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Dictatorship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Forms of government
A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by a dictator. It has Part of the Politics series
three possible meanings:
List of forms of government
n Roman dictator was a political office of the Roman Republic. Roman dictators were allocated
absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor n Anarchism
unaccountable,being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such n Aristocracy
dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the n Authoritarianism
Roman Emperors exercised power much more personally and arbitrarily. n Autocracy
n In contemporary usage, dictatorship refers to an autocratic form of absolute rule by leadership n Communist state
unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state. n Democracy
n For some scholars, like Joseph C.W. Chan from the University of Hong Kong, dictatorship is a form
of government that has the power to govern without consent of those being governed, while Direct democracy
totalitarianism describes a state that regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior of Representative democracy
the people. In other words, dictatorship concerns the source of the governing power (where the
power comes from) and totalitarianism concerns the scope of the governing power (what the n Despotism
government regulates). In this sense, dictatorship (government without people's consent) is a contrast n Dictatorship
to democracy (government whose power comes from people) and totalitarianism (government n Feudalism
controls every aspect of people's life) corresponds to liberalism (government emphasizes individual n Kleptocracy
right and liberty). Though the definitions of the terms differ, they are related in reality as most of the n Kritarchy
dictatorship states tend to show totalitarian characteristics. When governments' power does not come n Krytocracy
from the people, their power is not limited and tend to expand their scope of power to control every n Minarchism
aspect of people's life. n Meritocracy
n Monarchy

Contents Absolute monarchy

Constitutional monarchy
n 1 Postwar Era and the Cold War
n 2 Dictatorships in fiction n Ochlocracy
n 3 See also n Oligarchy
n Plutocracy
n 4 Further reading
n Republic

Postwar Era and the Cold War Mixed government

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In the postwar era, dictatorship became a frequent feature of military government, especially in Latin Constitutional republic
America, Asia, and Africa. In the case of many African or Asian former colonies, after achieving their Parliamentary republic
independence in the postwar wave of decolonization, presidential regimes were gradually transformed into Socialist republic
personal dictatorships. These regimes often proved unstable, with the personalization of power in the hands Capitalist republic
of the dictator and his associates, making the political system uncertain.
n Single-party state
It's often alleged that the rise of these dictatorships were substantially influenced by the Cold War n Thalassocracy
dynamics. Both the United States and the USSR managed to expand or maintain their influence zones by n Theocracy
financing paramilitary and political groups and encouraging coups d'état, especially in Africa, that have led n Theonomy
n Totalitarianism
many countries to brutal civil wars and consequent manifestations of authoritarianism. In Latin America
Politics Portal
the threat of either communism or capitalism was often used as justification for dictatorship, while in the
Middle East the desire to oppose Israel and later Islamic fundamentalism proved an important motivating pattern.

Dictatorships in fiction
In fiction, dictatorship has sometimes been portrayed as the political system of choice for controlling dystopian societies, such as in George
Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We", Fritz Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar", and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".

See also
n Absolute monarchy
n Totalitarianism
n Plutocracy
n Kleptocracy
n Generalissimo
n Maximum Leader
n Military rule
n Military dictatorship
n Police state
n Elective dictatorship
n Constitutional dictatorship
n Dictator

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Further reading
n Friedrich, Carl J.; Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. (1965). Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 2nd ed., Praeger.
n Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce; Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson and James D. Morrow (2003). The Logic of Political Survival. The
MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-63315-9.

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Category: Forms of government

n This page was last modified 20:56, 18 November 2007.

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