Authoritarian conservatism is a political ideology that seeks to uphold order, tradition, and hierarchy, often with forcible suppression of radical and revolutionary enemies such as communists, Nazis, and anarchists. Authoritarian conservative movements and regimes have included Chiangism in China, Metaxism in Greece, Francoism in Spain,Stanley G. Payne. Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1999. pp. 77–102. Horthyism in Hungary, and Vichyism in France.
The rise of authoritarian conservatism coincided with the rise of fascism. In some cases, the authoritarian conservatism clashed with fascism, like in Austria and Portugal, while in other cases, like in Francoist Spain, Vichy France, and Fascist Italy, it cooperated with fascism. Although both ideologies espoused nationalism and anti-communism, the traditionalist nature of authoritarian conservatism made it distinct from the revolutionary, palingenetic, and populist nature of fascism.Cyprian Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2006. p. 21. While fascism espoused vitalism, irrationalism, or secular neo-idealism, the authoritarian conservatism based its views on the traditional religion.
Although the concept of authority has been identified as a core tenet of conservatism in general, authoritarian conservatism is only one of many different forms of conservatism. It is contrasted with libertarian conservatism, which was a formerly dominant form of conservatism in the United States.
Ideology Historical roots The two philosophical forefathers of conservatism, Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, inspired two separate forms of conservatism. Whereas the first was rooted in a more libertarian Whig tradition, the latter was ultramontane, ultra-royalist, and ultimately authoritarian.
G. W. F. Hegel has also been identified as one of the most important conservative philosophers. Especially his work Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821) has exerted a powerful influence over conservative ideology. Hegel inspired right-wing authoritarians such as Rudolf Kjellén in Sweden and Giovanni Gentile in Italy.Benedetto Croce, Guide to Aesthetics, Translated by Patrick Romanell, "Translator's Introduction," The Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs–Merrill Company, Incorporated, 1965. Classical liberals have been critical of Hegel; Karl Popper identified him as the chief ideologue of the authoritarian Prussian state and considered him one of the main ideological enemies of an open society, and Isaiah Berlin accused him as being one of the architects of modern authoritarianism.
Modern exponents German political theorist Carl Schmitt advocated authoritarian conservatism. Referred to as "an acute observer and analyst of the weaknesses of liberal constitutionalism" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Schmitt was a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. He developed a political theology around concepts such as sovereignty, claiming that "sovereign is he who decides on the exception" and arguing for a dictatorial presidential power who could step outside the rule of law under a state of exception.Vagts, D., "Carl Schmitt's Ultimate Emergency: The Night of the Long Knives" (2012), The Germanic Review 87(2), p. 203.
Julius Evola, an Italian esoteric traditionalist, has also been described influential authoritarian conservative philosopher. During the interwar period and World War II, Evola criticized Italian fascism for not enough radicalism and supported Nazi Germany, calling for a synthesis of Nazism and fascism; after World War II, his ideas were presented as non-fascist by his supporters.
Relation to fascism
Authoritarian conservatism was prominent in the same era as fascism; in some cases it presented its own movements distinct from fascism with which it sometimes clashed, or in the cases of Francoist Spain, Vichy France, and Fascist Italy it cooperated. The Interwar period and World War II saw examples of cooperation of authoritarian conservatism and fascism, which made the distinction between them blurry. Although both ideologies shared core values such as nationalism and had common enemies such as communism and materialism, there was nonetheless a contrast between the traditionalist nature of authoritarian conservatism and the revolutionary, palingenetic and populist nature of fascism—thus it was common for authoritarian conservative regimes to suppress rising fascist and Nazi movements. The hostility between the two ideologies is highlighted by the struggle for power in Austria, which was marked by the assassination of ultra-Catholic statesman Engelbert Dollfuss by Austrian Nazis. Likewise, Croatian fascists (Ustaše) assassinated King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
Edmund Fawcett explains the difference between fascism and authoritarian conservatism as follows:
The authoritarian conservative right is distinguished from fascism in that such conservatives tended to use traditional religion as the basis for their philosophical views, while fascists based their views on vitalism, irrationalism, or secular neo-idealism. Fascists often drew upon religious imagery, but used it as a symbol for the nation and replaced spirituality with ultranationalism and statolatry. Even in the most religious of the fascist movements, the Romanian Iron Guard, "Christ was stripped of genuine otherworldly mystery and was reduced to a metaphor for national redemption."
A term used by some scholars is para-fascism, which refers to authoritarian conservative movements and regimes that adopt some characteristics associated with fascism such as personality cults, paramilitary organizations, symbols and rhetoric without committing to fascist tenets such as palingenetic ultranationalism, modernism, and populism.
