2. • A military dictatorship (also known as a
military junta) is a form of government
different from civilian dictatorship for a
number of reasons: their motivations for
seizing power, the institutions through which
they organize their rule, and the ways in which
they leave power.
3. • Three different types of dictatorship are
autocracy, authoritarian oligarchy, and
absolute democracy. In an autocracy, absolute
political power is concentrated in one person.
4. • Well-Known Dictatorships
• Here are examples of dictatorships with the dictator, his country, and time
of rule.
• European Dictators
• Vlad III - Wallachia - 1456 to 1462
• Vladimir Lenin - Soviet Union - 1917 to 1924
• Leonid Brezhnev - Soviet Union - 1964 to 1982
• Kaiser Wilhelm II - Germany Empire - 1888 to 1918
• Ismail Enver Pasha - Ottoman Empire - 1913 to 1918
• Nicholas II - Russia - 1894 to 1917
• Josef Stalin - Soviet Union - 1924 to 1953
• Leopold II - Belgium - 1885 to 1908
• Adolf Hitler - Nazi Germany - 1933 to 1945
• Alexander Lukashenko - Belarus - 1994 to present
5. • Asian Dictators
• Chiang Kai-shek - China - 1943 to 1948
• Ho Chi Minh - North Vietnam - 1945 to 1969
• Saddam Hussein - Iraq - 1979 to 2003
• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Iran - 1989 to present
• General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan - Pakistan - 1969 to 1971
• Hideki Tojo - Japan - 1941 to 1944
• Mao Zedong - People's Republic of China - 1949 to 1976
• Kim Jong-Il - North Korea - 1994 to 2011
• Kim Il Sung - North Korea - 1948 to 1994
• Pol Pot - Democratic Kampuchea - 1975 to 1979
• Bashar al-Assad - Syria - 2000 to present
• Sonthi Boonyaratglin - Thailand - 2006 to present
• Islam Karimov - Uzbekistan - 1991 to present
• Ilham Aliyev - Azerbaijan - 2003 to present
6. • African Dictators
• Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe - 1980 to present
• Omar al-Bashir - Sudan - 1989 to present
• Idi Amin Dada - Uganda - 1971 to 1979
• Paul Kagame - Rwanda - 1994 to present
7. • A dictatorship is a form of government
characterized by the absolute rule of one person
or a very small group of people who hold all
political power.
• While a dictatorship is a form of government in
some nations, just as monarchy or representative
democracy is the form of government in others,
dictatorships are seen by non-dictatorships as
dangerous and cruel because of the way they
tend to treat their citizens.
8. • Dictators and Control
• You won't find a dictator who calls himself a dictator. Instead, dictators
have ordinary titles such as president, emperor, great leader and similar
monikers. That's because 'dictator' is a pejorative term assigned to certain
rulers by other nations, particularly the developed nations of the West -
that is, countries with thriving economies - such as the United States,
Canada, the United Kingdom and many others.
• To be considered a dictatorship means that a country is known to be run
by one person without any checks and balances on his power. Dictators
make unilateral decisions that affect their countries without having to
consult any other branch of government. That's because there's no other
branch of government that is not controlled by the dictator. Human nature
being what it is, dictators don't rise to power for the good of their nations
(though they usually claim otherwise). They seize power to benefit
themselves, their families and their close political allies.
9. • Dictators usually come to power through
some kind of violent struggle, rather than the
peaceful passage of power that we take for
granted in the United States. In modern times,
it's not unusual to hear news stories about
dictators being elected by their citizens, when
in fact the elections are manipulated through
intimidation of voters to ensure the dictator's
victory.
10. • Unfortunately, dictatorships seldom usher in a nation's
prosperity. In the most brutal dictatorships, the citizens
live in extreme poverty because the government
withholds food and supplies in order to keep the
people under control
• . One of the more dramatic examples of this kind of
human rights abuse occurred in Myanmar in 2008.
When a cyclone swept over the country, killing
hundreds of thousands and leaving millions without
food or shelter, the country's military dictatorship
blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the people
until it could hold a sham election.