"Authoritian doesn't mean dictatorship, although a prevalent form of it is a dictatorship. I'll look into my political science notes and tell you later all the elements of both.
Edit: My notes + what is on the internet Authoritarian states are states in which either one person or a group of people rule through a mandate, not through free elections. Also, whatever they say goes. Examples of authoritarian states are oligarchies (rule by a group of elites), dictatorships (rule by one person as the leader), absolute monarchies (where the ruler inherits his/her power by bloodline and rules w/o any limitation; not to be confused with constitutional monarchies), juntas (rule by the military), and theocracies (rule by the state religion's leaders). There are 51 authoritarian states today. North Korea is the most authoritarian state.
In a democracy, they have elections with the following elements: free from coercion, fairly applying the rules, and open to all its citizen. Also, they have basic human rights involved as part of the rights of people. From there, there is many flavors of democracy (e.g., parliamentary/presidential, divisions of state rights/no division at all, set elections/can call election at anytime, etc.) There are 30 full democracies and 50 flawed democracies in the world today. Sweden is the most democratic nation.
Hybrid regime is where they don't have enough elements to be considered a democracy, but they are clearly not authoritarian either. There are 36 hybrid regimes, with Albania being the closest to a democracy and with Iraq being the closest to an authoritian state.
(All examples by country taken from a 2008 ranking of Democracy Index; situations might have changed since but this is the most current ranking). lol was looking at the same notes "
