Publication of IJGHMI
The Emotional Architecture of Authoritarianism: Anxiety, Attachment, and Political Obedience in Late Modern Societies
Author : Dr. Noah Steinberg
Open Access | Volume 2 Issue 3 | Jul–Sep 2025
https://doi.org/10.63665/IJGHMI_Y2F3A002
How to Cite :
Dr. Noah Steinberg, "The Emotional Architecture of Authoritarianism: Anxiety, Attachment, and Political Obedience in Late Modern Societies", International Journal of Global Humanities and Management Insights [IJGHMI], Volume 2, Issue 3 (Jul–Sep 2025), pp. 8–18.
Abstract
Abstract - Authoritarianism in postmodern societies cannot be accounted for in institutional breakdown or ideological control; it has to be theorized as an affective structure, based on citizens' emotional lives. This essay probes the emotional constitution of authoritarianism how fear, attachment, and desires for security influence political compliance. Using political psychology theory, affect theory, and critical sociology, it contends that anxiety is both a symptom of existential ambiguity and a means of regulation to appeal to a population in which control is safety. Attachment is then the affective glue that adheres individuals to the figures of authority who give them security during times of disorder. Through comparative examination of modern authoritarian movements, the research uncovers how narrative effect of protection, belonging, and fear serves to support the legitimation of coercive power. And yet the same emotional frameworks responsible for producing obedience create dissonance, depletion, and prospects for affective breakage. The article's conclusion is that envisioning authoritarianism as an emotional architecture undoes a remaking of political agency not as rational preference-exercising, but as embodied and profoundly visceral reaction to insecurity and desire in late modern times. The approach prioritizes the ethical imperative of developing emotional literacy and resilience as democratic counterpowers.
Keywords
Keywords – Authoritarianism, Political Psychology, Affect Theory, Anxiety, Attachment, Obedience, Emotional Governance, Political Subjectivity, Late Modernity, Democratic Resilience.
Conclution
A. Synthesis of Findings
Emotional Architecture as Scaffolding and Achilles' Heel of Authoritarianism The discussion above has shown that emotion is not a performative phenomenon of politics but an active organisational construct shaping the power dynamics and compliance. Authoritarianism, in its turn, is not based on coercion and ideology alone but relies on an unawed emotional architecture built using fear, attachment, and nostalgia for order. Anxiety produces compliance, attachment produces loyalty, and spectacle compresses identification into something concrete but all these very same very affects also carry seeds of inherent vulnerabilities. Ironically, emotional regimes can never be permanent because emotions are dynamic, relational, and reversible. Fear, if habituated, turns to resentment; attachment, if broken, turns to disillusionment. Thus, the effect infrastructure of authoritarian domination itself carries its flaw: the inevitable possibility of affect depletion and ultimate recombination of moral sentiment. Here is where the crisis of feeling typically comes prior to the breakdown of authoritarianism when citizens no longer feel those sentiments they have learned to simulate.
B. Future Directions
Towards an Affective Ethics of Democratic Renewal If authoritarianism is sustained by the exploitation of feeling, then democracy needs to be renewed by the cultivation of affective ethics. Future policy and research need to consider that democratic resilience is not only a matter of institutional design but also one of emotional education. Civil society requires emotional literacy the capacity to distinguish when fear is being engineered, when sympathy is being suppressed, and when belonging is being weaponized. Political pedagogy needs to appeal, therefore, not merely to reason, but to the ethical education of feeling: teaching citizens to value vulnerability, diversity, and empathy as political virtues. Emotional ethics cannot be reduced to sloppy sentimentalism; it is a pragmatic foundation for democratic resilience. Only when societies can feel democratically so that they can maintain sympathy in times of conflict and hope in times of uncertainty can they withstand the ongoing temptations of authoritarian ease.
C. Reclaiming the Emotional Commons
The task of modern societies is to reclaim the emotional commons the shared affective spaces that make possible trust, communication, and collective imagination. This reclamation will take institutional courage and cultural imagination: artists, educators, journalists, and social movement activists will need to collaborate to regain the affective bases of democratic life. To achieve that, they will need to struggle with the long-term histories of fear that persist even when political regimes fall, and make emotional memory a source of solidarity rather than conflict. The price of obedience in feeling, once understood, can then be the ethical base upon which renewed democratic feeling is built.References
[1] Osborne, D., Costello, T. H., Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2023). The psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(4), 220–232. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00161-4 [2] Roccato, M., & Russo, S. (2017). Right-wing authoritarianism, societal threat to safety, and psychological distress. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(5), 600–610. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2236 [3] Veit, S., Hirsch, M., Giebler, H., Gründl, J., & Schürmann, B. (2024). Submission or Rebellion? Disentangling the relationships of anxiety, attitudes toward authorities, and right-wing populist party support. Political Behavior. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241240717 [4] Stempel, K. E. (2025). A state of the art on emotions in the context of public policymaking. Statistics, Politics and Policy, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2025-0021 [5] Demertzis, N. (Ed.). (2013). Emotions in Politics: The Affect Dimension in Political Tension. Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan. [6] Gormley, B., & Lopez, F. G. (2010). Authoritarian and homophobic attitudes: Gender and adult attachment style differences. Journal of Homosexuality, 57(4), 525-538. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918361003608715 [7] Gaziano, C. (2017). Adult attachment style and political ideology. SAGE Open, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017724493 [8] Parent, J., Nix, R. L., Shelton, T. L., Hinojosa, C., & Bacchini, D. (2020). Parenting, temperament, and attachment security as antecedents of political orientation: Longitudinal evidence from early childhood to age 26. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001006 [9] Onraet, E., & Van Hiel, A. (2014). Are right-wing adherents mentally troubled? Recent insights on the relationship of right-wing attitudes with threat and psychological ill-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 27–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413514249 [10] Roccato, M., Russo, S., & others. (2017). Right-wing authoritarianism, societal threat to safety, and psychological distress. European Journal of Social Psychology. [11] Falkenberg, M., Zollo, F., Quattrociocchi, J., Pfeffer, J., & Baronchelli, A. (2023). Affective and interactional polarization align across countries. Preprint. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.18535 [12] Ellefsen, R., & Sandberg, S. (2022). Black Lives Matter: The role of emotions in political engagement. Sociology, 56(1), 60-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385221081385 [13] Van Hiel, A., Onraet, E., & others (2014). See [9]. [14] Study on authoritarian attitudes and autonomic reactivity: Authoritarian attitudes are associated with higher autonomic reactivity to stress and lower recovery. (Authors: …) Psychophysiology, Year. (You will need to add full author list once you access the article.) [15] The existential function of right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Personality. Year, Volume (Issue), Pages. (Author: …) [16] [16] Clarifying the structure and nature of left-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, etc. (Authors: …) (2022). [17] “Purity, politics, and polarization: Political ideology moderates’ threat-induced shifts in moral purity beliefs.” British Journal of Social Psychology, 2023. bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com [18] Duschinsky, R., Greco, M., & Solomon, J. (2015). The Politics of Attachment: Lines of Flight with Bowlby, Deleuze and Guattari. Theory, Culture & Society, 32(7-8), 173-195. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276415605577 [19] Terpe, S. (2016). Negative Hopes: Social Dynamics of Isolating and Passive Forms of Hope. Sociological Research Online, 21(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.3799