Based on Immanuel Kant's dictum by which he states that only goodwill can be considered unconditionally good, both within and without this world, this article seeks to explain how violence can evolve from goodwill. The world - enhancing potential, which is inherent to goodwill and - in an abstract sense - to ideocracy, too, can be further increased by enlightenment. Therefore, one is to create the educational preconditions for improving the world by one's own means. This approach is followed by technocratic ideocracies. Furthermore, totalitarian ideocracies possess "higher moralism", which calls for the unity of theory and practice.

Noch immer ist das Konzept des Totalitarismus stark mit der auf absolute Kontrolle der Gesellschaft abzielenden Zentralisierung von allumfassender Macht verbunden. Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit einem Konzept des Totalitarismus, das zwar bereits ansatzweise von Friedrich und Brzezinski aufgegriffen, aber erst in den letzten zehn Jahren zunehmend bekannter wurde. Totalitarismus wird dabei als ein Experiment der Sozialkonstruktion verstanden. Es zielt darauf, um jeden Preis eine neue Gesellschaft zu erschaffen und eine anthropologische Revolution in Gang zu setzen. Angewandt auf die "Ideokratie" führt dies zu der Annahme, dass einige totalitäre Regime sich zeitweise nicht nur durch die Manipulation von Gedanken legitimiert haben, sondern auch durch eine Welle populistischer Begeisterung für die von den Machtträgern versprochene Aussicht auf eine neue Ära, die aus der alten Ordnung hervorgeht. Gewalttaten sind diesem "palin­genetischen Mythos" nach weniger ein Mittel der barbarischen Zerstörung, sondern legitimieren sich vielmehr als Geburtswehen zur Etablierung einer neuen Ordnung. In diesem Beitrag wird diese populistische Begeisterung im Umkehrschluss mit dem Bestreben in Verbindung gebracht, den entzauberten und nihilistischen Tendenzen der Moderne übersinnliche Phänomene entgegenzusetzen.

This paper shows that ideocracies, especially communist ideocracies, have a specific pattern of cooptation and incorporation of elites and ordinary citizens, which is different from all other political regime types. Ideocracies dominate society through and through by a net of measures that make the citizens materially dependent on the state, from which the individual citizen cannot escape. The strong concentration of the distribution of goods and positions in the hands of the ideocratic state goes hand in glove with the great power to repress non - co - opted people. However, there are trade - offs in the ideocratic pattern of cooptation. The tendency of ideocracies to infantilize its citizens, may provoke reluctance even among otherwise politically indifferent citizens. Nevertheless, despite the trade - offs, the specific pattern of cooptation and incorporation of citizens and elites might help to explain why communist ideocracies were very durable in comparison to other types of political regimes.

This article explores the role of the output legitimacy in autocracies. A review of recent contributions to the study of autocracies and the analysis of data on outputs and outcomes do not support the view that autocracies are capable of generating a high level of output legitimacy through high levels of political performance. A wider range of barriers such as performance dilemmas, resource constraints, deficient processing of information, and trade - offs tend to inhibit the generation of large - scale output legitimacy in most autocracies. The solution suggested by rational choice institutionalism for the "dictator's dilemma", namely repression and political exchange, is, thus, in most cases either not feasible or feasible only in a limited, non - sustainable fashion. These findings lend support to the view that non - democracies suffer from a comparative structural "autocracy disadvantage". Autocratic leaders are therefore faced with the difficult task of having to choose between alternative modes of legitimation - as long as they prefer to escape the "dictator's dilemma" - or acceptance of the dictator's dilemma and increasing levels of repression in order to sustain power.

This essay deals with the interplay between cooptation, legitimation, and repression with a special emphasis on the Nazi attitude and the behavior towards politically indifferent Germans. It analyzes the ideological framework of justification for the repressive Nazi politics that were also used to recruit followers who had a clean conscience and felt they were doing the right thing. Nazi ideology rejected the bourgeois - Christian concepts of universal human rights and dignity as anachronistic while simultaneously using these concepts for ideological purposes. Finally, the article shows how opportunism and radical activism stood side by side in Nazi Germany, with both of these attitudes contributing to the stabilization of the Nazi regime.

The communist party in the German Democratic Republic claimed governmental legitimacy for being the builder of an antifascist state on the way to communism. The simulation of parliamentarism also played a role and, for a short period of time in the 1960s, the cooptation of technocrats as well. In the 1970s and 1980s the most important part of legitimacy was derived from the welfare policy under Erich Honecker. At no time was the political system stable without a considerable amount of repression. In the Soviet Occupation Zone and the early GDR repression was characterized by Stalinist terror : internment camps, military courts, and harsh punishment. Rigorous repression in 1952/53 and 1960/61 was connected to the attempts to accelerate the socialist revolution ( normative legitimacy ). From 1949 to 1989 a gradual mitigation of repression took place, but not steadily. Relaxation in the watersheds such as in 1956, 1963, and 1971 came to a halt in 1960, 1965, and 1976 ff. Never­theless, more lenient times of repression brought irreversible mitigations. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s open terror was replaced by less visible forms of repression. Cooptation of non - communists played a marginal role in the history of the GDR. In the early phase it was nothing but a phase - out model. Later on cooptation was by and large a recruitment process under the control of the SED, which generated a rather homogenous elite selected by its fidelity to the socialist state.

This article examines the interaction of legitimation, cooptation, and repression in China's authoritarian consolidation. It shows that the totalitarian regime under Mao Zedong was characterized by a low degree of performance and cooptation and that it had to rely on extreme repression and ideological indoctrination to stay in power. After the death of Mao Zedong, the character of the regime changed markedly. The new elites made sparing use of repression and indoctrination but did not compensate the abdication of coercive and ideological control with increases in the performance or cooptation of powerful social groups. This induced a power vacuum, in which popular discontent against increasing corruption, rising inequality, and high inflation fermented. The student demonstrations of 1989, which quickly spread to include other population groups, were an expression of this discontent. Learning from this crisis, the communist party leadership subsequently initiated reforms to increase regime performance and co - opted an increasing number of social groups. The use of repression remained a last resort option. The central findings of this contribution are that these measures significantly improved the stability of China's one - party autocracy.