Managed democracy

Managed democracy or guided democracy, also called managed democracy, is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto autocracy. Such governments are legitimized by free and fair elections, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and objectives.

In other words, the government controls elections so that people can exercise all their rights without actually changing public policy. While they follow basic democratic principles, there can be large deviations towards authoritarianism. Under managed democracy, the state's continued use of propaganda techniques prevents the electorate from having a significant impact on politics.

The concept of "guided democracy" It was developed in the 20th century by Walter Lippmann in his seminal work Public Opinion (1922) and by Edward Bernays in his work Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923).

After World War II, the term was used in Indonesia for the approach of government under the Sukarno administration from 1957 to 1966. Mao Zedong in his On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People uses the term guided democracy to refer to the regime of popular democratic dictatorship that he advocates, in which democracy is guided by centralism and freedom by discipline.

Today it is widely used in Russia, where Kremlin theorists introduced it into common practice, notably Gleb Pavlovsky. Princeton University professor Sheldon Wolin describes this process as inverted totalitarianism for a growing trend within the United States.^{[citation needed]}