The negation of a positive concept differs from its supposed opposite.

Evidence

The position defended here is that the negation of a positive pole concept such as democracy is literally “not-democracy.” The conceptual claim—which as we will see has huge causal implications—is that autocracy is not the same as not-democracy. One can see this often in semantic practice when people state that “peace is not just the absence of war.” A person making this statement is rejecting the idea that peace = not-war. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 123

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘not-democracy’ from ‘autocracy’ — the negation of a concept is not identical to its bipolar opposite.
• XREF: Connects to the long-running peace-studies debate over negative versus positive peace (Galtung), and to measurement literature on bipolar versus unipolar scales.