Dictator

"Dictators" redirects here. For the American band, see The Dictators.
For the ancient Roman title, see Roman dictator. For other uses, see Dictator (disambiguation).

20th-century leaders typically described as dictators, from left to right and top to bottom, include Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany; Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile; Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party; Benito Mussolini, Duce and Prime Minister of Italy; and Kim Il Sung, Supreme Leader of North Korea.
Julius Caesar outmaneuvered his opponents in Ancient Rome to install himself as dictator for life.

A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a polity.[1] The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency.[1] Like the terms "tyrant" and "autocrat", dictator came to be used almost exclusively as a non-titular term for oppressive rule. In modern usage the term dictator is generally used to describe a leader who holds or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power.

Dictatorships are often characterised by some of the following: suspension of elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of the rule of law; and the existence of a cult of personality centered on the leader. Dictatorships are often one-party or dominant-party states.[2][3] A wide variety of leaders coming to power in different kinds of regimes, such as one-party or dominant-party states and civilian governments under a personal rule, have been described as dictators.

  1. ^ a b "Lessons in On-Line Reference PublishingMerriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Merriam-WebsterMerriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus. Merriam-WebsterMerriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia. Merriam-Webster". The Library Quarterly. 71 (3): 392–399. July 2001. doi:10.1086/603287. ISSN 0024-2519. S2CID 148183387.
  2. ^ Papaioannou, Kostadis; vanZanden, Jan Luiten (2015). "The Dictator Effect: How long years in office affect economic development". Journal of Institutional Economics. 11 (1): 111–139. doi:10.1017/S1744137414000356. hdl:1874/329292. S2CID 154309029.
  3. ^ Olson, Mancur (1993). "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development". American Political Science Review. 87 (3): 567–576. doi:10.2307/2938736. JSTOR 2938736. S2CID 145312307.