Project Features

The New Authoritarian Character: Comparing Germany and Brazil

How do new authoritarian movements combine freedom and authority? A comparative study of Germany and Brazil examines contemporary authoritarian attitudes and character structures.

The global rise of new authoritarian movements has reignited debates about the social and psychological foundations of authoritarianism. This research project, based at the University of Passau and funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, explores how contemporary forms of authoritarianism differ from the “old” authoritarian character described by Adorno and others in the mid-20th century.

Focusing on Germany and Brazil, the project at the Chair of Political Science with focus on Comparative Government (Prof. Dr. Lars Rensmann, Dr. Arthur Oliveira Bueno, Dr. David Jäger) investigates how ideas of freedom and authority have evolved under neoliberal conditions. While traditional authoritarian personalities upheld external authority and moral convention, today’s movements often seem to fuse freedom and authority into one ideal — the belief that personal autonomy and market success are expressions of the same principle. This paradox gives rise to what the researchers describe as a “new authoritarian character,” blending neoliberal concepts of freedom with reactionary or illiberal worldviews.

Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines survey research and in-depth interviews in both Germany and Brazil to examine authoritarian attitudes, character structures, and their social contexts. Quantitative analyses provide a broad view of the prevalence and distribution of such attitudes, while qualitative interviews and discourse analyses uncover their psychological and cultural dimensions. This integrated approach enables a systematic comparison of the social-psychological dynamics behind new authoritarian movements in two distinct societies.

By comparing these cases, the project asks whether the observed patterns represent a single emerging form of authoritarianism or two context-specific variants shaped by different histories and social structures. The findings aim to enrich theoretical debates in critical social theory and political psychology while offering insights into how neoliberal ideals can intertwine with illiberal tendencies within democratic societies.

Symbolic image: Wikimedia Commons