Authoritarian and Democratic Regime

Most states are organized into three organs of the state: mainly 1) the legislative 2) the executive 3) the judiciary. The reason for this organization is such that each can form a check and balance against each other from being a preponderant force.

But in practice, each of this state of organ is never ever separate or mutually exclusive. Very often the judiciary is nominated by the Prime Minister or the President and the executive is often headed by the cabinet which reports to the Prime Minister. The civil service merely acts as an administrative body. And a derivative of the constitutional monarchy is the presidency which normally have veto power over material policies and if there is a monarch, the king or queen would have such powers but not able to set the agenda of the governing body.

Therefore in theory, the division of labour among the different organs is nothing more than a constitutional and a theoretical one of which in the actual functioning: all three organs actually worked hand in hand with each other and dependent on the status quo.

Therefore there would be a need to separate the powers who exert powers as a result of their position from the actual functioning of their seat within a political organization.

This to me puts into question the actual definition of an authoritarian regime. A dictator who commands all sectors of a country via his personal influence and political organization is really not much different from a democratic one where the President and Prime Minister gets to nominate his heads of his executive and those that would judge him/her in the first place. The only difference therefore would be the existence of an elections of which means that the Prime Minister or President has a limited time period to exert his/her influence or at least in theory subjected to be disposed by those that they govern.

And unless according to this idea, one can prove that an authoritarian regime is proving detrimental to the welfare to his people, it would be difficult to justify replacing an authoritarian one with a democratic one when in reality the fundamental difference appears to be one of a periodic elections.

But it would indeed difficult to endorse an authoritarian regime just based on the above because consent and assent can be manipulated by a totalitarian regime. Public opinion with no form of check and balance is highly susceptible to propaganda and information control.

Therefore the question comes in would be that: how much violence is too much violence to ensure complicity.

And since the similarity in almost all regimes across the world is one of concentration of powers: both constitutional and authoritarian- why then does the former seem to have lesser violence against it's own people as compared with the latter.

The answer of what I do believed lies not in the despot nature of the latter but rather for the former, democratic rights enshrined in the constitution and the political system meant that any form of unjust violence against legitimate dissent provided a restraint on the leaders: of which the idea of "democracy" brings to mind the idea of freedom and human rights, a prejudice any political leader of such political system would not dare contravening.

Hence the idea of a more benevolent or altruistic leader in a democratic system would not fly but rather as a matter of political capital. Therefore, if violence is the sole arbiter of the success of a regime then, a democratic one would be the likely winner but if welfare is the final understanding of a regime- then the jury is still out on the better-ness of one over the other.