military dictatorship essay

What Is a Military Dictatorship? Definition and Examples

• B.S., Texas A&M University

A military dictatorship is a form of government in which the military holds most or all political power. Military dictatorships may be ruled by a single high-ranking military officer or by a group of such officers. Military dictatorships are notorious for human rights abuses and the denial of political and social freedoms.

Key Takeaways Military Dictatorship

• In a military dictatorship is an autocratic type of government in which the military holds all or most power over the country.
• The ruler in a military dictatorship may be a single high-ranking military officer or a group of such officers, referred to as a military junta.
• Most military dictatorships take power after overthrowing the existing civilian government in a coup d'etat.
• Historically, many military regimes have been noted for their brutal suppression of freedom and persecution of political opponents.
• The number of countries ruled by military dictatorships began to fall sharply after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
• While Thailand remains the world’s last active military dictatorship, other notable examples of modern countries with histories of military rule include: Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Greece.

Military Dictatorship Definition and Characteristics

In a military dictatorship, military leaders exercise substantial or complete control of the people and functions of government. As an autocratic form of government, a military dictatorship may be ruled by either a single military strongman whose authority is unlimited or by a group of high-ranking military officers—a “military junta”—who can to some extent limit the dictator’s authority. 

During the 19th century, for example, many Latin American countries struggling to reorganize after being freed from Spanish colonial rule, allowed military dictators to take power. These charismatic self-proclaimed leaders, known as “caudillos,” usually led private guerilla armies that had won control of former Spanish-held territories before setting their sights on vulnerable national governments.

In most cases, military dictatorships come to power after the previous civilian government has been overthrown in a coup d'etat . Typically, the military dictator completely dissolves the civilian government. Occasionally, components of the civilian government structure may be restored after the coup d'etat but are strictly controlled by the military. In Pakistan, for example, while a series of military dictators have sporadically staged elections, they have fallen far short of the UN’s definition of “free and fair.” The secrecy of the ballot has been regularly compromised and military authorities often denied the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, and movement.

Along with the suspension or revocation of constitutional rights and freedoms, an almost universal characteristic of a military dictatorship is the imposition of martial law or a permanent state of national emergency intended to distract the people with a constant fear of attack. Military regimes typically disregard human rights and go to extremes to silence political opposition. Ironically, military dictators have often justified their rule as a way of protecting the people from “harmful” political ideologies. For example, the threat of communism or socialism was often used to justify military regimes in Latin America .

Playing on the public assumption that the military is politically neutral, military dictatorships may attempt to portray themselves as the people’s “savior” from corrupt and exploitive civilian politicians. For example, many military juntas adopt titles such as Poland’s “National Liberation Committee” in the early 1980s, or Thailand’s current “Peace & Order Maintaining Council.”

Since their oppressive style of rule often spawns public dissent, military dictatorships often go out the same way they came in—through an actual or imminent coup d'etat or popular revolt.

Military Juntas

A military junta is a coordinated group of high-ranking military officers who exercise authoritarian or totalitarian rule over a country after taking power by force. Meaning “meeting” or “committee,” the term junta was first used about the Spanish military leaders who resisted Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 and later about the groups that helped Latin America win independence from Spain between 1810 and 1825. Like military dictatorships, military juntas often take power through a coup d'etat.

Unlike pure military dictatorships, in which the power of a single dictator or “military strongman” is unlimited, the officers of a military junta can limit the dictator’s power.

Unlike military dictators, the leaders of military juntas may end martial law, wear civilian clothing, and appoint former military officers to maintain de-facto control over local governments and political parties. Rather than all functions of the national government, military juntas may choose to control a more limited range of areas, such as foreign policy or national security .

Military vs. Civilian Dictatorships

In contrast to a military dictatorship, a civilian dictatorship is a form of autocratic government that does not draw its power directly from the armed forces.

Unlike military dictatorships, civilian dictatorships do not have built-in access to an organized base of support like an army. Instead, civilian dictators take and hold on to power by controlling a dominant political party and the electoral process or by winning fanatical levels of popular support. Rather than the threat of military force, charismatic civilian dictators use techniques like mass distribution of bombastic propaganda and psychological warfare to create cult-like feelings of support and nationalism among the people. Civilian dictatorships that depend on political domination tend to be longer-lasting than personalistic cult-supported dictatorships.