History Africa Togo
The Rally of the Togolese People (RTP) was the ruling political party in Togo from 1969 to 2012. It was founded by President Gnassingbé Eyadéma and headed by his son, President Faure Gnassingbé, after the former died in 2005. Faure Gnassingbé replaced the RPT with a new ruling party, the national-conservative Union for the Republic, in April 2012, dissolving the RPT.
Asia Cambodia The Social Republican Party was a political party in Cambodia, founded by the then-head of state Lon Nol on 10 June 1972. Its platform was populist, nationalist, and anti-communist, Lon Nol being determined to oppose North Vietnamese and Chinese influence in the region in the context of the Second Indochina War. The party's primary function, however, was to support and legitimise Lon Nol's leadership of the country; he was later to develop a rather ramshackle chauvinist and semi-mystical ideology called "Neo-Khmerism" to back his political agenda.Kiernan, B. How Pol Pot came to power, Yale University Press, 2004, p. 348.
China
Han Fei's Legalism in the 3rd century B.C. advocated authoritarian conservatism that elevated the position of ruler. Legalism argued that administrative discipline, not Confucian virtue, was crucial for the governance of the state.
Modern Chinese conservatism was often accompanied by authoritarianism; the Chinese nationalist party Kuomintang (KMT) originally started out as a social democratic party that advocated Westernization in the Sun Yat-sen period, but Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the KMT who succeeded Sun, ruled conservative and anti-communist right-wing dictatorship after Shanghai massacre in 1927; After the reform and opening up in 1980s, neoauthoritarianism gained its root in the Chinese Communist Party. Neoauthoritarianism is a conservative political thought that advocates for a powerful centralized state to promote market reforms within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a concept that has been described as right-wing and classically conservative, despite including some aspects of Marxist–Leninist and Maoist theories.
One of the top leaders and the gray eminence of the Chinese Commmunist Party, Wang Huning, has criticized the western youth for their supposed rejection of traditional western values in his writing; Wang argues for a culturally unified and traditionalist China, albeit mixed with Marxist-Leninist theories. After Xi Jinping came to power, China has become increasingly culturally conservative, traditionalist and nationalist. Furthermore, Xi Jinping has also accelerated the crackdown on LGBTQ+ activism and pornography production. In 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a campaign directing Chinese social media platforms to censor content that "promotes not marrying and not having children" or that "provokes gender antagonism."
Iran The Iranian Principlists are one of two main political camps inside post-revolutionary Iran, the other being Reformists. The term hardliners that some Western sources use in the Iranian political context usually refers to the faction.. Their ideology is clerical, theocratic, and Islamist.
South Korea Park Chung Hee was a South Korean politician and army general who seized power in the May 16 coup of 1961 and then was elected as the third President of South Korea in 1963. He introduced the highly authoritarian Yushin Constitution, ushering in the Fourth Republic of Korea. Ruling as a dictator, he constantly repressed political opposition and dissent and wholly controlled the military. He ruled the country until his assassination in 1979.Byung-Kook Kim., & Vogel, E. F (2013). The Park Chung Hee Era: the transformation of South Korea. Harvard University Press. pp. 200–205. .
Europe Belgium The Rexist Party was a far-right Catholic, corporatist, and royalist political party active in Belgium from 1935 until 1945.Cook, Bernard A. (2005). Belgium: A History (3rd ed.). Peter Lang. p. 118. In its early period—until around 1937—it tried to win power by democratic means and did not want totally to abolish democratic institutions. During the German occupation of Belgium, it became a fascist movement.
Bulgaria Zveno was a Bulgarian political organization founded in 1930 by Bulgarian politicians, intellectuals, and Bulgarian Army officers. It advocated for rationalization of Bulgaria's economic and political institutions under a dictatorship that would be independent from both the Soviet Union and the Axis powers. They strongly opposed the Bulgarian party system, which they saw as dysfunctional, and the terror of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. King Boris III, an opponent of Zveno, orchestrated a coup through a monarchist Zveno member, General Pencho Zlatev, who became Prime Minister in January 1935. In April 1935, he was replaced by another monarchist, Andrei Toshev.
Finland
In the Finnish Civil War, rightist White Finland defeated the leftist Red Finland. The clashes occurred in the context of the turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The paramilitary White Guards were led by Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim and were assisted by the German Imperial Army at the request of the Finnish civil government. The Lapua Movement was a radical Finnish nationalist, pro-German, and anti-communist political movement. Led by Vihtori Kosola, it turned towards far-right politics after its founding and was banned after a failed coup d'état attempt in 1932.. The Peasant March was a demonstration in Helsinki attended by more than 12,000 supporters from all over the country to put pressure on the Finnish government to suppress communism in the country.
Germany