A paternal autocracy is an authoritarian system of government that mostly existed during the Interwar period and World War II. Paternal autocracies were typically governments ruled by apolitical "strongmen" who united their people through a cult of personality and a sense of national pride; examples of paternal autocrats include Jozef Pilsudski, Miklos Horthy, and Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. They could also include authoritarian leaders who could be considered “parafascist”, meaning they have a dictatorship that resembles fascism, though not being fully totalitarian and lacking the revolutionary tendencies to reshape society. Examples of these would be Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Francisco Franco, and Hideki Tojo. Their regimes coopted features of fascism, such as corporatism, militarism, nationalism, and authoritarianism, but they did not have the desire to break with the past and completely reinvent their countries societies in fascist values. Paternal autocracies are different from conservatism in that they advocate a non-democratic form of government, and different from fascists in that their form of government has some checks to its power; the ideology was essentially a continuation of reactionism. After World War II, the ideology faded away, as the world was divided between the Eastern Bloc and Western Bloc, with little room left for Interwar strongmen.
Advertisement