Without the automatic support of the armed forces, civilian dictators are less likely than military dictators to involve the country in foreign wars and to be ousted by insurrection or revolt. Civilian dictatorships are also more likely to be replaced by democracies or constitutional monarchies than are military dictatorships.

Examples of 20th Century Military Dictatorships

Once common throughout Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, the prevalence of military dictatorships has been declining since the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it became harder for military regimes to seize power by using the threat of communism to gain the support of powerful Western democracies like the United States.

While Thailand remains the only country currently ruled by a military dictatorship, dozens of other countries have been under military rule at some point during the 20th century.

On May 22, 2014, the caretaker government of Thailand was overthrown in a bloodless coup d'etat led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, commander of the Royal Thai Army. Prayuth established a military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), to govern the country. The junta repealed the constitution, declared martial law, and banned all forms of political expression. In 2017, the NCPO issued an interim constitution granting itself almost total power and establishing a puppet legislature, which unanimously elected Prayuth prime minister.

From 1964 to 1985, Brazil was controlled by an authoritarian military dictatorship. After taking power in a coup d'etat, commanders of the Brazilian Army, backed by anti-communist interests, including the United States, enacted a new constitution that restricted freedom of speech and outlawed political opposition. The military regime gained popular support by encouraging nationalism, promising economic growth, and rejecting communism. Brazil officially restored democracy in 1988.

On September 11, 1973, Chile’s socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat backed by the United States. Over the next 17 years, a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet orchestrated the most brutal period of human rights abuses in Chilean history. During what it called the “national reconstruction,” Pinochet’s regime outlawed political participation, executed over 3,000 suspected dissidents, tortured tens of thousands of political prisoners, and forced some 200,000 Chileans into exile. Although Chile returned to democracy in 1990, the people continue to suffer from the effects of Pinochet’s military dictatorship on political and economic life.

After overthrowing President Isabel Perón in a coup d'etat on March 24, 1976, a junta of right-wing military officers ruled Argentina until democracy was restored in December 1983. Operating under the official name of the National Reorganization Process, the junta persecuted social minorities, imposed censorship, and placed all levels of government under military control. During Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War” period of military dictatorship, as many as 30,000 citizens were killed or “disappeared.” In 1985, five leaders of the former ruling military junta were convicted of crimes against humanity.

From 1967 to 1974, Greece was ruled by an extreme right-wing military dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. On April 21, 1976, a group of four Greek Army colonels overthrew the caretaker government in a coup d'etat. In just the first week of its reign, the junta jailed, tortured, and exiled over 6,000 suspected political opponents in the name of protecting Greece from communism. Their actions were so swift and brutal that by September 1967 the European Commission of Human Rights had charged the Regime of the Colonels with multiple gross violations of human rights.

Sources and Reference

• Geddes, Barbara. “Military Rule.” Annual Review of Political Science , Volume 17, 2014, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-213418.
• Merieau, Eugenie. “How Thailand Became the World’s Last Military Dictatorship.” The Atlantic , March 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/03/thailand-military-junta-election-king/585274/.
• Skidmore, Thomas E. “The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-1985.” Oxford University Press, March 8, 1990, ISBN-10: 0195063163.
• Constable, Pamela. “A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet.” W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, ISBN 0393309851.
• Lewis, Paul H. “Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina.” Praeger, October 30, 2001, ISBN-10: 0275973603.
• Athenian, Richard. “Inside the colonels' Greece.” W. W. Norton, January 1, 1972, ISBN-10: 0393054667.
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The Origins of Military Supremacy in Dictatorships

Lucan a. way, jean lachapelle, adam e. casey.

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Militaries play dramatically different roles in different autocracies. At one extreme, the military remains the supreme political actor for generations. At the other extreme, militaries long remain subordinate to authoritarian leaders. We argue that the roots of this variation—from military supremacy to subordination—lie in military origins. Where authoritarian mass parties created militaries from scratch, the armed forces have generally remained subservient. Where militaries emerged separately from authoritarian parties, they enjoyed the autonomy necessary to achieve and maintain military supremacy. The core lesson is simple: Unless an autocratic regime created the military, it will struggle to control the military.

About the Authors

Dan Slater is the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and the director of the Center for Emerging Democracies at the International Institute at the University of Michigan.

