The concept of authoritarianism is investigated in the context of a) political milieu conditions b) value orientations and c) youth culture identifications. a) The development of authoritarianism in connection with authoritarian social systems is often held to be connected with "east-west differences". Such differences cannot be confirmed. The concept of the political milieu is therefore used to explain the structural and functional importance of the differences in the degree of authoritarians in terms of their value orientations leads to a classical phenomenology of the authoritarian personality. c) Youth culture identification shows on the one hand that members of right-wing youth cultures define themselves explicitly via value orientation of the members of left-wing youth cultures seem much more autonomous. For left-wing youth cultures the definition in terms of values is only important if it is a question of rejection "typical right-wing values".