Dictatorship

• 1. Introduction

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  A dictatorship is a form of government built around one person who holds absolute or near-absolute political power. That person, the dictator, does not rule alone. Around them sits an inner circle of advisers, generals, and high-ranking officials, the very people who carry out orders and, at the same time, pose the greatest threat to the ruler. The Latin word dictator was not always an insult. In the early Roman Republic it named a constitutional office, a temporary grant of absolute power to handle some emergency. From that narrow legal role to the personalist strongmen of the present day, the idea has traveled a long way. How does one person hold an entire country in their grip? Why do some of these regimes collapse in five years while others outlast their founders? And why, after the Soviet Union dissolved, did the number of dictatorships fall and then begin climbing again? The answers run through coups and sham elections, secret police and oil money, and a quiet shift from terror to spin.

• 2. The Inner Circle

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  Elites are the primary political threat to a dictator. They form a class that holds a degree of power inside the regime and receive benefits in exchange for their support. They may be military officers, party members, friends, or family of the ruler. The dictator needs them, because the inner circle's support is necessary for orders to be carried out. That necessity makes the elites a check on the dictator's power. To enact policy, a dictator must either appease these elites or attempt to replace them.

  Unity among the elites decides how much room the dictator has. A unified inner circle can overthrow a dictator, forcing greater concessions to stay in power. This is especially true when the circle is made up of military officers with the resources to carry out a coup. Factions and divisions work the other way. When the elites are split, their ability to bargain shrinks, and the dictator's power becomes more unrestrained.

  The opposition is everyone outside the regime, plus anyone who does not support it. Organized opposition threatens stability by undermining public support and calling for regime change. A dictator may answer it by repressing it through force, modifying laws to restrict its power, or appeasing it with limited benefits. The opposition can be an external group, but it can also include current and former members of the dictator's own inner circle, the same people who once helped them rule.

• 3. Three Ways To Rule

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  Political scientist Barbara Geddes introduced a classification of dictatorships in 1999 that focuses on where power lies. Under this system there are three types. Military dictatorships are controlled by military officers. One-party dictatorships are controlled by the leadership of a political party. Personalist dictatorships are controlled by a single individual. Hybrid dictatorships combine these classifications.

  Military dictatorships are most common in developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and they tend to be unstable. The average duration of a military dictatorship is only five years, though one is often followed by additional military coups. Their leaders share a background that shapes how they govern. Drawing on their nonpartisan status, military dictators may see themselves as impartial guardians of the state. The predominance of violent force in military training shows up as an acceptance of violence as a political tool. Such rulers may also be less trusting or diplomatic, underestimating bargaining and compromise.

  One-party dictatorships are the most stable of the three. Between 1950 and 2016 they made up 57 percent of authoritarian regimes in the world. Because a ruling party permeates every level of society, these regimes see higher economic growth and are far less likely to face civil conflict, insurgency, or terrorism. The party also lends legitimacy and can manage a peaceful transfer of power at the end of a dictator's rule. That durability is one reason the form kept expanding faster than the others through the latter half of the 20th century.

• 4. The Personalist Trap

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  Personalist dictatorships place all power in the hands of a single individual, who gains greater access to key political positions and to the government's treasury. The elite corps is usually made up of close friends or family members the dictator handpicks. Such rulers typically favor loyalty over competence and carry a general distrust of intelligentsia. To keep appointees from collaborating, a personalist dictator segments the government, leaving the regime with no internal checks and balances.

  The dictator's dilemma sits at the heart of this design. Heavy reliance on repression gives every constituent a reason to falsify their preferences, so the dictator never learns the genuine popular mood or their real measure of support. Preference falsification, internal politics, data scarcity, and a restricted press all follow. To protect themselves, many personalist regimes install open ballots and impose heavy security and censorship on anyone whose private views do not match the leader's.

  Unrestrained at home, these regimes are more prone to corruption and more repressive than other forms. They are more likely to make radical shifts in foreign policy or start wars. On average they last twice as long as military dictatorships, but not as long as one-party ones, and they often collapse with the death of the dictator. Personalist rule has grown sharply, rising from 28 percent of authoritarian regimes in 1988 to 52 percent by 2010, making it the most common form of authoritarianism. The scholar Daniel Chirot suggests the classical model of tyranny is especially relevant for understanding 20th-century African personalist dictatorships, where rulers were unconstrained by legal checks and balances of power.

• 5. From Rome To Caudillos

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  A Roman dictator was a special magistrate, temporarily appointed by the consul during a crisis and granted total executive authority. At least 85 such dictators were chosen for the Roman Republic, the last to wage the Second Punic War. Sulla revived the dictatorship 120 years later after crushing a populist movement, and 33 years after that Julius Caesar took it up. Caesar broke the tradition of temporary dictatorships when he was made dictator perpetuo, a dictator for life, a step that led to the creation of the Roman Empire.

  Later regimes drew the same label. In Europe, the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell, formed in 1649 after the Second English Civil War, was described as a military dictatorship by contemporary opponents and some modern academics. Maximilien Robespierre was similarly described as a dictator while he controlled the National Convention and carried out the Reign of Terror in 1793 and 1794.

