This is the Tom Hartman Program.

So let's take a deep dive into authoritarianism as a form of government and as a form of governance.

On the line with us is Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University,

a historian and cultural critic, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders,

and the author of seven books, including her latest strongmen from Mussolini to the present.

Both her website and her Twitter handle are her name Ruth Ben-Ghiat, B-E-N-G-H-I-A-T,

dot com for website and put an ad at the beginning of that for a Twitter handle.

Professor Ben-Ghiat, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining us today.

I'd like to start with just kind of a definition of terms.

I think most people have some understanding of what democracy is and what a kingdom is, for example,

you know like Saudi Arabia, I mean an absolute monarchy.

But between absolute monarchy on the one hand, even absolute despotism,

and democracy, on the other hand, on the polar ends, and please correct me if you think those

are not the polar ends, there's this weird little hybrid of strong man-authoritarian leadership

in countries that started out as representative democratic republics.

How do we define this? What is the spectrum like? What are these kinds of government

that we saw with Mussolini, for example, during World War II?

So authoritarianism at most broad is a system of governance with the executive branch comes

to overwhelm and politicize and sometimes suppress the working of a free judiciary,

a free press, the courts, and all the other institutions of society.

So authoritarian governments in the 20th century, we had the one-party dictatorship.

...