Traditional authoritarian regimes are more likely to evolve towards democracy than revolutionary totalitarian ones, so supporting them can be the lesser evil.
Jeane Kirkpatrick argued it in 'Dictatorships and Double Standards' in Commentary (1979), criticising American policy for undermining friendly autocrats in Iran and Nicaragua only to see more repressive regimes replace them. The essay led Ronald Reagan to appoint her ambassador to the United Nations.
In practice
- A government weighs whether to keep aiding an abusive ally on the grounds that its likely replacement would be worse.
- A board keeps an autocratic chief executive because the rival faction promises a purge.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation, Kirkpatrick's, is that traditional autocracies leave a society's institutions intact while totalitarian regimes absorb them, leaving nothing to build democracy from.
- In its favour
- Several right-wing authoritarian regimes democratised in the 1970s and 1980s, including Spain, Portugal, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan.
- Against it
- The communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed between 1989 and 1991, contradicting the claim that totalitarian systems could not change. Critics argue the doctrine was used to justify support for abusive governments.
- Standing
- Contested both on its record and on its ethics. Compare the dictator's dilemma.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works