[4] A unified inner circle has the capacity to overthrow a dictator, and the dictator must make greater concessions to the inner circle to stay in power. [104] A one-party communist dictatorship was formed in Cuba when a US-backed dictatorship was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution, creating the only Soviet-backed dictatorship in the western hemisphere. [148], Terrorism is less common in dictatorships. The 20th century saw the rise of fascist and communist dictatorships in Europe; fascism was eradicated in the aftermath of World War II in 1945, while communism spread to other continents, maintaining prominence until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Examples of Fascism. Freedom House, the Polity data series, and the Democracy-Dictatorship Index are three of the most used data series by political scientists. [45] Although, when it comes to polling and elections a dictator could use his power to override private preferences. Most of them are characterized by a single leader with either no party or one that is weak. Italy's Mussolini. Dictatorships suffer from an obvious and significant imbalance of power. [84] Other nationalist movements in Europe established dictatorships based on the fascist model. A dictator may address the opposition by repressing it through force, modifying laws to restrict its power, or appeasing it with limited benefits. A personalist dictator will manage these appointees by segmenting the government so that they cannot collaborate. Secondly, while the term "dictatorship" is widely understood to include inherent abuse of powerthere is arguably no such thing as a benevolent dictatorhistory offers several examples of autocrats who tried to do what was best for their people. [91], The Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, splitting the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. W; Alphabetical list of countries; Alphabetical list of countries. This may be ensured through incentives, such as distribution of financial resources or promises of security, or it may be through repression, in which failing to support the regime is punished. [34] When a one-party dictatorship develops gradually through legal means, in can result in conflict between the party organization and the state apparatus and civil service, as the party rules in parallel and increasingly appoints its own members to positions of power. The economic focus of a dictatorship often depends on the strength of the opposition, as a weaker opposition allows a dictator to extract additional wealth from the economy through corruption.[125]. Cinhil Aymeric Nygel Haldane, 22nd king of Gwynedd who shortly reigned in 1025. Multiple political parties may exist, but one dominates the government, makes all the rules, is free to disseminate propaganda, and controls every aspect of every election (which may offer voters only a single candidate), thereby ensuring they win every time. But this is not the first time Myanmar is having the bitter taste of autocracy, in fact, their governance turned . Syria - Well, it depends. 1. [124], The type of economy in a dictatorship can affect how it functions. Those who believe that he is a dictator argue that he imprisons his opponents, removed freedom of speechthe press can only publish what he allows them toand has restructured the government to give himself more and longer-lasting power. 2. Photo: Lars Klove. Skyline of Downtown Dubai with Burj Khalifa from a Helicopter. The dictatorship was revived 120 years later by Sulla after his crushing of a populist movement, and 33 years after that by Julius Caesar. Charles Taylor Country: Liberia Charles McArthur Ghanakay Taylor's life story is akin to that of a movie. From the outside looking in, life within a dictatorship appears akin to being in a toxic relationship or living situation. He took control of the nation in 1973 after leading a coup that deposed elected leftist leader Salvador Allende. Hybrid dictatorships are regimes that have a combination of these classifications. The Modern World's Dictatorship Countries African Dictators A Global View of Dictators Is China a dictatorship? However, many people in long-running dictatorships such as North Korea and Cameroon have never experienced anything else, so living in a dictatorship is much less jarring and shocking to them. A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. " In the 19th century, settlers slowly and hesitantly began to establish themselves in. Military dictators may also be less trusting or diplomatic and underestimate the use of bargaining and compromise in politics. In personalist dictatorships, the elite corps are usually made up of close friends or family members of the dictator, who typically handpicks these individuals to serve their posts. Dictatorships in the Middle East and Northern Africa are either illiberal republics in which a president holds power through unfair elections, or they are absolute monarchies in which power is inherited. Examples might include King Cyrus the Great of Persia, who is thought to have created the first declaration of human rights, the Biblical King Solomon, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yue. Africa has several long-standing dictators despite the fact that the continent as a whole is quite volatile politically. Also called a dominant party dictatorship or one-party state. Many are noted for their cruelty, while others are honored as national heroes. They are often unstable, and the average duration of a military dictatorship is only five years, but they are often followed by additional military coups and military dictatorships. As of early 2022, the countries of Afghanistan, Eritrea, North Korea, and Turkmenistan are the only nations in the world whose governments are generally considered to be totalitarian dictatorships. This may sound like a contradiction of terms to many people. [90] These new African governments were marked by severe instability, which provided opportunities for regime change and made fair elections a rare occurrence on the continent. Qatar - Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani Russia - Vladimir Putin, President of Russia Rwanda - Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda Saudi Arabia - King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, King of Saudi Arabia Somalia - Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, President of Somalia South Sudan - Salva Kiir Mayardit, President [50] Monarchies allow for strict rules of succession that produce a peaceful transfer of power on the monarch's death, but this can also result in succession disputes if multiple members of the royal family claim a right to succeed. When necessary, a dictator may also make an effort to replace or amend the nation's constitution to empower, enrich, or otherwise benefit the dictator and his/her allies to a greater degree. Since the Korean War, North Korea has been ruled by a series of autocratic leaders. These countries maintain parliaments and human rights organizations, but these remain under the control of the countries' respective dictators. [145] Opposition parties in dictatorships may be restricted by preventing them from campaigning, banning more popular opposition parties, preventing opposition members from forming a party, or requiring that candidates be a member of the ruling party. [131] A military coup is often carried out when a regime is threatening the country's stability or during periods of societal unrest. [8]:457 Elected heads of state are usually referred to as "president." Political scientists such as Juan Jos Linz and Samuel P. Huntington identify key attributes that define the power structure of a dictatorship, including a single leader or a small group of leaders, the exercise of power with few limitations, limited political pluralism, and limited mass mobilization. The 20th century also saw the rise of personalist