Drawing on research in Russia during the March 2012 election, this article takes a critical look at the plethora of global statistical surveys that point to authoritarian trends under the current regime. It concludes that the conceptual framework underpinning the West's revelations about the descent into authoritarianism in contemporary Russia is neither clear nor convincing.

The Egyptian government has repeatedly violated the law with arbitrary arrests, torture in detention, and forced disappearances. But in the past, Egyptian legal expert Mai El-Sadany says, at least these measures could have been challenged in court. Today a person may be subjected to the same abuses without recourse or appeal.

While social networking platforms can be powerful tools in the hands of activists seeking to bring down authoritarian governments, it is unwise to assume that access to the Internet and social networking platforms alone is sufficient for democratization of repressive regimes. The case of China demonstrates how authoritarian regimes can adapt to the Internet, even using networked technologies to bolster legitimacy. The emergence of Chinese 'networked authoritarianism' highlights difficult issues of policy and corporate responsibility that must be resolved in order to ensure that the Internet and mobile technologies can fulfill their potential to support liberation and empowerment. Adapted from the source document.

Authoritarianism has been an important explanatory concept for more than 60 years and a powerful predictor of social, political, and intergroup attitudes and behaviour. An important impediment to research on authoritarianism has been the length of the measures available, particularly with the contemporary emphasis on the need for social research to use larger, more representative samples and measure multiple constructs across multiple domains. We therefore developed a six-item Very Short Authoritarianism (VSA) scale that equally represented the three content subdimensions and two directions of wording of Altemeyer's widely used Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. Over four samples (N = 1,601) from three countries the VSA scale showed satisfactory internal consistency and the expected hierarchical factor structure with three primary factors loading on a single higher-order factor. Additionally, the scale predicted variables such as nationalism, ethnocentrism, political orientation, political party/candidate support, attitudes towards ingroups or outgroups and anti-minority bias at moderate to strong levels with effects very close to those obtained for much longer established measures of RWA (including Altemeyer's scale). The VSA scale also showed clearly better reliability and validity than a short measure of authoritarian parental values that has been used to measure authoritarianism.