System Justification in Authoritarian Regimes

What explains the enduring popularity of authoritarianism and authoritarian leaders? In addition to theories rooted in regime performance, propaganda, and punishment, I propose system justification, a well-established socio-cognitive motive favoring established systems and stability, as a novel explanation for authoritarian support. I theorize the relationship between system justification and political behaviors in authoritarian contexts and test this in data from two original surveys of Egyptian citizens. After validating that the system justification scale reflects needs for certainty and structure in an authoritarian political setting, I show it is strongly associated with preferences for authoritarian governance. An embedded experiment shows that security, infrastructure, and identity systemic threats mobilize high system justifiers, further increasing support for authoritarian governance. Finally, additional analyses reveal that system justification predicts attitudinal and behavioral support for a specific authoritarian regime. The findings suggest a central role for individual psychological motivation in authoritarian persistence.