Dictatorship

A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by a dictator. It has three possible meanings:

In the postwar era, dictatorship became a frequent feature of military government, especially in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In the case of many African or Asian former colonies, after achieving their independence in the postwar wave of decolonization, presidential regimes were gradually transformed into personal dictatorships. These regimes often proved unstable, with the personalization of power in the hands of the dictator and his associates, making the political system uncertain.

It's often alleged that the rise of these dictatorships were substantially influenced by the Cold War dynamics. Both the United States and the USSR managed to expand or maintain their influence zones by financing paramilitary and political groups and encouraging coups d'état, especially in Africa, that have led many countries to brutal civil wars and consequent manifestations of authoritarianism. In Latin America the threat of either communism or capitalism was often used as justification for dictatorship, while in the Middle East the desire to oppose Israel and later Islamic fundamentalism proved an important motivating pattern.

In fiction, dictatorship has sometimes been portrayed as the political system of choice for controlling dystopian societies, such as in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We", Fritz Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar", and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".