"The New State That We Are Building": Authoritarianism and System-Justification in an Illiberal Democracy.

Jan-Erik Lönnqvist,László Kelemen,Zsolt Péter Szabó

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703280

Abstract

The authoritarian personality is characterized by unquestionining obedience and respect to authority. System justification theory (SJT) argues that people are motivated to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of existing social, economic, and political systems. Commitment to the status quo is also a key characteristic of the authoritarian personality. It can be argued that the social context matters for how an underlying latent authoritarian character is expressed. This means that authoritarian regimes could be expected to lead to increased authoritarianism and stronger system-justification. We investigated this hypothesis in two representative samples of Hungarians, collected before (2010) and after (2018) 8 years of Fidesz’ rule (N = 1,000 in both samples). Moreover, the strong version of SJT argues that members of disadvantaged groups are likely to experience the most cognitive dissonance and that the need to reduce this dissonance makes them the most supportive of the status quo. This argument dovetails nicely with claims made by the political opposition to Fidesz, according to which Fidesz is especially popular among low-status members of society. We found that measures assessing authoritarian tendencies did not change between 2010 and 2018. However, more specific beliefs and attitudes did change, and these effects were especially pronounced among Fidesz supporters. Their belief in a just world and a just system has grown stronger, while their attitudes toward migrants had hardened. Low status was associated with lower levels of system-justifying ideologies. However, low status Fidesz voters justified the system more than high status opposition voters in 2018, lending some support for the strong version of SJT. Our results suggest that beliefs and attitudes of Hungarians have changed between 2010 and 2018, and that political leadership played a crucial role in this.

Highlights

The authors of the Authoritarian Personality argued that the social context matters for how an underlying latent authoritarian character is expressed in authoritarian attitudes and authoritarian behavior
Very few empirical studies have investigated changes in authoritarianism in response to antidemocratic shifts in the political system. We address this gap in the literature by investigating authoritarian characteristics, including right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Duckitt and Sibley, 2007) and system-justifying beliefs (Kay and Jost, 2003), in two representative samples of Hungarians, collected before and after 8 years of an “illiberal democracy.”
We first sketch the major developments in the Hungarian political system over the past decade, we introduce the two theoretical frameworks upon which we rely, namely, the authoritarian personality and system justification theory

Summary

Introduction

One of the most influential social science books of the 20th century was the Authoritarian Personality by Adorno et al (1950) They attempted to explain fascism, the Second World War and the Holocaust with psychological factors as active forces in the social process. Their conceptualization of the authoritarian personality built on Fromm’s definition of the authoritarian character as a type of personality that loves authority – a personality type that simultaneously wishes to be in authority and to be subject to the will of the authority.

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