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Dictatorship
A dictatorship is a form of government in which a single person or a small group of people determine the politics of a society without being authorised to do so by the people through free elections or any other form of expression of will. A dictatorship also exists when, after the expiry of a medium-term period for which these persons were empowered, they were not re-empowered. Furthermore, a dictatorship has come into being without religious or hereditary legitimacy.
The ruler in a dictatorship is the dictator. The most common way to establish a dictatorship is through the violent overthrow of the previous government, i.e. a coup d'état.
However, dictators can also be given governmental responsibility through democratic elections if they cannot be voted out of office. The authorisation of elected representatives of the people to govern can only ever be granted for a defined period of time in the medium term, and it must be possible to vote them out of office prematurely in an emergency. A medium-term period can, for example, cover a few years. Most often, representatives of the people are elected for four or five years. After that, the authorisation must be renewed, otherwise the form of government will turn into a dictatorship. Removal from office can be prevented, for example, by applying emergency regulations or amending existing laws.
Difference between dictatorship and monarchy and theocracy
The main difference between a dictatorship and a monarchy or theocracy is that dictators are not normally legitimised by third parties and therefore not permanently legitimised by the people to take over the government. In a monarchy and a theocracy, on the other hand, rulers are legitimised even if they have not received legitimacy through an expression of the will of the people. The monarch, i.e. the king or emperor, usually has divine legitimacy and, in an elective monarchy, is elected for life by a small circle of people from a defined, small circle of people. In a hereditary monarchy, the function of king or emperor is inherited by one of his children.
The theocrat, for example the pharaoh, caliph, ayatollah or pope, is also divinely legitimised. However, he does not obtain his rule through inheritance, but is elected by a specific group of clergymen.
Monarchs and theocrats are therefore usually divinely legitimised and are thus fundamentally recognised by the people as rulers. If the majority of the people no longer recognise their rule, they are usually overthrown or forced to abdicate. The system of rule in a monarchy or theocracy is not normally questioned by the people in the long term, usually over thousands of years. The system of rule in a dictatorship is questioned by the people after a certain period of time, often a few years or decades, which means that the people no longer legitimise the rule.
Dictatorships that manage to hold on to power for many decades fundamentally change their character and usually become de facto monarchies. This is the case, for example, in North Korea with the Kim family or the Paektu bloodline. In Syria, for example, there were attempts to establish a de facto monarchy with the Assad family, but this was overthrown in the second generation with Bashar al-Assad.
