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Dictator

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Political leader who possesses absolute power
"Dictators" redirects here. For the American band, seeThe Dictators.
For the ancient Roman title, seeRoman dictator. For other uses, seeDictator (disambiguation).

20th-century leaders typically described as dictators (from left to right and top to bottom):Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union;Adolf Hitler of Germany;Augusto Pinochet of Chile;Mao Zedong of China;Benito Mussolini of Italy; andKim Il Sung of North Korea
Julius Caesar outmaneuvered his opponents in ancient Rome to install himself as dictator for life.

Adictator is a political leader who possesses absolutepower. Adictatorship is defined as a state ruled by a dictator.[1][2] The word originated as the title of aRoman dictator elected by theRoman Senate to rule the republic intimes of emergency.[2] 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 termdictator 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 andcivil liberties; proclamation of astate of emergency;rule by decree;repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of therule of law; and the existence of acult of personality centered on the leader. Dictatorships are oftenone-party ordominant-party states.[3][4] 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.

Etymology

Main article:Roman dictator

The worddictator comes from theLatin worddictātor,agent noun fromdictare (say repeatedly, assert, order).[5][6] A dictator was aRoman magistrate given sole power for a limited duration. Originally an emergency legal appointment in theRoman Republic and theEtruscan culture, the termdictator did not have the negative meaning it has now.[7] It started to get its modern negative meaning withCornelius Sulla's ascension to the dictatorship followingSulla's civil war, making himself the first Dictator in Rome in more than a century (during which the office was ostensibly abolished) as well asde facto eliminating the time limit and need of senatorial acclamation.[8]

He avoided a major constitutional crisis by resigning the office after about one year, dying a few years later.Julius Caesar followed Sulla's example in 49 BC and in February 44 BC was proclaimedDictator perpetuo, "Dictator in perpetuity", officially doing away with any limitations on his power, which he kept untilhis assassination the following month. Following Caesar's assassination, his heirAugustus was offered the title of dictator, but he declined it. Later successors also declined the title of dictator, and usage of the title soon diminished among Roman rulers.[9]

Modern era

Country ratings for 2016 fromFreedom House'sFreedom in the World 2017[10]
  Free (86)  Partly Free (59)  Not Free (50)
2017Democracy Index byThe Economist in which countries marked in different shades of red are considered undemocratic, with many being dictatorships[11]

As late as the second half of the 19th century, the termdictator had occasional positive implications. For example, during theHungarian Revolution of 1848, the national leaderLajos Kossuth was often referred to as dictator, without any negative connotations, by his supporters and detractors alike, although his official title was that of regent-president.[12] When creating a provisional executive in Sicily during theExpedition of the Thousand in 1860,Giuseppe Garibaldi officially assumed the title of "dictator" (seeDictatorship of Garibaldi).[13] Shortly afterwards, during the 1863January uprising in Poland, "Dictator" was also the official title of four leaders, the first beingLudwik Mierosławski.[14]

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea is Africa's longest serving dictator.[15][16]

Past that time, however, the termdictator assumed an invariably negative connotation. In popular usage, adictatorship is often associated with brutality and oppression. As a result, it is often also used as a term of abuse against political opponents. Many dictators create acult of personality around themselves and they have also come to grant themselves increasingly grandiloquent titles and honours.[17] For instance,Idi Amin Dada, who had been a British army lieutenant prior toUganda's independence from Britain in October 1962, subsequently styled himself "His Excellency,President for Life,Field MarshalAl HadjiDoctor[A] Idi Amin Dada, VC,[B]DSO,MC, Conqueror of theBritish Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular".[18] In the movieThe Great Dictator (1940),Charlie Chaplin satirized not onlyAdolf Hitler but the institution of dictatorship itself.[19]

