Authoritarian States (Part 11 of 13) - Consolidation and maintenance of power - Persuasion

Persuasion is also known as informal social control. The goal of informal social control is to be able to direct people’s behaviour, without the people being consciously aware that their behaviour is being directed. This includes a wide range of state controls over the media, education, and culture in general. Some of these themes we will return to in our next lesson on authoritarian policies, here we concentrate on what the historian David Welch calls the ‘essential twins’ of media control, censorship, and propaganda. From evasion that seeks to distract and depoliticize, and the hyper-patriotism of social solidarity, through to the ambitious social transformation brought about through the mobilisation of the public, propaganda was central to ability of the authoritarian state to control its people.
Another in the series of short films introducing the subject of modern authoritarian states for students of the IB Diploma.