Dominant-party system in the context of "Grand coalition"

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party, the military, or the concentration of power in a single person. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have sometimes been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.

The political scientist Juan Linz, in an influential 1964 work, An Authoritarian Regime: Spain, defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities:

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.

A police state is a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little to no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are not exclusive to simply one-party states or dominant-party states, as they can also arise in a democracy or multi-party system.

Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has "taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

The president of the Liberal Democratic Party (自由民主党総裁, Jiyū-Minshutō Sōsai) is the highest position and executive authority within Japan's Liberal Democratic Party. The current holder of the position is Sanae Takaichi, who was elected to the position on 4 October 2025, following her victory in the party's presidential election. She is the first woman to hold the role.

Due to the dominance of the LDP in Japanese politics, twenty-six of the twenty-eight presidents (all except Yohei Kono and Sadakazu Tanigaki) have also been the prime minister of Japan.

The 1955 system (Japanese: 55年体制, Hepburn: 55-nen Taisei), also known as the one-and-a-half party system, is a term used by scholars to describe the dominant-party system that has existed in Japan since 1955, in which the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has held by itself or in coalition with Komeito (from 1999 to 2025) a government nearly uninterrupted, with opposition parties largely incapable of forming significant or long lasting alternatives, other than for brief stints in 1993–1994 and 2009–2012. The terms 1955 system and the one-and-a-half party system are credited to Junnosuke Masumi [ja], who described the 1955 system as "a grand political dam into which the history of Japanese politics surge".

The years of Japan under the 1955 regime witnessed high economic growth, leading to the dominance of the ruling party in the Diet, with an undergirded tight connection between the bureaucracy and the business sector. Due to a series of LDP scandals and the 1992 burst of the Japanese asset price bubble, the LDP lost its majority in the House of Representatives in the 1993 general election, which initially signalled the end of the 1955 system. However, the left-wing Japan Socialist Party, the long-time opposition which finally gained a majority, would soon lose much of its support after it decided to form a coalition government with the arch-rival LDP just a year later, leading to the JSP being refounded as the SDP in 1996, and its coalition partner regaining power. The LDP briefly lost power again in 2009 to the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan before regaining it in 2012, retaining power up to the present day. Nevertheless, it lost its majority in the House of Representatives in the 2024 general election, and its majority in the House of Councillors in the 2025 election, forcing it to run a minority government for the first time.

The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, titled Restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations, was passed in response to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1668 that required any change in China's representation in the UN be determined by a two-thirds vote referring to Article 18 of the UN Charter. The resolution, passed on 25 October 1971, recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) as "the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations" and removed "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" (referring to the then Kuomintang regime as the dominant party in the Republic of China, whose central government had retreated to Taiwan from the mainland) from the United Nations.

In the 2020s, disputes over the interpretation of the resolution have arisen, with Taiwan, the United States, Canada, the European Union, United Kingdom and Australia disagreeing with the PRC's interpretation about conflating the resolution with its one China principle and using it against Taiwan's right of participation in international organizations.

Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70% of its territory being a part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. With a population of slightly over 2.4 million people and a comparable land area to France, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. It is essentially the nation-state of the Tswana people, who constitute nearly 80% of the population.

The Tswana ethnic group are descended mainly from Bantu-speaking peoples who migrated into southern Africa, including modern Botswana, in several waves before AD 600. In 1885, the British colonised the area and declared a protectorate named Bechuanaland. As part of the decolonisation of Africa, Bechuanaland became an independent Commonwealth republic under its current name on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has been a parliamentary republic with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections, though dominated by the Botswana Democratic Party until 2024. As of 2024, Botswana is the least corrupt country in mainland Africa according to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International.