National differences in cruelty and corruption do not alter a regime’s governmental form

Evidence

Drunkenness and incompetence, which loom so large in any description of Russia in the twenties and thirties and are still widespread today, played no role whatsoever in the story of Nazi Germany, while the unspeakable gratuitous cruelty in the German concentration and extermination camps seems to have been largely absent from the Russian camps, where the prisoners died of neglect rather than of torture. Corruption, the curse of the Russian administration from the beginning, was also present during the last years of the Nazi regime but apparently has been entirely absent from China after the revolution. Differences of this sort could be multiplied; they are of great significance and part and parcel of the national history of the respective countries, but they have no direct bearing on the form of government. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 40

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that Arendt’s ‘form of government’ concept is formal and structural, decoupled from national character or incidental practice — a key distinction for the toolkit.