View all work by Dan Slater

Lucan Ahmad Way is professor of political science at the University of Toronto and co-chair of the Journal of Democracy Editorial Board.

View all work by Lucan A. Way

Jean Lachapelle is assistant professor of political science at the Université de Montréal.

View all work by Jean Lachapelle

Adam E. Casey is research fellow in the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan.

View all work by Adam E. Casey

Image Credit: Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Images

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A Theory of Military Dictatorships

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an agent of the elite but may turn against them in order to create a regime more in line with their own objectives. The political moral hazard problem increases the cost of using repression in nondemocratic regimes and in particular, necessitates high wages and policy concessions to the military. When these concessions are not sufficient, the military can take action against a nondemocratic regime in order to create its own dictatorship. A more important consequence of the presence of a strong military is that once transition to democracy takes place, the military poses a coup threat against the nascent democratic regime until it is reformed. The anticipation that the military will be reformed in the future acts as an additional motivation for the military to undertake coups against democratic governments. We show that greater inequality makes the use of the military in nondemocratic regimes more likely and also makes it more difficult for democracies to prevent military coups. In addition, greater inequality also makes it more likely that nondemocratic regimes are unable to solve the political moral hazard problem and thus creates another channel for the emergence of military dictatorships. We also show that greater natural resource rents make military coups against democracies more likely, but have ambiguous effects on the political equilibrium in nondemocracies (because with abundant natural resources, repression becomes more valuable to the elite, but also more expensive to maintain because of the more severe political moral hazard that natural resources induce). Finally, we discuss how the national defense role of the military interacts with its involvement in domestic politics.

We thank seminar participants at Brown, CIFAR, Rochester and Toulouse. Acemoglu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation. Much of the work on this paper was done when Acemoglu and Vindigni were visiting Yale and Collegio Carlo Alberto. They thank the Economics Department and the Leitner Program in International Political Economy at Yale and Collegio Carlo Alberto for their hospitality. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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• A Theory of Military Dictatorships Author(s): Daron Acemoglu Davide Ticchi Andrea Vindigni Societies where the elite form a strong military in order to prevent democratization are more likely to later lapse into military...

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Brazil’s military dictatorship

Simmering tensions under the surface, an increasingly authoritarian leadership , and swelling military power cast a shadow over Brazil starting from the mid-1960s. Over the course of the country’s 21-year dictatorship, at least 191 civilian deaths and 234 “disappearances” occurred by the hands of those in power. But the Inter-American Court for Human Rights believes the real number of deaths, many of which went unreported, is actually closer to 1,000 – in addition to the estimated 10,000 Brazilians forced into exile and the more than 50,000 detainees.

Brazil had a high turnover when it came to presidents in the years directly following Vargas’s death. Juscelino Kubitschek oversaw the creation of Brazil’s new political heart, Brasília, and amped the country’s production capacity. But the military’s growing influence on the country’s leadership became evident when his successor, Jânio Quadros, stepped down after a mere seven months in office.

Fears over Brazil’s apparent communist leanings meant that Quadros’ vice-president, João Goulart, held on to the presidency for less than three years.

By April 1st, 1964, with the support of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and several sectors of Brazil’s economic elites, the Armed Forces overthrew Goulart and installed a military dictatorship.

The military presidents

Just ten days later, Brazil had a new President to see out what remained of Goulart’s term: Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco. Congress was shut down, strikes were made illegal, and salaries were frozen. Castelo Branco initially planned to hand power back to civilians by the end of his term, but the radical sectors of the military had other ideas. They imposed Field Marshal Artur da Costa e Silva as the new President, who governed between 1967 and 1969.

By that time, left-wing sectors had organized themselves into armed groups, using urban guerrilla tactics to fight against the military regime. In response, the government radicalized its repressive actions, suspending the constitution and imposing censorship. In 1969, Costa e Silva died of a heart attack and was succeeded by a military junta. One year later, General Emílio Garrastazú Médici became Brazil’s President.

Although Brazil’s dictatorship doesn’t compare to Chile or Argentina in terms of the number of deaths, the most violent human rights abuses took place under Médici. Rather than committing mass murders, Brazil’s dictatorship became renowned for its widespread use of torture techniques, learned at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama. By the end of his term in 1974, left-wing armed organizations had been wiped out of the political landscape.

