The Ideological Correspondence Hypothesis: How Epistemology Determines Governance Strategy in Authoritarian Regimes

The comparative analysis of authoritarianism struggles to explain why regimes emerging from similar conditions of systemic stress often adopt diametrically opposed governance strategies. While contemporary structural-demographic models excel at forecasting the temporal onset of crises, they remain largely silent on the consequential problem of prognosis: forecasting the specific morphology of the successor regime. This paper addresses this predictive gap by proposing the Ideological Correspondence Hypothesis. We posit that the operational strategy of a regime is structurally determined by the epistemological architecture of its dominant ideology—its fundamental theory of knowledge. We argue that regimes grounded in Rationalist-Materialist epistemologies, such as Marxism-Leninism, are cognitively compelled to prioritize Institutional Engineering, creating systems that are robust but brittle in the face of legitimacy deficits. Conversely, regimes grounded in Irrationalist-Mythic epistemologies, such as Völkisch nationalism, instinctively prioritize Charismatic Mobilization, generating intense loyalty but remaining structurally vulnerable to elite fragmentation. To quantify this divergence, we introduce two composite metrics: the Institutional Capacity Index (ICI) and the Charismatic Mobilization Index (CMI). The framework further posits a universal Two-Phase Model of regime evolution, demonstrating that all post-crisis regimes begin in a high-CMI "Shamanic" phase driven by the structural necessity of personalized leadership. The divergence into Engineer or Shaman modalities occurs only in the second phase, a process whose velocity and direction are measured by the Cult Trajectory Index (CTI), a derivative metric that demonstrates high predictive accuracy regarding long-term regime survival. Through a comparative analysis of paradigmatic historical cases—contrasting the institutionalizing trajectory of Stalin’s USSR with the charismatic intensification of Nazi Germany, and examining the internal epistemological shift in China from Mao to Deng—we demonstrate the model's validity. We reinterpret Stalin’s Great Purge not as an act of paranoia, but as a rational inter-temporal trade-off consistent with the Engineer modality: a preemptive liquidation of alternative power centers to ensure regime resilience in a catastrophic war. Ultimately, this paper offers a falsifiable framework for forecasting the post-crisis morphology of authoritarian regimes. It moves the study of ideology from descriptive sociology to predictive political science by treating a regime’s theory of knowledge as its operational code, demonstrating that the divergent paths of authoritarian systems are not accidents of personality, but the inevitable unfolding of their cognitive DNA.