Characteristics

Dictators usually maintain power throughpolitical repression of any opposition and the consolidation of other influential or powerful members of society. The general public is controlled throughindoctrination andpropaganda, and an autocracy may attempt to legitimize itself in the eyes of the public through appeals topolitical ideology, religion, or foreign hostility.[20] Some dictatorships establish legislatures,unfair elections, orshow trials to further exercise control while presenting the appearance of democracy.[21]

Benevolent dictatorship

Main article:Benevolent dictatorship

Abenevolent dictatorship is a concept that describes a government in which an authoritarian leader exercises absolute political power over the state but is perceived to do so with regard for the benefit of the population as a whole, standing in contrast to the decidedly malevolent stereotype of a dictator. The label has been applied to leaders such asMustafa Kemal Atatürk ofTurkey(1923–38),[22]Josip Broz Tito ofSFR Yugoslavia (1953–80),[23] andLee Kuan Yew of Singapore (1959–90).[24]

Military roles

The association between a dictator and the military is a common one. Many dictators take great pains to emphasize their connections with the military and they often wear military uniforms. In some cases, this is perfectly legitimate; for instance,Francisco Franco was a general in the Spanish Army before he becameChief of State of Spain,[25] andManuel Noriega was officially commander of thePanamanian Defense Forces.[26]

Crowd manipulation

Some dictators have been masters ofcrowd manipulation, such asBenito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Others were more prosaic speakers, such asJoseph Stalin andFrancisco Franco. Typically, the dictator's people seize control of all media, censor or destroy the opposition, and give strong doses of propaganda daily, often built around acult of personality.[27]

Mussolini and Hitler used similar titles referring to them as "the Leader". Mussolini used "IlDuce" and Hitler was generally referred to as "derFührer", both meaning 'Leader' in Italian and German respectively. Franco used a similar title, "ElCaudillo" ("the Head", 'the chieftain').[28] In the case of Franco, the title "Caudillo" did have a longer history for political-military figures in both Latin America and Spain. Franco also used the phrase "By the Grace of God" on coinage or other material displaying him asCaudillo.[29]

Human rights abuses, war crimes and genocides

Under Syrian dictatorBashar al-Assad,Syrian military inflicted industrial-scale atrocities on civilian population during theSyrian civil war. These include hundreds of chemical attacks, such as theGhouta chemical attack, the largest chemical attack in the 21st century.[30][31][32]

Over time, dictators have been known to use tactics that violate human rights. For example, under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, government policy was enforced bysecret police and theGulag system of prison labour camps. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time. Data collected from Soviet archives gives the death toll from Gulags as 1,053,829.[33] TheInternational Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant forSudan's military dictatorOmar al-Bashir over allegedwar crimes inDarfur.

Similar crimes were committed duringChairmanMao Zedong'srule over thePeople's Republic of China during China'sCultural Revolution, where Mao set out to purge dissidents, primarily through the use of youth groups strongly committed tohis cult of personality,[34] and duringAugusto Pinochet'sjunta inChile.[35] Some dictators have been associated withgenocide on certain races or groups; the most notable and wide-reaching example isthe Holocaust,Adolf Hitler's genocide of eleven million people, of whom six million were Jews.[36] Later on inDemocratic Kampuchea,General SecretaryPol Pot and his policies killed an estimated 1.7 million people (out of a population of 7 million) during his four-year dictatorship.[37] As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "theHitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant".[38]

Modern usage in formal titles

Giuseppe Garibaldi, celebrated as one of the greatest generals of modern times[39] and as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe,[40] who fought in many military campaigns that led toItalian unification. He proclaimed himselfdictator of Sicily in 1860 during theExpedition of the Thousand

Because of its negative and pejorative connotations, modern authoritarian leaders very rarely (if ever) use the termdictator in their formal titles, instead they most often simply have title ofpresident. In the 19th century, however, its official usage was more common:[41]

