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dictatorship
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Antonio López de Santa Anna Third Reich Joseph Stalin Benito Mussolini Józef Piłsudski António de Oliveira Salazar
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Antonio López de Santa Anna
Antonio López de Santa Anna Antonio López de Santa Anna, daguerreotype.

dictatorship

political science
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•History

dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations. The term dictatorship comes from the Latin title dictator, which in the Roman Republic designated a temporary magistrate who was granted extraordinary powers in order to deal with state crises. Modern dictators, however, resemble ancient tyrants rather than ancient dictators. Ancient philosophers’ descriptions of the tyrannies of Greece and Sicily go far toward characterizing modern dictatorships....

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