Authors: Bogdanor
Summary: This entry, in just less than 800 words, defines dictatorship, discusses its historical origin and modern development, provides examples of famous dictators, and concludes by offering Franz Neumann's definition of the concept.
The entry defines dictatorship as a form of government with a single ruler--an autocracy. The single ruler in this system is a dictator because authority comes from a personal claim rather than from a monarchical or dynastic claim.
Although in modern parlance dictatorship is often synonymous with arbitrary government, the concept has not always evoked such negative connotations. In fact, in the early Roman Republic, the dictator was a supreme magistrate--a dictator required by the constitution. The constitutions of some modern countries like French and Italy have a provision for 'emergency powers' that creates a similar constitutional dictatorship.
Our modern notion of dictatorship springs from Sulla, Caesar and Augustus, but it was Cromwell's dictatorship in England that marked the turning point from the ancient to the contemporary world. Following Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte cemented dictatorship's modern, pejorative meaning. More recently, civilian and military dictatorships have proliferated in Latin America.
The most significant attribute of the modern dictatorship is that the dictator is above the law. The modern dictator is not restrained by constitutional checks and feels no responsibility to those ruled. Ideology has been an important legitimizing factor for twentieth century dictatorships, particularly those of the fascists and the Nazis.
The entry concludes by offering Franz Neumann's definition of dictatorship as the most useful and all-inclusive modern definition of the concept. According to Neumann, a dictatorship is a person or group who seizes and monopolizes power in the state, and exercises this power without restraint.