A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a polity.
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 state or dominant-party states.
Etymology
The word
dictator comes from the
Latin word
dictātor,
agent noun from
dictare (say repeatedly, assert, order).
A dictator was a
Roman magistrate given sole power for a limited duration. Originally an emergency legal appointment in the
Roman Republic and the Etruscan culture, the term
dictator did not have the negative meaning it has now.
It started to get its modern negative meaning with
Sulla's ascension to the dictatorship following Sulla's civil war, making himself the first Dictator in Rome in more than a century (during which the office was ostensibly abolished) as well as
de facto eliminating the time limit and need of senatorial acclamation.
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 proclaimed Dictator perpetuo, "Dictator in perpetuity", officially doing away with any limitations on his power, which he kept until his assassination the following month. Following Caesar's assassination, his heir Augustus 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.
Modern era
As late as the second half of the 19th century, the term
dictator had occasional positive implications. For example, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the national leader
Lajos 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.
When creating a provisional executive in Sicily during the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi officially assumed the title of "dictator" (see Dictatorship of Garibaldi). Shortly afterwards, during the 1863
January Uprising in Poland, "Dictator" was also the official title of four leaders, the first being Ludwik Mierosławski.
Past that time, however, the term dictator assumed an invariably negative connotation. In popular usage, a dictatorship 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 a cult of personality around themselves and they have also come to grant themselves increasingly grandiloquent titles and honours.
Characteristics
Benevolent dictatorship
A benevolent dictatorship refers to 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. A benevolent dictator may allow for some
civil liberties or
democracy to exist, such as through public
or
representatives with limited power, and often makes preparations for a
Democratization during or after their term. The label has been applied to leaders such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of
Turkey (1923–38),
Josip Broz Tito of
SFR Yugoslavia (1953–80),
"...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." and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore (1959–90).
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 became Chief of State of Spain,
and
Manuel Noriega was officially commander of the Panamanian Defense Forces.
Crowd manipulation
Some dictators have been masters of crowd manipulation, such as
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Others were more prosaic speakers, such as
Joseph Stalin and
Francisco 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 a cult of personality.
Mussolini and Hitler used similar titles referring to them as "the Leader". Mussolini used "Il Duce" and Hitler was generally referred to as "der Führer", both meaning 'Leader' in Italian and German respectively. Franco used a similar title, "El Caudillo" ("the Head", 'the chieftain').
Human rights abuses, war crimes and genocides
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 by
secret police and the
Gulag 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.
["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.."] The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for
Sudan's military dictator
Omar al-Bashir over alleged war crimes in
Darfur.
Similar crimes were committed during Chairman Mao Zedong's rule over the China during China's Cultural Revolution, where Mao set out to purge dissidents, primarily through the use of youth groups strongly committed to his cult of personality,[Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet, New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1993., p. 91] Some dictators have been associated with genocide on certain races or groups; the most notable and wide-reaching example is the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler's genocide of eleven million people, of whom six million were Jews.["] As a result, Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Adolf Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant".[William Branigin, Architect of Genocide Was Unrepentant to the End The Washington Post, April 17, 1998]
Modern usage in formal titles
Because of its negative and pejorative connotations, modern authoritarian leaders very rarely (if ever) use the term
dictator in their formal titles, instead they most often simply have title of president. In the 19th century, however, its official usage was more common:
[Moisés Prieto, ed. Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century: Conceptualisations, Experiences, Transfers (Routledge, 2021).]
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The Dictatorial Government of Sicily (27 May – 4 November 1860) was a provisional executive government appointed by Giuseppe Garibaldi to rule Sicily during the Expedition of the Thousand. The government ended when Sicily's annexation into the Kingdom of Italy was ratified by plebiscite.
[Cesare Vetter, "Garibaldi and the dictatorship: Features and cultural sources." in Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 2021) pp. 113–132.]
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Marian Langiewicz of Poland proclaimed himself Dictator and attempted (unsuccessfully) to form a Polish government in March 1863.
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Romuald Traugutt was Dictator of Poland from 17 October 1863 to 10 April 1864.
[Stefan Kieniewicz, "Polish Society and the Insurrection of 1863." Past & Present 37 (1967): 130–148.]
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The Dictatorial Government of the Philippines (24 May – 23 June 1898) was an insurgent government in the Philippines which was headed by Emilio Aguinaldo, who formally held the title of Dictator.
Criticism
The usage of the term
dictator in western media has been criticized by the left-leaning organization Fairness & 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 as
Paul Biya or Nursultan Nazarbayev are rarely referred to as "dictators", while leaders of countries opposed to U.S. policy such as Nicolás Maduro or
Bashar al-Assad have the term applied to them much more liberally.
See also
Informational notes
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A He conferred a Juris Doctor on himself from Makerere University.
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B The Victorious Cross (VC) was a medal made to emulate the British Victoria Cross.
Citations
Further reading
External links
