Dictatorship

Dictatorship is a form of government where a country or a group of countries is ruled by one person or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure that the entity's power remains strong.

A dictatorship is a type of authoritarianism, in which politicians regulate nearly every aspect of the public and private behavior of citizens. Dictatorship and totalitarianism societies generally employ political propaganda to decrease the influence of proponents of alternative governing systems.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, traditional monarchies gradually declined and disappeared. Dictatorship and constitutional democracy emerged as the world's two major forms of government.

Between the two world wars, four types of dictatorships have been described: constitutional, communist (nominally championing "dictatorship of the proletariat"), counterrevolutionary, and fascist, and many have questioned the distinctions among these prototypes. Since World War II a broader range of dictatorships have been recognized including Third World dictatorships, theocratic or religious dictatorships and dynastic or family-based dictatorships.

In the Roman Empire, a Roman dictator was the incumbent of a political office of legislate of the Roman Republic. Roman dictators were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman Emperors exercised power much more personally and arbitrarily.

After the collapse of Spanish colonial rule, various dictators came to power in many liberated countries. Often leading a private army, these Caudillo or self-appointed political-military leaders, attacked weak national governments once they control a regional political and economic powers, with examples such as Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico and Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina. Such dictators have been also referred to as "personalismo".

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