Totalitarian régimes, such as that of National Socialist Germany, undergo an intense mobilisation of their many social groups. This would even seem to be their defining feature. Juan Linz, in advancing a clearcut distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian régimes, reckons that the former are essentially characterised by multiple processes of mobilisation, conducted by a mass party, in the name of an ideology and to the advantage of an omnipotent leader. He therefore deems a totalitarian system to be one which eliminates all pluralism, and which endows itself with an exclusive ideology and with a closed and constraining conception of the world, so as to integrate individuals more fully by provoking an intense collective mobilisation within the framework of a single party and various other secondary associations.

Conversely, authoritarian systems are in Juan Linz's view characterised by a limited pluralism, as also by the absence of a highly structured ideology to which everyone is subjected; there is, instead, a wide range of different beliefs. Political mobilisation is not very intense in a régime of this kind; the leader, or the small group holding power, wields it by means of frameworks which are ill-defined but which rule out what is purely and simply arbitrary. Because no ideology is forced upon the social actors, and because they do not identify emotionally with their leaders but prefer to concentrate upon problems arising in their private lives, mobilisation is significantly weaker under such régimes.