Dictatorship in History

Abstract

The Term dictatorship is used in contemporary language to define any type of government, hereditary monarchy excepted, which is based on the unlimited concentration of power in the hands of an individual or a group of people. Orginally the term dictatorship referred only to an extraordinary magistrature of the ancient Roman Republic which is the case of serious danger for the state, it granted full civil and military power to an individual who exercised it for a maximum period of 6 months, according to the rules and functions established rigorously from the constitutional system. In the course of the XIX and especially during the XX century, the meaning of dictatorship has been transformed radically because it has been applied to a form of government and political regime that had nothing in common with the ancient Roman magistrature, except the unlimited concentration of power. Especially during the XX century, with the proliferation of governments dominated by the unlimited power of an individual, the concept of dictatorship took a new meaning, even opposite to the original one. In fact, the contemporary dictatorships almost all the time have an unlimited duration, they work against the existing constitutional system and they place themselves beyond any definition of rules and functions. Except for their common characteristic of being anti-dictatorship, contemporary dictatorships are very different in terms their historical, geographical economical and social situation. This relates to how they arose, the type of organization, the ideology, the behavior, the aims the results and the aoutcome of their historical development.This therefore makes it difficult to propose a general and unifying theory of the dictatorship.