The “Years of Lead” coincided with a period of intense artistic revolution and creativity in Brazil, spawning movements like the pop genre tropicália , one of the most original cultural movements in our country. In an original, even anarchic way, musicians blended rock and roll with elements of Brazilian culture – which, at the time, was thought to be “uncool.”

Musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were imprisoned, while others like Chico Buarque undertook a self-imposed exile to European countries. It was also during this era that Brazil’s powerful drug trafficking gangs formed in prisons and established power in the country’s vulnerable, low-income favela communities.

The “Brazilian Miracle”

Between 1968 and 1973, Brazil experienced extraordinary growth rates, hovering at 10 percent every year. Official slogans were along the lines of, “No one can hold this country back.” But those positive numbers are deceptive upon closer inspection. That period also marked an increase of inequality in Brazil, and there was no solid growth-to-growth. When the oil crisis of 1974 shpook the world, Brazil’s economy plummeted. Trade deficits hit $4 billion per year.

To finance the earlier growth, the Brazilian government borrowed hefty sums of money from abroad. The external debt skyrocketed to $90 billion, and inflation annually hit the 100 percent mark. The poor became poorer, unemployment rose, and the internal market shrank abruptly.

The decline of the regime

In June 1973, Médici announced Ernesto Geisel would be his successor, taking control during the following March. Geisel’s leadership was the beginning of the regime’s softening, permitting a return of exiled citizens, allowing the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) to run an election campaign in 1974 and relaxing authoritarian rule. In 1978, Brazilian workers gained an 11 percent wage rise after Geisel was forced to deal with the country’s first workers’ strike since before the dictatorship, led by none other than the future president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The dictatorship’s intentional softening continued under President João Figueiredo until 1984, when mass protests erupted throughout the country. With the cry of “Diretas Já” (direct elections now), protestors demanded direct elections for the population. Although they were unsuccessful, Brazil’s indirect elections in 1985 signaled an official end to the dictatorship.

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Brazil, military dictatorship in essay.

Following a recurring pattern in Brazilian history (1889, 1930, 1937, 1945), in 1964 a group of military officers overthrew the civilian government of João Goulart (1961–64), installing a military dictatorship that ruled for the next 21 years. The roots of the crisis prompting the coup have been traced to a confluence of events from the mid-1950s. These included a dramatic upsurge in leftist political movements, parties, and unions among urban and rural dwellers, encouraged by civilian leaders and intensifying after the 1959 Cuban revolution, combined with a growing economic crisis marked by high inflation (nearly 90 percent in 1964) and foreign debt ($3 billion), huge budget deficits ($1.1 billion in 1964); declining foreign investment, and eroding middle-class support.

With U.S. backing, on March 31, 1964, a group of officers headed by General Humberto Castello Branco seized power. Castello Branco ruled as president until 1967, his principal goal economic stabilization. Reforms introduced by his planning minister, the neo-orthodox technocrat Roberto Campos, partly achieved this aim. The regime also reformed the nation’s banking system and reduced unions’ bargaining power. From 1968 to 1974 years of the so-called Brazilian miracle, foreign investment soared, industry boomed, and the economy grew at an average annual rate of 11 percent, though inflation still averaged around 23 percent. Relatively moderate, Castello Branco and his successor, General Artur Costa e Silva (1967–69), tolerated a degree of organized dissent, though when opposition leaders launched a series of protests and strikes in 1967–68, Costa e Silva cracked down, arresting and jailing hundreds. In September 1969 he suffered a stroke and was replaced by hard-liner General Emilio Garrastazu Médici (1969–74).

By 1969 there emerged in the country’s major cities more than a dozen guerrilla groups, composed of perhaps 500 members altogether and akin to the Montoneros in Argentina, that for the next four years waged a losing battle against the dictatorship. Robbing banks and kidnapping foreign diplomats, the guerrillas found inspiration in the writings of Carlos Marighela, especially his Mini-manual of the Urban Guerrilla. The years of Brazil’s Dirty War (1969–73) were marked by mass jailings, institutionalized torture, and upwards of 333 disappearances, far fewer than in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay. By 1973 the urban guerrilla groups had been eradicated. In 1974 the more moderate General Ernesto Geisel (1974–79) assumed the presidency.

