Centralized Authority: Swift and Decisive Governance in Authoritarian
Centralized management in authoritarian regimes provides the opportunity to concentrate power and ensure a unified direction of state policy, allowing quick and decisive decision-making without the lengthy consensus discussions characteristic of democratic systems. In this authoritarian model, centralized leadership makes it possible to consolidate the most critical areas of state activity—from military affairs to economic management and the media. This offers the following advantages:1. Unified Leadership and Coordinated Actions. As noted:"Military affairs, organs of political supervision, finances, [Cheka], various forms of communication, transport routes, the guiding principles of the mining and processing industries, sectors of the national economy of overall state significance, and naturally, the relations with other states should be strictly centralized and not subject to the governance of autonomous republics..." (source: link txt, page: 1950).This emphasizes that centralized management ensures the coordination of top priorities, which is especially important under conditions of both external and internal instability.2. Overcoming Fragmentation and Consolidating Efforts. A centralized system minimizes the risk of fragmentation—often seen in democratic systems where the people's will can become divided. In this context, it is useful to recall that even in historically "democratic centralism," initial successes were achieved through the solidarity and coordinated actions of collectives:"Congregations in the early 17th century, as well as the Soviet Communist Party in the 1920s, represented a minority in an unfriendly world, and their strength lay in unity and solidarity. Under such circumstances, 'democratic centralism' was more acceptable than later, when the crisis had passed and the pressure of conformism had set in." (source: link txt, page: 562).This indicates that unified and centralized leadership makes it possible to mobilize quickly in challenging conditions, which is hard to accomplish amidst the disunity typical of democracies.3. Systematization and Orderliness in Governance. Centralized management establishes a fundamentally clear distribution of responsibilities and a single developmental trajectory in those areas where unity of decision-making is critically important for state stability. As stated:"The utmost centralization of the first group of issues leads to supreme unified leadership in everything that in essence should be [unified]..." (source: link txt, page: 2131).This approach helps the state avoid fragmentation, which often results in conflicting interests and hampers the implementation of strategically significant initiatives.Thus, the advantage of centralized management in authoritarian regimes lies in its ability to act quickly, decisively, and cohesively under conditions that demand unified efforts—even if such a system might overlook the diversity of opinions typical of democratic systems.