Dictatorship

The dictatorship is a Political regime where a man alone, sometimes a more or less wide group of men (party, caste, army, religious group, etc) exerts the power, generally unbounded legal or constitutional, either that the law or the constitution does not impose limit to him, or that it does not respect them.

Etymology and history

The term comes from the Latin will dictatura which indicated at the time of the Roman République a exceptional magistrature which conferred all the powers on only one man (the dictator - étymologiquement “that which speaks”). This supreme office, together with precise and temporary rules of designation (six months maximum), was granted in the event of serious danger against the Republic. It was abolished after the dictatorships of Sylla and Jules César.

The word dictator indicates today what one rather called Tyran in antiquity or Despote in the Ancien Mode. This meaning which developed during the French revolution, is useful especially for the contemporary period.

Aristote, in its typology of the modes, makes tyranny the corrupted shape of government by only one (monarchy). Montesquieu, in its work Of the spirit of the laws , proposes a typology based on controlled: the despotism is then a government which does not respect freedoms of the individuals and whose principle is fear.

Modern dictatorship

Definitions

  • Encyclopædia Universalis : The dictatorship is a political regime authoritative, established and maintained by violence, with exceptional character and illegitimate. It emerges in very serious social crises, where it is used either to hasten the course in progress (revolutionary dictatorships), or to prevent it or slow down it (preserving dictatorships). It is in general about a very personal mode; but the army or the sole party can be used as a basis for institutional dictatorships.
  • Dictionary of the policy (Hattier): The dictatorship is defined as an arbitrary and coercive mode, incompatible with political freedom, the constitutional government and the principle of the equality in front of the law.
  • cultural Dictionary (the Robert): a dictatorship is one concentration of all the capacities between the hands of an individual, an assembly, a party; political organization characterized by this concentration of capacities , (it quotes like example inter alia Cromwell and the Jacobins), and a dictator is one nobody who after being itself seized the capacity exerts it without control or one nobody who exerts the power in a mode that one can rightly describe as dictatorship.

Contemporary criteria

In the political arena, one calls “dictatorship” a mode in which a man (the dictator), or a group of people, having an absolute capacity, is maintained there in an authoritative way and exerts arbitrarily it.

The absolute character of the capacity is characterized in particular by the absence of Séparation of the capacities (executive, legislative, legal). This confusion of the capacities can the being with the profit of the executive (case more running) or with the profit of the legislature (Régime from assembly). It also results from the democratic absence of control and free elections (repression of the opponents, the non-observance of the Freedom of the press).

The arbitrary character of the capacity results in the non-observance of the Rule of law (violation of the Constitution, establishment of Loi S of exceptions).

So much of dictators arrive at the capacity following a Coup d'etat (to South America in particular) or of a civil war (Francisco Franco), it happens that a leader arrives at the capacity legally before becoming a dictator (it was the case of Adolf Hitler).

Note: Fascism and totalitarianism cannot be comparable with the other dictatorial modes, because of their specificities. Italian Fascism and national-socialisme in common have the mystical exaltation of the nation, the rejection of the liberal democracy and their anti-individualism. The individual finds his raison d'être only in subordination to the community. Totalitarianism is characterized by its will to model the very whole company according to an ideology very structured by the use of terror and the framing of a whole population. In this direction, the Nazi Germany and the Union of the socialist Soviet republics were one and the other of the totalitarian modes, sometimes even if the historians feel reluctant to confuse them in the same category because of their basic differences.

Historical examples: diversity of the dictatorships

With these criteria of authoritative capacity, being maintained by oppression, and of absence of free elections, a great number of modes, operations and various ideologies can be regarded as dictatorial. Here examples of leaders and modes which the historians agree to qualify dictators.

Sole party

Communist sole party

Military dictatorship

Theocracy

  • Mode of the talibans - Afghanistan
  • Rouhollah Khomeiny - Islamic Republic of Iran

Other dictatorships

Catalog of films

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