Inclined toward a return to civilian rule, in October he allowed opposition parties to run in congressional elections, resulting in their landslide victory, thus stalling further democratization. In the economic sphere, the steep OPEC oil price hikes in 1973 and 1979 returned Brazil to high deficits, ballooning debt, and climbing inflation, which reached 110 percent in 1980. The abundance of cheap petrodollars on world markets delayed the day of economic reckoning, but in 1981 a global recession and credit squeeze compelled Brazil to default on its commercial bank loans, decisively ending the economic boom.

The fifth and last of the general-presidents was João Figueiredo (1979–85), who, facing mounting popular opposition and a ravaged economy, pledged a return to civilian rule. Local, state, and federal congressional elections in 1982 were followed by presidential elections in 1985, won by Tancredo Neves, governor of the state of Minas Gerais. Since 1985 Brazil has been governed by a succession of democratically elected governments.

Bibliography:

• Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999;
• Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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The Trumpification of the Supreme Court

The conservative justices have shown they are ready to sacrifice any law or principle to save the former president.

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The notion that Donald Trump’s supporters believe that he should be able to overthrow the government and get away with it sounds like hyperbole, an absurd and uncharitable caricature of conservative thought. Except that is exactly what Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer argued before the Supreme Court yesterday, taking the position that former presidents have “absolute immunity” for so-called official acts they take in office.

“How about if a president orders the military to stage a coup?” Justice Elena Kagan asked Sauer. “I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act,” Sauer said after a brief exchange. “If it were an official act … he would have to be impeached and convicted.”

“That sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” Kagan replied later.

The Democratic appointees on the bench sought to illustrate the inherent absurdity of this argument with other scenarios as well—Kagan got Sauer to admit that the president could share nuclear secrets, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented a scenario in which a president orders the military to assassinate a political rival. Sauer said that might qualify as an official act too. It was the only way to maintain the logic of his argument, which is that Trump is above the law.

David A. Graham: The cases against Trump: A guide

“Trying to overthrow the Constitution and subvert the peaceful transfer of power is not an official act, even if you conspire with other government employees to do it and you make phone calls from the Oval Office,” Michael Waldman, a legal expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public-policy organization, told me.

Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.

The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing , environmental regulations , civil-rights laws , and universal-health-care plans . When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued. As long as Donald Trump is the standard-bearer for the Republicans, every institution they control will contort itself in his image in an effort to protect him.

The Supreme Court, however, does not need to accept Trump’s absurdly broad claim of immunity for him to prevail in his broader legal battle. Such a ruling might damage the image of the Court, which has already been battered by a parade of hard-right ideological rulings. But if Trump can prevail in November, delay is as good as immunity. The former president’s best chance at defeating the federal criminal charges against him is to win the election and then order the Justice Department to dump the cases. The Court could superficially rule against Trump’s immunity claim, but stall things enough to give him that more fundamental victory.

If they wanted, the justices could rule expeditiously as well as narrowly , focusing on the central claim in the case and rejecting the argument that former presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president, without getting into which acts might qualify as official or not. Sauer also acknowledged under questioning by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that some of the allegations against Trump do not involve official acts but private ones, and so theoretically the prosecution could move ahead with those charges and not others. But that wouldn’t necessarily delay the trial sufficiently for Trump’s purposes.

“On big cases, it’s entirely appropriate for the Supreme Court to really limit what they are doing to the facts of the case in front of it, rather than needing to take the time to write an epic poem on the limits of presidential immunity,” Waldman said. “If they write a grant opinion, saying no president is above the law, but it comes out too late in the year, they will have effectively immunized Trump from prosecution before the election while pretending not to.”

Trump’s own attorneys argued in 2021, during his second impeachment trial, that the fact that he could be criminally prosecuted later was a reason not to impeach him. As The New York Times reported , Trump’s attorney Bruce Castor told Congress that “after he is out of office,” then “you go and arrest him.” Trump was acquitted in the Senate for his attempted coup after only a few Republicans voted for conviction; some of those who voted to acquit did so reasoning that Trump was subject to criminal prosecution as a private citizen. The catch-22 here reveals that the actual position being taken is that the president is a king, or that he is entitled to make himself one. At least if his name is Donald Trump.

