We aren't a simple authoritarian regime anymore.

Human rights groups are putting pressure on authoritarian governments.

So why do economists fall in love with authoritarian governments?

At which point he is the authoritarian ruler of France.

Statically, China is a one party system, authoritarian there's no question about it.

Dynamically, it has changed over time to become less authoritarian and more democratic.

Now that is pretty authoritarian, and that's something I'm very much critical of.

For each of these successful authoritarian governments in East Asia, there's a matched failure.

The stability and security of authoritarian regimes cannot create but terrorism and violence and destruction.

In my analysis I rely considerably on the types of authoritarian behaviour first analyzed by Kurz.

Some of these economies were ruled by authoritarian governments in the 60s and 70s and 1980s.

For decades, we have lived under authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, in the Middle East.

Or they're responding to censorship requests by authoritarian regimes that do not reflect consent of the governed.

The terrible danger of the authoritarian system only became clear as we got closer to the end.

And this actually fits with another interesting theory about what's happening in authoritarian states and in their cyberspace.

I'll just give you a very short list of reasons why authoritarian deliberation may actually help the dictators.

Maybe the problem is just an authoritarian culture in the region, and some Muslims have been influenced by that.

We have to cure ourselves of the notion that we are authoritarian, that we can determine everything that happens.

And it is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so called Islamic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan they are pretty authoritarian.

Most governments followed the dictate of the authoritarian leaders to stay away from these different groups, because they were terrorists.

So that's why I've always been fascinated with how technology could actually reshape and open up authoritarian societies like ours.

Maybe we should live with this kind of authoritarian situation that we find ourselves in, instead of having the second scenario.

And finally, the purpose of any authoritarian deliberation efforts is usually to increase the legitimacy of the regimes, both at home and abroad.

I have seen almost the same faces for kings and presidents ruling us old, aged, authoritarian, corrupt situations regimes that we have seen around us.

They may have become slower, but the activists could still access it and actually argue that having access to them is actually great for many authoritarian states.

Because even what has been happening up 'til now with the Spinternet and authoritarian deliberation, there is a great chance that those voices will not be heard.

This is what political scientists call authoritarian deliberation, and it happens when governments are actually reaching out to their critics and letting them engage with each other online.

If you look at the statistical evidence worldwide, there's really no support for the idea that authoritarian governments hold a systematic edge over democracies in terms of economic growth.

And that regime that we got rid of was actually a dictatorship, an authoritarian regime, that for decades created a great sense of paralysis within the nation, within the people themselves.

We need fathers, as it were, the exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes, which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and on the other, the lax, no rules option.

And in place of that, what happens is that Islamism grows as an ideology which is authoritarian, which is quite strident, which is quite anti Western, and which wants to shape society based on a utopian vision.

Now these are things about general culture, but I'm also very much interested in political culture and whether liberty and democracy is appreciated, or whether there's an authoritarian political culture in which the state is supposed to impose things on the citizens.

It's incredible to be here in Libia and so inspiring to see the people of this country and those in the regions around to be able to overcome authoritarian regimes and to now have an opportunity to create free and prosperous societies.

It is thus also a challenge to those of us living in more fortunate circumstances. If we do not wish to be submerged in violence and authoritarian responses to it, international institutions must do for the modernizing world what the EU has managed to do for the postcommunist countries.

(Antonis Vradis) You definitely had a lot of anarchist groups and anarchist initiatives springing up, and trying to play a role, not of replacing the state in any way, but actually filling a void in a different kind of way, in a way that will no longer be hierarchical or authoritarian, in a way contributing towards people's pre conceptualization of their everyday life.