  The Spanish American wars of independence created many new Latin American governments in the early 19th century, and many fell under caudillos, personalist dictators who mostly came from a military background. Their rule was associated with pageantry and glamor. A caudillo was often nominally constrained by a constitution, yet had the power to draft a new one as he wished. Some are remembered for their cruelty, others honored as national heroes. The title itself was sometimes claimed openly. Giuseppe Garibaldi assumed the title of dictator while creating a provisional executive in Sicily during the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, a period known as the Dictatorship of Garibaldi.

• 6. The Century Of Extremes

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  Between World War I and World War II, far-left and far-right movements seized power across Europe through coups, using strikingly similar methods: cult of personality, concentration camps, forced labor, mass murder, and genocide. The aftermath of World War I redrew borders and unsettled older governments, opening the door for these movements to rise.

  Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks created the first communist state with Soviet Russia during the Russian Revolution in 1917, described as a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks consolidated power by 1922 to form the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin followed Lenin in 1924 and had imposed totalitarian rule by 1929. On the other side, Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 and began reforms in 1925 to build the first fascist dictatorship, fusing totalitarianism, fealty to the state, expansionism, corporatism, and anti-communism. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party created a second fascist dictatorship in Germany in 1933, taking absolute power through electoral victory, violence, and emergency powers. After defeat in World War II, the far-right dictatorships of Europe collapsed, with the exceptions of Spain and Portugal.

  Across the Atlantic, Latin America turned rapidly toward dictatorship in the 1930s. Populist movements grew stronger after the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. European fascism was imported as well, and the Vargas Era of Brazil drew heavily on the corporatism practiced in fascist Italy. The instability that fed all of this would only deepen as the Cold War divided the world into two camps.

• 7. Cold War Strongmen

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  Mobutu Sese Seko ruled the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a dictator for decades, renaming it Zaire. Most African dictatorships formed after countries gained independence during decolonisation. King Sobhuza II of Swaziland suspended the constitution in 1973 and ruled as an absolute monarch. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled Equatorial Guinea since leading a military coup in 1979. Habib Bourguiba ruled Tunisia until a 1987 coup led by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who then ruled until the Tunisian Revolution in 2011. Marxist-Leninist one-party states spread too, from Angola under the MPLA to Mozambique under FRELIMO and Somalia under Siad Barre.

  In Asia, the Chinese Civil War split the country between the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. Mao built a one-party communist state under Maoism and tightened his grip with the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, which targeted all elements of capitalism and traditionalism. After his death, Deng Xiaoping became the de facto leader and restored market economics. Anti-communist strongmen ruled elsewhere: Suharto took power in Indonesia in 1967, and Ferdinand Marcos governed the Philippines until the People Power Revolution in 1986. In Korea, Kim Il Sung created a Soviet-backed communist dictatorship in the North while Syngman Rhee created a US-backed nationalist one in the South.

  In Latin America, military rule stayed prominent though coups declined from the 1980s. Between 1967 and 1991-12 countries underwent at least one military coup, with Bolivia experiencing eight. Cuba became the only Soviet-backed dictatorship in the western hemisphere after the Cuban Revolution overthrew Fulgencio Batista. To hold power, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet organized Operation Condor, linking the intelligence agencies and secret police of South American dictators. The cohesion of those security services was no accident, and it points to why some of these regimes proved so hard to dislodge.

• 8. Spin And Survival

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  Between the 1990s and the 2000s, most dictators moved away from being larger-than-life figures who controlled the populace through terror. In their place came a trend of cultivating a positive public image and moderating rhetoric to integrate with the global community. These rulers are sometimes called spin dictators, monopolizing power by appealing to democratic sentiments while covertly pursuing repression. They embrace modern technology, manipulate information, regulate cyberspace, and slander dissidents. A few, like Kim Jong Un, still rule through deadly repression and state terrorism. North Korea is the only country in East Asia ruled as a hereditary dictatorship, passing from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il in 1994 and to Kim Jong Un in 2011.

  Sham elections are central to this new style. Most dictatorships hold elections to maintain legitimacy, but the opposition is not permitted to win. In the 20th century, only one-quarter of partisan dictatorships allowed opposition candidates to participate. Since the Cold War, that share has grown, and by 2018 roughly two-thirds of dictatorships permitted opposition candidates in semi-competitive elections where they still could not win. Massive approval ratings are weaponized as propaganda, galvanizing supporters against dissidents and portraying the dictator as a guardian without whom the country descends into chaos.

  Money and revolution help decide who endures. Most dictatorships exist in countries with high levels of poverty, which destabilizes government, with oil-rich Middle Eastern states and the East Asian Tigers as exceptions. Resource-based economies let a dictator extract rents without cooperating with other institutions. One study found that 70.63 percent of dictators who engage in oil drilling were still in power after five years, against 59.92 percent of non-oil producers. Regimes born in revolution are the most durable of all. Autocracies that emerged from revolutions lasted on average as long as three times nonrevolutionary regimes and collapsed at one-fifth the rate, protected by cohesive elites and loyal militaries that rarely defect when the turmoil comes.