David A. Graham: The Supreme Courts goes through the looking glass of presidential immunity

Democracy relies on the rule of law and the consent of the governed—neither of which is possible in a system where the president can commit crimes or order them committed if he feels like it. “We can’t possibly have an executive branch that is cloaked in immunity and still expect them to act in the best interests of the people in a functioning democracy,” Praveen Fernandes, the vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal legal organization, told me.

The only part of Trump’s case that contains anything resembling a reasonable argument is the idea that without some kind of immunity for official acts, presidents could be prosecuted on a flimsy basis by political rivals. But this argument is stretched beyond credibility when it comes to what Trump did, which was to try repeatedly and in multiple ways to unlawfully seize power after losing an election. Even if the prospect of presidents being prosecuted for official acts could undermine the peaceful transfer of power, actually trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power is a much more direct threat—especially because it has already happened. But the Republican-appointed justices seemed much more concerned about the hypothetical than the reality.

“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent,” Justice Samuel Alito asked, “will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

Trump has the conservative justices arguing that you cannot prosecute a former president for trying to overthrow the country, because then they might try to overthrow the country, something Trump already attempted and is demanding immunity for doing. The incentive for an incumbent to execute a coup is simply much greater if the Supreme Court decides that the incumbent cannot be held accountable if he fails. And not just a coup, but any kind of brazen criminal behavior. “The Framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to,” Kagan pointed out during oral arguments. “And, you know, not so surprising, they were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law. Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?”

At least a few of the right-wing justices seemed inclined to if not accept Trump’s immunity claim, then delay the trial, which would likely improve his reelection prospects. As with the Colorado ballot-access case earlier this year, in which the justices prevented Trump from being thrown off the ballot in accordance with the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office , the justices’ positions rest on a denial of the singularity of Trump’s actions.

No previous president has sought to overthrow the Constitution by staying in power after losing an election. Trump is the only one, which is why these questions are being raised now. Pretending that these matters concern the powers of the presidency more broadly is merely the path the justices sympathetic to Trump have chosen to take in order to rationalize protecting the man they would prefer to be the next president. What the justices—and other Republican loyalists—are loath to acknowledge is that Trump is not being uniquely persecuted; he is uniquely criminal.

This case—even more than the Colorado ballot-eligibility case—unites the right-wing justices’ political and ideological interests with Trump’s own. One way or another, they will have to choose between Trumpism and democracy. They’ve given the public little reason to believe that they will choose any differently than the majority of their colleagues in the Republican Party.

85 Dictatorship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best dictatorship topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy dictatorship essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on dictatorship, ❓ questions about dictatorship.

