“Pravova derzhava”. Issue 36 (2025), pages 361–371.

DOI: 10.33663/0869-2491-2025-36-361-371

Skrypniuk Oleksandr
The Political Regime of the DPRK through the Prism of the Modern Authoritarian Regime

Introduction. The DPRK, or North Korea, is a unique case that cannot be excluded from the discourse on undemocratic political regimes such as modern authoritarianism.
This study is not political in nature and therefore does not aim to draw a clear distinction between undemocratic regimes. On the contrary, its fundamental task is to identify and explore the broad panorama of variations in modern authoritarian political regimes in the dynamics of their transformation, especially their adaptation to modern challenges, primarily in the constitutional and legal dimension. And since in previous works we considered the hybrid regime as a type of modern authoritarian regime due to its incorporation of democratic elements as an essentially authoritarian regime, it is worth extending this approach to the diametrically opposite part of the spectrum of undemocratic regimes — the totalitarian one.
The article traces the constitutional and legal nature of the combination of democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian components within the modern understanding of an authoritarian regime, using the example of the North Korean political regime. The hypothesis that totalitarian and hybrid political regimes can be considered opposite poles of the modern authoritarian political regime in its broad sense is proven. The phenomenon of the autocratization of the totalitarian political regime is substantiated and its main characteristics are identified.
Conclusions. The global trend toward autocratization also affects totalitarian regimes and manifests itself in the opposite effect, their weakening, even democratization.
The autocratization of totalitarianism means the erosion of rigid totalitarian elements by modern authoritarian, pseudo-democratic ones, which give grounds to define this political regime as a rigid variety of modern authoritarianism, as opposed to classical and soft authoritarianism (hybrid). On the one hand, they begin to imitate democracy, distorting its essence and masking the undemocratic nature of the regime, but at the same time somewhat weakening totalitarian pressure. On the other hand, with the spread of modern technologies, totalitarianism is simply unable to maintain total control over all spheres of life (for example, the dissemination of information) and to stop society’s demand for democratization. Therefore, the autocratization of the totalitarian regime of the DPRK manifests itself in its weakening and drift towards autocracy through the forced or imitative incorporation of certain democratic elements.
Key words: authoritarian, totalitarian, hybrid political regime, autocratization, DPRK, North Korea.

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