Everyday authoritarianism: politics of stigmatisation and human insecurities

This introduction to the Special Issue ‘Everyday Authoritarianism’ offers a systematic theorisation of the mechanisms, agents, scope conditions, and outcomes of everyday authoritarianism. We highlight two interlinked mechanisms, stigmatisation and the production of human insecurities, which normalise authoritarian power relations through the language of empowerment, participation, and innovation and embed them in everyday social, economic, technological, and cultural life across regime types. Drawing on seven contributions from contexts of executive aggrandisement, state failure, deindustrialisation, and urban decay, we discuss three outcomes of everyday authoritarianism: discourses rendering exclusion and hierarchy ‘common sense’; compliance and opportunistic accommodation as conformity becomes socially safer and materially necessary; and surveillance decentralised onto ordinary citizens. The Special Issue shows that democracy is a struggle not only over formal institutions and laws but also over mundane matters that reproduce stigmatisation and insecurity, from virtual currencies and housing finance to digital space, the marketplace, and corporate social responsibility.