Criticism

This sectionrelies largely or entirely upon asingle source. Relevant discussion may be found on thetalk page. Please helpimprove this article by introducingcitations to additional sources at this section.(November 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The usage of the termdictator in western media has been criticized by the left-leaning organizationFairness & Accuracy in Reporting as "Code for Government We Don't Like". According to them, leaders that would generally be considered authoritarian but are allied with the United States such asPaul Biya orNursultan Nazarbayev are rarely referred to as "dictators", while leaders of countries opposed to U.S. policy such asNicolás Maduro orBashar al-Assad have the term applied to them much more liberally.[46]

See also

References

Informational notes

Citations

  1. ^Robertson, David Professor (22 April 2015).A Dictionary of Modern Politics. Routledge.ISBN 978-1-317-63943-5.
  2. ^ab"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.
  3. ^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.
  4. ^Olson, Mancur (1993). "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development".American Political Science Review.87 (3):567–576.doi:10.2307/2938736.JSTOR 2938736.S2CID 145312307.
  5. ^"Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, dicto".www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved2024-01-17.
  6. ^"Oxford English Dictionary".
  7. ^Le Glay, Marcel. (2009).A history of Rome. Wiley-Blackwell.ISBN 978-1-4051-8327-7.OCLC 760889060.
  8. ^Wilson, Mark B. (2021).Dictator: the evolution of the Roman dictatorship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 325.ISBN 9780472132669.
  9. ^Wilson, Mark B. (2021).Dictator: the evolution of the Roman dictatorship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 330.ISBN 9780472132669.
  10. ^Freedom in The World 2017 – Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global DemocracyArchived 2017-07-27 at theWayback Machine byFreedom House, January 31, 2017
  11. ^"Democracy Index 2017 – Economist Intelligence Unit"(PDF).EIU.com. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 18 February 2018. Retrieved17 February 2018.
  12. ^Macartney, Carlile Aylmer (September 15, 2020).Lajos Kossuth.Encyclopedia Britannica.Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. RetrievedOctober 31, 2020.
  13. ^Riall, Lucy (20 October 2008).Garibaldi. Yale University Press.ISBN 978-0-300-17651-3.
  14. ^Davies, Norman (31 May 2001).Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-164713-0.
  15. ^"The brutal central African dictator whose playboy son faces French corruption trial".The Independent. 12 September 2016.
  16. ^"The Five Worst Leaders In Africa".Forbes. 9 February 2012.
  17. ^Treisman, Daniel; Guriev, Sergei (4 April 2023).Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Princeton University Press.ISBN 978-0-691-22447-3.
  18. ^Keatley, Patrick (18 August 2003)."Obituary: Idi Amin".The Guardian. London.Archived from the original on 2013-12-05. Retrieved2008-03-18.
  19. ^"LIFE". 2 September 1940.
  20. ^Treisman, Daniel; Guriev, Sergei (4 April 2023).Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Princeton University Press.ISBN 978-0-691-22447-3.
  21. ^"Autocratic Legalism | the University of Chicago Law Review".
  22. ^"Atatürk, Ghazi Mustapha Kemal (1881–1938) | Encyclopedia.com".www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved2023-09-18.
  23. ^Shapiro, Susan; Shapiro, Ronald (2004).The Curtain Rises: Oral Histories of the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. McFarland.ISBN 978-0-7864-1672-1.Archived from the original on 2021-05-12. Retrieved2019-01-19.
    "...All Yugoslavs had educational opportunities, jobs, food, and housing regardless of nationality. Tito, seen by most as a benevolent dictator, brought peaceful co-existence to the Balkan region, a region historically synonymous with factionalism."
  24. ^Miller, Matt (2012-05-02)."What Singapore can teach us".The Washington Post.ISSN 0190-8286.Archived from the original on 2016-03-11. Retrieved2015-11-25.
  25. ^Thomas, Hugh (1977).The Spanish Civil War. Harper & Row. pp. 421–424.ISBN 978-0-06-014278-0.
