In Russia, they have only 1 party left, so the party clearly doesn’t matter. In Usa, it is not an official dictator yet. In other countries with a dictatorship, I don’t know about their parties. So do you know any examples where the parties still matter?
Authoritarianism isn’t an ideology per se, and often dictatorship isn’t official. Even Stalin was the “general secretary” of his party. And yet, authoritarianism of every stripe demonstrates similar styles regardless of their political ideology. Smashing dissent, regressive economics and consolidated power, militarism, etc. These have never been solely the purview of avowed fascists. So no, for most of those that suffer under dictators, the ideology of those thugs rarely matter.
But make no mistake, a multi-party democracy with varied ideologies is not the opposite of authoritarianism. Factions can be just as much a poison pill, if the balance of powers are not subordinate to an informed electorate. The opposite of authoritarianism is anarchism.
It’s actually pretty rare for dictatorships to have only one legal party. Even North Korea is nominally a multi-party state. Such minor parties are just token controlled opposition ofc, but they serve to give a flimsy “democratic” veneer.
America’s trajectory rn is aiming closer to the illiberal/managed democracy of Hungary under Viktor Orban, where there are true opposition parties with an actual chance at winning, but the media, government, and electoral system is strongly biased against them.
I think China in a way is democratic as long as you have allegiance to Xi Jinping. So as long as two people have opposing policies that neither of them contradict “Xi Jinping thought”, then there is some choice I guess?
Yes. It is theoretically possible for a dictator to rule with the actual best interests of the people in mind, rather than a misguided belief about what those are, or else a complete lack of concern for anyone but themselves.
Since political beliefs tend to align along party lines, the party of such a dictator does matter somewhat, however little that might be.
Unfortunately, any benevolent dictatorship would be at constant risk of turning, and almost certainly be doomed to turn, into one of the other two options.
Even less fortunately, most dictatorships skip the benevolent step entirely.
