Authoritarianism before democracy was standardised: conceptualising interwar-era electoral authoritarianism, the liberal inheritance, and institutional-hierarchical alternatives

Abstract This article conceptually and empirically explores the Interwar Era’s variant of the ‘electoral authoritarian’ regime-type, relying on a unique recategorisation of all Central and Eastern European states to systematically classify non-democratic regimes between the two World Wars. Modern electoral authoritarian regimes are notable for combining the ‘standard model’ of electoralist structural features common to contemporary democracy with identifiably authoritarian political orders. Electoralist regimes of the period were distinct from those of today, with a greater emphasis on anti-political dominant parties, the inheritance of 19 th century-style parliamentarism in terms of both institutional and political culture, and a reliance on unaccountable apex executives who nevertheless allowed authoritarian forms of multiparty politics. The article also introduces the era’s primary alternative for institutionalized regimes that do not fit the simple label of traditional dictatorship or electoral authoritarianism: the ‘institutional-hierarchical’ model. This characterizes innovations in corporatist-style economic and sectoral representation, as well as explicitly top-down, non-electoralist authoritarian constitutional structures and mobilized, single-party institutions. The article reviews all Interwar regimes in the region, providing alternative regime conceptualizations, exploratory classifications, and an illustrative case-study of Poland’s post-1926 Interwar style electoral authoritarian regime, highlighting both the survival of older electoralist models alongside a growing movement towards both more personalist and institutional-hierarchical formats by the 1930s.