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A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a polity. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency. 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 term dictator is generally used to describe a leader who holds or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power.
A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian, and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies.
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power is held by the ruler, known as an autocrat. It includes some forms of monarchy and all forms of dictatorship, while it is contrasted with democracy and feudalism. Various definitions of autocracy exist. They may restrict autocracy to cases where power is held by a single individual, or they may define autocracy in a way that includes a group of rulers who wield absolute power. The autocrat has total control over the exercise of civil liberties within the autocracy, choosing under what circumstances they may be exercised, if at all. Governments may also blend elements of autocracy and democracy, forming an anocracy. The concept of autocracy has been recognized in political philosophy since ancient times.
Totalitarian democracy is a dictatorship based on the mass enthusiasm generated by a perfectionist ideology. The conflict between the state and the individual should not exist in a totalitarian democracy, and in the event of such a conflict, the state has the moral duty to coerce the individual to obey. This idea that there is one true way for a society to be organized and a government should get there at all costs stands in contrast to liberal democracy which trusts the process of democracy to, through trial and error, help a society improve without there being only one correct way to self-govern.
Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.
Dictablanda is a dictatorship in which civil liberties are allegedly preserved rather than destroyed. The word dictablanda is a pun on the Spanish word dictadura ("dictatorship"), replacing dura, which by itself is a word meaning 'hard', with blanda, meaning 'soft'.
The term "illiberal democracy" describes a governing system that hides its "nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures". There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy or whether it even exists.
Mancur Lloyd Olson Jr. was an American economist and political scientist who taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. His most influential contributions were to new institutional economics, and focused on the role played by private property, taxation, public goods, collective action, and contract rights in economic development.
William Russell Easterly is an American economist specializing in economic development. He is a professor of economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is a Research Associate of NBER, senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) of Duke University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Easterly is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth.
Guided democracy, also called directed democracy and managed democracy, is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto authoritarian government or, in some cases, as an autocratic government. Such hybrid regimes are legitimized by elections, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and goals.
Socialist democracy is a political system that aligns with principles of both socialism and democracy. It includes ideologies such as council communism, democratic socialism, social democracy, and soviet democracy, as well as Marxist democracy like the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was embodied in the Soviet system (1922–1991). It can also denote a system of political party organization like democratic centralism, or a form of democracy espoused by Marxist–Leninist political parties or groups that support one-party states. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992) styled itself a socialist democracy, as did the People's Republic of Bulgaria (1946–1990) and the Socialist Republic of Romania (1947–1989).
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.
A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.
The concept institutional sclerosis was first introduced by American economist and social scientist Mancur Olson, in his book The Rise and Decline of Nations, published in 1982. Olson argues that the number of interests groups within a society has a sclerotic effect on economic growth. It seeks to explain economic growth and performance of societies across different countries by focusing on the role of institutions - specifically interest groups.
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a book by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, who jointly received the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize for their contribution in comparative studies of prosperity between nations. The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics, and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing, according to a wide range of historical case studies.
The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor is a 2014 book by the development economist William Easterly. It traces the history of the fight against global poverty, and examines the structural incentives of development. Easterly contends that poverty reduction has been used as a tactic to take away the rights of the poor and give power to the state and corporations. He suggests poverty reduction is better served by greater respect for individual freedom than a reliance on technocracy.
A civilian dictatorship is a form of government different from military dictatorships where the ruling dictator does not derive their power from the military. Among civilian dictatorships, dominant-party dictatorships tend to outlast personalistic dictatorships.
Ecoauthoritarianism is a political ideology which attempts to reconcile both environmentalist and authoritarian tendencies. It is justified by the belief of the inevitability and necessity of a strong central government to preserve the environment.
Theory of the Stationary Bandit — theory of the origin of the state, developed by American scholars Martin C. McGuire and Mancur Olson.
Daniel Treisman is a British-American political scientist. He is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has served as Interim Director of UCLA's Center for European and Russian Studies. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
References
- ↑ Roth, Steffen J. (2007). VWL für Einsteiger: eine anwendungsorientierte Einführung (2. Ausgabe) [Economics for beginners: an application-oriented introduction (2nd Edition)] (in German). Lucius & Lucius UTB GmbH. pp. 133–134. ISBN 9783825227425 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Olson, Mancur (1993-01-01). "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development". The American Political Science Review . 87 (3): 567–576. doi:10.2307/2938736. JSTOR 2938736. S2CID 145312307.
- 1 2 Easterly, William (4 March 2014). The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-08090-8 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Easterly, William (2010). "Democratic Accountability in Development: The Double Standard". Social Research: An International Quarterly. 77 (4): 1075–1104. ISSN 1944-768X.
- ↑ Ribeiro, Igor (February 25, 2009). "A "ditabranda" da Folha" [The "ditabranda" of Folha] (in Portuguese). Portal Imprensa. Archived from the original on 2012-02-01.