Totalitarian Governments

It just so happens that along with this class I took Comparative Politics as part of my course load this semester. Within the last part of our class we talked about totalitarian governments. Non-democratic regimes can be identified by 3 main characteristics: the power monopoly, ideology, and mass mobilization. Within a totalitarian style government the power monopoly is with a leader, or a small number of political elites. The ideology in a totalitarian style government runs everything, as everything the government does and what they want the people to do is based off a strong ideology. The last part of a totalitarian regime is that there is some sort of mass mobilization the government has on the people. These definitions of a democracy can be applied to the totalitarian government of Panem in The Hunger Games. First, Panem is ruled by one leader that, being President Snow. President Snow has total rule, and can do whatever he pleases. Panem also has a strong ideology, that being the ideology of President Snow and the Capitol. Throughout the book the reader sees how President's strict ideology plays such a prevalent role within the 12 districts. Finally, Panem has mass mobilization with the annual Hunger Games. The Hunger Games mobilizes people from each district to participate in the games and fight to the death. Totalitarian governments have been seen all throughout history including China under Mao, and is still around today in countries such as North Korea that has a strong totalitarian government. In my opinion, totalitarian governments limit the people too much, which cause the government to lose legitimacy and be eventually overthrown by the people.