• Differences and Similarities Between Democracy and Authoritarian Government Essay This implies that the citizens have a way of participating in the formation of the rules and laws by which they are governed. The laws that govern the rights of people and the economy are […]
• Democracy and Dictatorship As a matter of fact, the paths above show some means that connect political and economic composition of a community to a political institution. The panorama of the existing democracy in this path is weak […]
• Chaos and Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century The origin and development of fascism date to the late nineteenth century, and it was defined more in the turmoil of World War I.
• Fascist Elements in Dictatorial Ideas of Mussolini and Hitler The ideological and political differences between the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler are nuanced. They lie in such government branches as ethnic and military issues.
• Iran as the First Dictator Country The three reasons that Iran has become the first dictator country in the world are the absence of basic freedom, censorship of the media, and women’s rights.
• Dictatorship in Wells’ “The Shape of Things to Come” In his novel, Wells addresses the resistance of the Muslim world, the destruction of Buddhism, the opposition of the Catholic Church. This wave of air revived in London appears to the power that is obsessed […]
• Military Dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) They studied records of interrogations of the government of Brazil so that they could be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the government in dealing with the issue of dictatorship.
• Democracy and Dictatorship in Ancient Greece and Today Recalling the speech of Thucydides, democracy is when the power is in the hands of not a minority but of the whole people when all are equal before the law when political life is free […]
• Napoleon Bonaparte’s Military Dictatorship Second, the leaders of the new government generally come from the armed forces and have a substantial support both of the citizens and of the military.
• Chinese Democratic Dictatorship Essence Mao’s definition excluded western imperialists and oppressors who brought suffering to the people of China. The inspirational nature of Mao’s speech sought to mobilize people to support the communist regime.
• Military Dictatorship Effects in Nigeria and Brazil Brazil fell into the hands of the military in 1964 when the military came in to restore order, as there were tensions in the country.
• Dictatorship in Latin America This is of the main arguments that can be put forward. It is important for understanding the history of these countries.
• To What Extent Had Hitler Established a Dictatorship by 1936
• Was Hitler’s Dictatorship Established By Legal Means
• The Childhood, Education, Achievements and Dictatorship of Adolf Hitler
• The Geography of Dictatorship and Support for Democracy
• Military Dictatorship and Hieratical Political Leaders Failed in Bangladesh
• Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• North: Government and Dictatorship Supreme Authority
• The Value of a Statistical Life in a Dictatorship: Evidence from Stalin
• The Value of Political Capital: Dictatorship Collaborators as Business Elites
• Propaganda Under a Dictatorship Brave New World Revisited
• The Differences Between Democracy And Dictatorship
• Strategyproof Choice of Acts: Beyond Dictatorship
• The Reasons That Led to the Rise of Dictatorship in Germany in 1933 and Not Before
• Napoleon Employed Revolutionary Ideals to Consolidate His Military Dictatorship
• The Establishment Of Hitler’s Dictatorship And Its Legality
• The Modern Dictatorship of Napoleon the Pig in Animal Farm, an Allegorical Novella by George Orwell
• United States From The Era Of Dictatorship
• Weimar Economic Decline, Nazi Economic Recovery, and the Stabilization of Political Dictatorship
• The Importance of Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin to the Communist Dictatorship in Russia
• The Impact of Sanctions in Idi Amin’s Dictatorship in Uganda
• U.S. vs. the Middle East Dictatorship Perceptions
• To What Extent Did Stalin Establish a Personal Dictatorship in the Years 1929
• To What Extent Are Democracy and Dictatorship Different
• Serial Dictatorship: the Unique Optimal Allocation Rule when Information is Endogenous
• Random Dictatorship and the Value in Cooperative Games with Incomplete Information
• Relative Wage Effects of Unions, Dictatorship and Codetermination: Econometric Evidence from Germany
• The Contribution of Nazism and Adolf Hitler’s Dictatorship to the Start of World War II
• Is Democracy Always Preferable to Dictatorship
• Soviet Experiment by Suny, the Leadership of Vladimir Lenin and the Dictatorship of Joseph Stalin
• Transition From Dictatorship to Democracy: Spain from Franco to Aznar
• Fairness and Survival in Ultimatum and Dictatorship Games
• Science and Dictatorship in the Brave New World
• Random Serial Dictatorship and the Core from Random Endowments in House Allocation Problems
• Why a Dictatorship Emerged in Germany in 1933 and Not Before
• On the Durability of King and Council: The Continuum Between Dictatorship and Democracy
• The Social Origins Of Dictatorship And Democracy
• The Dictatorship Of The Duvalier Family In Haiti
• The Contribution of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin to the Idea of Dictatorship
• The Man In The High Castle: Criticisms Of Reality And Dictatorship By Philip K. Dick
• Leadership and Dictatorship: Lord of the Flies
• German Dictatorship Government vs. German Democracy
• The Gender of Power: Latin American Dictatorship
• Was Hitler’s Dictatorship Established by Legal Means?
• Was the Reichstag Fire the Main Reason Why Hitler Was Able to Establish a Dictatorship in Germany by 1934?
• Why Did Francos’ Dictatorship Last So Long?
• Why Was Hitler Able to Establish a Dictatorship in Germany by 1934?
• How Did Hitler Establish a Dictatorship in Germany by August 1934?
• How Did Stalin Establish His Dictatorship in 1928?
• How Was Hitler Able to Create a Dictatorship?
• Did Caesar Know What to Do With His Dictatorship?
• Did Gaius Julius Caesar Intend to Destroy Rome With His Dictatorship?
• Does Democracy Produce Worse Government Than Dictatorship Produce?
• What Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy?
• Which Were American Military Interests and Economic Confidence in Spain Under the Franco Dictatorship?
• Which Were Brazil’s Dictatorship and Military Regimes?
• What Is the Role of Terror and Violence in the Establishment of the Nazi Dictatorship Between 1933 and 1939?
• What Were the Effects of the Chilian Dictatorship?
• What Are Democracy and Dictatorship?
• What Is Africa’s Growth Tragedy: A Theoretical Model of Dictatorship and Kleptocracy?
• Who Is Fidel Castro and His Stricken Dictatorship?
• How Did Francisco Franco Start His Dictatorship?
• What Are Harsanyi’s Social Aggregation Theorem and Dictatorship?
• How Did Latin American Economies Suffer Military Dictatorship Nationalist Government?
• How Describe Solidarity Culture and the Making of a Transnational Opposition to the Marcos Dictatorship?
• Was Mao Tse-Tung Individual Dictatorship the Root of China’s Backward Economy After 1949?
• What Is Mises’ Democracy–Dictatorship Equivalence Theorem?
• Who Was Mussolini, and How Did He Establishment of Dictatorship in Italy?
• What Were Plato’s Ideas About Socialism, Democracy, Capitalism, and Dictatorship?
• How Is Public Good Provision Under Dictatorship and Democracy?
• How Was the Harsh Impact of Dictatorship and Corruption on Citizens of All Classes?
• When Are Trade Unions and Transfer Payments Reasons to Prefer Democracy to Dictatorship?
• What Is a Dictatorship Government?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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César Luis Menotti, Who Coached Argentina to a World Cup, Dies at 85