dictatorships in Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America, both of which became prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. "[6], For a regime to be considered as a democracy by the DD scheme, it must meet the requirement of four rules below:[1]:69[3], Some regimes may meet the first three rules, but lack an alternation in power in its historical past; these regimes are classified as dictatorships because of cases where the incumbent only allows elections as long as they keep winning, and would refuse to step down if they lost. Binary measure of democracy and dictatorship, Six-fold regime classification scheme and its rules, Comparison with other democracy-measuring data sets, Studies in Comparative International Development, "Minimalist Conception of Democracy: A Defense", Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi: Democracy and development, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy-Dictatorship_Index&oldid=1141715357, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2023, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from January 2023, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. For democracies, it categorizes them into three types: parliamentary, semi-presidential and presidential democracies. 10. (2010), Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland developed a six-fold regime classification scheme, resulting what the authors called as the DD datasets. [87], The decolonisation of Africa prompted the creation of new governments, many of which became dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s. [8]:456. The Soviet Union occupied nationalist dictatorships in the east and replaced them with communist dictatorships, while others established liberal democratic governments in the Western Bloc. Changing Human Nature Needs a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" . But to understand the dictatorship in Cuba . These movements supported pan-Arab Nasserism during most of the Cold War, but they were largely replaced by Islamic nationalism by the 1980s. In their book "Dictators and Dictatorships: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders", authors Natasha M. Ezrow and Erica Frantz lay out five types of dictatorships: Power is obtained and maintained through military might. For dictatorships, monarchic, military and civilian dictatorship. Although it is true that some dictators are far more strict and overbearing than others, as a rule, dictatorships tend to result in a loss of personal autonomy, quality of life, and political choice for everyday citizens. Adolf Hitler: 14 most cruel dictators Benito Mussolini: 14 most cruel dictators Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924): 14 most cruel dictators Joseph Stalin: 14 most cruel dictators Mao Zedong or Mao or Mao Tse Tung: 14 most cruel dictators Muammar Gaddafi: 14 most cruel dictators Idi Amin (1920-2003): 14 most cruel dictators Perhaps someday some of these modern dictatorships will cast off their dictators and embrace a more democratic and inclusive form of government. The dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945, Benito Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in 1919. [126] In particular, censorship by dictatorships helps solidify claims of legitimacy and marginalize the voices of opposition critics. Below are 10 African country that are still under dictatorship. [133] A dictator may negotiate the end of a regime if it has lost legitimacy or if a violent removal seems likely. Sudan - 1989 to 2019 - Omar al-Bashir. [8]:456, The second distinction made is whether the head of state is popularly elected for a fixed term. Mao consolidated his control of the People's Republic of China with the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, which involved the destruction of all elements of capitalism and traditionalism in China. This violence is frequently exercised through institutions such as military or police forces. Latin America experienced a dramatic political change in the last quarter of the twentieth century. [46], The shift in the power relation between the dictator and their inner circle has severe consequences for the behavior of such regimes as a whole. [123] The form of government does not correlate with the amount of economic growth, and dictatorships on average grow at the same rate as democracies, though dictatorships have been found to have larger fluctuations. [136], Dictatorships are typically more aggressive than democracy when in conflict with other nations, as dictators do not have to fear electoral costs of war. But for today, these are the world's dictatorships. This is thanks to an oil boom that enriched his family at the expense of the Equatorial Guinea citizens. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers. [8]:455 Some countries (such as Spain, Belgium, Germany, and Israel) require that the vote of no confidence also specify who is going to replace the sitting government to minimize the time without an interim government, essentially replacing one government with another. Therefore, it is impossible to know if the regime is a democracy or a dictatorship, so DD Index considers them dictatorships until an alternation in power occurs. [82], Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party created a second fascist dictatorship in Germany in 1933,[83] obtaining absolute power through a combination of electoral victory, violence, and emergency powers. A semi-presidential (mixed) democracy has a government that needs the majority of support from a legislature to exist and whose head of state is popularly elected for a fixed term. Indeed, the 20th century, which witnessed the careers of Atatrk, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, Mao Tse-tung, Juan Pern, Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sukarno, Kwame Nkrumah, and Charles de Gaulle, could appear in history as the age of plebiscitary dictatorship. Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin were the leading examples of such modern totalitarian . Modern Dictatorships Between 1919 and 1939 there was a great reaction against democracy and dictatorship was established in many countries of the world. The chief executive can take many names including chancellor, prime minister, or premier and the heads of the executive departments can bear different names and be called different things. [108], Dictatorship in Europe largely ended after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the liberalization of most communist states. Some of the most famous dictators in history include Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein. Based on a "minimalist" theory of democracy, the index relies on rules regarding the existence of competitive elections. Today, they are "elected," as true democracies helplessly look on . The territory of today's Algeria was the home of many prehistoric cultures, including Aterian and Capsian and the, Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country in Southern Africa. [1] Popularly elected means that the head of state is directly elected by the citizens or elected by an assembly which then elects them (an example being the electoral college in the United States). The result is that such regimes have no internal checks and balances, and are thus unrestrained when exerting repression on their people, making radical shifts in foreign policy, or starting wars with other countries. A dictator has the ability to make decisions that will have an impact on the people in many ways, and the worse part is, the people do not consent to being ruled. Current Dictators Kim Jong-un Kim Jong-un is North Korea's current dictator and the third generation Kim to rule the country, following the death of his father Kim Jong-il in 2011. [130] One-party dictatorships are generally more stable and last longer than military or personalist dictatorships.