  26. ^Dinges, John (26 September 2023).Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega. Open Road Media.ISBN 978-1-5040-8719-3.
  27. ^Morstein, Marx Fritz; et al. (March 2007).Propaganda and Dictatorship. Princeton UP.ISBN 978-1-4067-4724-9.
  28. ^Hamil, Hugh M., ed. (1992). "Introduction".Caudillos: Dictators in Spanish America. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 5–6.ISBN 978-0-8061-2428-5.
  29. ^Moradiellos, Enrique (18 December 2017).Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator. Bloomsbury. p. 43.ISBN 978-1-78673-300-9.
  30. ^S.B. (21 August 2013)."Syria's war: If this isn't a red line, what is?".The Economist.Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved15 April 2015.
  31. ^"Syria gas attack: death toll at 1,400 worst since Halabja".The Week. 22 August 2013.Archived from the original on 25 August 2013. Retrieved24 August 2013.
  32. ^D. Ward, Kenneth (September 2021)."Syria, Russia, and the Global Chemical Weapons Crisis".Arms Control Association. Archived fromthe original on 8 July 2023.
  33. ^"Gulag Prisoner Population Statistics from 1934 to 1953."Wasatch.edu. Wasatch, n.d. Web. 16 July 2016: "According to a 1993 study of Soviet archival data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953. However, taking into account that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death, the actual Gulag death toll was somewhat higher, amounting to 1,258,537 in 1934–53, or 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953.."
  34. ^Wang, Sally (18 August 2012)."Remembering the dark days of China's Cultural Revolution".South China Morning Post.Archived from the original on 2018-06-09. Retrieved2021-07-15.
  35. ^Constable, Pamela;Valenzuela, Arturo (1993-05-04).Nation of Enemies Chile Under Pinochet. W.W Norton & Company. p. 91.ISBN 978-0-393-30985-0.
  36. ^"The Holocaust".The National WWII Museum | New Orleans.Archived from the original on 2021-07-15. Retrieved2021-07-15.
  37. ^""Top 15 Toppled Dictators".Time. 20 October 2011. Archived fromthe original on 2013-08-24. Retrieved4 March 2017.
  38. ^Branigin, William (1998-04-17)."ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE WAS UNREPENTANT TO THE END".The Washington Post.ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved2025-11-21.
  39. ^"Scholar and Patriot". Manchester University Press.Archived from the original on 28 March 2024. Retrieved5 April 2020 – via Google Books.
  40. ^"Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian revolutionary)".Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved6 March 2014.
  41. ^Prieto, Moisés (2021-09-19).Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century: Conceptualisations, Experiences, Transfers. Routledge.ISBN 978-1-000-43708-9.
  42. ^Vetter, Cesare (2021-09-19). "Garibaldi and the dictatorship: Features and cultural sources".Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century: Conceptualisations, Experiences, Transfers. Routledge. pp. 113–132.ISBN 978-1-000-43708-9.
  43. ^Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911)."Langiewicz, Maryan" .Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  44. ^Stefan Kieniewicz, "Polish Society and the Insurrection of 1863."Past & Present 37 (1967): 130–148.
  45. ^"The First Philippine Republic". National Historical Commission. 7 September 2012.Archived from the original on 27 January 2017. Retrieved26 May 2018.On June 20, Aguinaldo issued a decree organizing the judiciary, and on June 23, again upon Mabini's advice, major changes were promulgated and implemented: change of government from Dictatorial to Revolutionary; change of the Executive title from Dictator to President
  46. ^"Dictator: Media Code for 'Government We Don't Like'".FAIR. 2019-04-11.Archived from the original on 2021-04-16. Retrieved2021-04-07.
  47. ^"Idi Amin: a byword for brutality".News24. 2003-07-21. Archived fromthe original on 2008-06-05. Retrieved2007-12-02.
  48. ^Lloyd, Lorna (2007).Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006. University of Michigan: Martinus Nijhoff. p. 239.ISBN 978-90-04-15497-1.

Further reading

External links

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