He led the national team to a championship in 1978 but was convinced that it didn’t get the recognition it deserved in the shadow of the country’s dictatorship.

By The Associated Press

César Luis Menotti, the charismatic coach who in 1978 led Argentina to its first World Cup title, achieving that milestone in the country’s capital, Buenos Aires, has died. He was 85.

The Argentine Football Association announced the death on Sunday but did not give a cause or specify where or when he died. Local media reports said that he had been admitted to a clinic in March with severe anemia. He reportedly underwent surgery for phlebitis in April and then returned home.

Passion for soccer and a sharp ability to explain its mechanics were Menotti’s hallmark characteristics as a trainer. He was considered one of the most emblematic and influential coaches in Argentine soccer.

Menotti, whose nickname was El Flaco (The Thin One), coached Argentina’s national team from 1974 to 1983. He was convinced that the team did not get the recognition it deserved when it won the World Cup because the country was ruled at the time by a military junta responsible for widespread human rights violations.

His detractors often recalled a photo in which Menotti, after Argentina defeated the Netherlands in the final, 3-1, shook hands with Jorge Rafael Videla , who was the head of the junta. The victory came at the height of the so-called dirty war, in which thousands of political opponents of the regime were tortured, killed or “disappeared.”

On the eve of the World Cup, Menotti left a 17-year-old Diego Maradona off the squad — a decision that the coach later said had soured their relations for years after Maradona had become one of the sport’s biggest stars.

Menotti coached Mexico’s national team in 1991 and 1992. He also led Barcelona (1983-84), where he had Maradona on his squad; Atlético Madrid (1987-88); Uruguay’s Penarol (1990-91); Italy’s Sampdoria (1997); and Mexico’s Tecos (2007), his last coaching job.

For years Menotti often had a cigarette hanging between his lips, but he mostly quit the habit in 2011 after a three-day hospitalization stemming from his tobacco addiction.

He also was known for wearing his hair long but neat. He said he didn’t rely on hairdressers.

“I cut my own hair,” he said. “I take the scissors, I cut the ends.”

César Luis Menotti was born in 1938 — some sources say Oct. 22, others Nov. 5 — in Rosario, in the northern Santa Fe Province in Argentina.

He began his career as a player for Rosario Central (1960-63 and 1967), then played for Racing Club (1964) and Boca Juniors (1965-66), all Argentine clubs.

Menotti played for the New York Generals (1967) of the National Professional Soccer League and then for Brazil’s Santos (1968) and Italy’s Juventus (1969-70).

At Santos, he played alongside Pelé , who he never hesitated to say was the best player in the world.

Menotti was a political activist and an affiliate member of the Argentine Communist Party. He was also a boxing fan and an admirer of the works of Latin American writers, including Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges.

“Once I was interviewed by Borges,” Menotti said in one of his last interviews, “and when I asked him if it bothered him that I smoked, he told me, ‘What intoxicates me is not the cigarette, but the stupid conversations.’”

“So I asked about everything,” he said, adding, “But not about soccer, because I know about soccer!”

The New York Times contributed reporting.