Autocracy in the context of "Despotism"

A tyrant (from Ancient Greek τύραννος (túrannos) 'absolute ruler'), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, yet the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. However, Greek philosopher Plato saw tyrannos as a negative form of government, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, deemed tyranny the "fourth and worst disorder of a state."

The philosophers Plato and Aristotle defined a tyrant as a person who rules without law, using extreme and cruel methods against both his own people and others. The Encyclopédie defined the term as a usurper of sovereign power who makes "his subjects the victims of his passions and unjust desires, which he substitutes for laws".In the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, a new kind of tyrant, one who had the support of the military, arose – specifically in Sicily.

A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader who holds absolute or near-absolute political power. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian, and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, and personalist dictatorships.

The Latin word dictator originated in the early Roman Republic to refer to a constitutional office with "a temporary grant of absolute power to a leader to handle some emergency." Modern dictatorships first developed in the 19th century, which included Bonapartism in Europe and caudillos in Latin America. With the advent of the 19th and 20th centuries, dictatorships and constitutional democracies emerged as the world's two major forms of government, gradually eliminating monarchies, one of the traditional widespread forms of government of the time. Typically, a common aspect that characterizes dictatorship is suppressing freedom of thought and speech of the masses, in order to maintain complete political and social supremacy and stability. Dictatorships generally employ political propaganda to decrease the influence of proponents of alternative governing systems. The 20th century saw the rise of fascist and communist dictatorships in Europe; fascism was largely eradicated in the aftermath of World War II in 1945, while communism spread to other continents, maintaining prominence until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The 20th century also saw the rise of personalist dictatorships in Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America, both of which became prominent in the 1960s and 1970s.

A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is defined as a state ruled by a dictator. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency. Like the terms "tyrant" and "autocrat", dictator came to be used almost exclusively as a non-titular term for oppressive rule. In modern usage, the term dictator is generally used to describe a leader who holds or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power.

Dictatorships are often characterised by some of the following: suspension of elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of the rule of law; and the existence of a cult of personality centered on the leader. Dictatorships are often one-party or dominant-party states. A wide variety of leaders coming to power in different kinds of regimes, such as one-party or dominant-party states and civilian governments under a personal rule, have been described as dictators.

Theocracy or ethiocracy is a form of autocracy or oligarchy in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries, with executive, legislative, and/or judicial power, who manage the government's daily affairs.

Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe. Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism, fascism is at the far-right of the traditional left–right spectrum.

The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before spreading to other European countries, most notably Germany. Fascism also had adherents outside of Europe. Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the mass mobilization of society erased the distinction between civilians and combatants. A military citizenship arose, in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner. The war resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines, providing logistics to support them, and having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.

During the Roman Empire, the governor of Roman Egypt (praefectus Aegypti) was a prefect who administered the Roman province of Egypt with the delegated authority (imperium) of the emperor.

Egypt was established as a Roman province in consequence of the Battle of Actium, where Cleopatra as the last independent ruler of Egypt and her Roman ally Mark Antony were defeated by Octavian, the adopted heir of the assassinated Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Octavian then rose to supreme power with the title Augustus, ending the era of the Roman Republic and installing himself as princeps, the so-called "leading citizen" of Rome who in fact acted as an autocratic ruler. Although senators continued to serve as governors of most other provinces (the senatorial provinces), especially those annexed under the Republic, the role of Egypt during the civil war with Antony and its strategic and economic importance prompted Augustus to ensure that no rival could secure Aegyptus as an asset. He thus established Egypt as an imperial province, to be governed by a prefect he appointed from men of the equestrian order.

The Republic of Afghanistan (Pashto: د افغانستان جمهوریت, Dǝ Afġānistān Jumhūriyat; Dari: جمهوری افغانستان, Jumhūrī-yi Afğānistān) was the first republic in Afghanistan. It is often called the Daoud Republic, as it was established in July 1973 by General Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan of the Barakzai dynasty (alongside senior Barakzai princes) who deposed his cousin, King Mohammad Zahir Shah, in a coup d'état. The occasion for the coup was the 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan which took power from most members of the royal family in favour of centralization under Zahir Shah and his offspring under the tenet of democracy. Daoud Khan was known for his autocracy and attempts to modernize the country with help from both the Soviet Union and the United States, among others.

In 1978, a military coup known as the Saur Revolution took place, instigated by the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, in which Daoud and his family were killed. The "Daoud Republic" was subsequently succeeded by the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Autokrator or Autocrator (Ancient Greek: αὐτοκράτωρ, romanized: autokrátōr, lit. 'self-ruler', from αὐτός, autós, 'self' + κράτος, krátos, 'dominion') is a Greek epithet applied to an individual who is unrestrained by superiors. It has been applied to military commanders-in-chief as well as Roman and Byzantine emperors as the translation of the Latin title imperator. Its connection with Byzantine and Russian-style absolutism gave rise to the modern terms autocracy and autocrat.