Why dictatorship is wrong

Ultimately however, democracy generally brings more peace, prosperity and individual human dignity. Camille Paglia :. Virtually all of the world's major archaeological zones, except for Athens, were originally produced by some version of dictatorship. From Karnak and Babylon to Angkor Wat and Chichen Itza, autocratic authority provided the organisational system for massive public works projects that glorified the state.

Under such regimes, of course, individualism was stifled, and there were no basic civil liberties. But as a social principle, centralisation was enormously consequential, marking human progress out of the parochial fiefdoms of family and clan.

Camille Paglia is professor of humanities and media studies at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Galen Strawson :. The possibility is not excluded by human nature, but it's probably better on average to have a dictator who achieves supremacy by force of arms rather than by political advancement. This is because it's almost impossibly hard for a decent person to reach the top by political means.

Galen Strawson is professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. DBC Pierre :. You don't have to travel far to see that political boundaries ill-fit the new world. Never in history have more people been in armed conflict, mostly over territory; seismic shifts among tiny cultural plates. I feel it's not a question of good dictators, but least worst: they're a naturally occurring phenomenon, organic, and having gained power, are often by definition the only ones who will maintain order.

Also, we imagine democracy can be sold off-the-rack, when the history and culture of a place won't yet support it. Take Iraq's implosion after Saddam. One good thing about dictatorships: you know exactly where you stand. Anyway, a purely academic question, as we Anglos traditionally support any dictator who kisses arse.

Dozens of writers are tackling our 10 big questions about democracy. Keep in mind that benevolent dictators work for the betterment of their countrymen. They do not fight against them, persecute them, or force them to live inferior lives. Benevolent dictators ensure that the best policies are being carried out. Benevolent dictators will not allow their country to be misused or endure bad government or policies that could bring it to ruin.

That being said, the corruption of power makes the idea of benevolent dictators unlikely. Most dictators are extreme patriots. A patriot is an individual that wholeheartedly cares for their country. They are prepared to defend it at all costs. They also believe in expanding their country at all costs.

Dictators might oppress their people and even enslave them. Dictatorships might also take this approach with other nations they deem inferior. Taking these actions does not stop them from being committed to patriots.

A dictator will usually go out of their way to ensure that their nation is strongly represented in the world.

Dictators can be very charismatic. Individuals that fulfill this role typically must have this type of personality trait. When a person wants to rule a nation, something about them will make people want to follow or be complacent to overthrow the government. Think about it like this: if the average person decided to take over and rule a nation, how far do you think they will get? Most people are not that charismatic or to take over and rule a nation. If you go back in history and closely examine the lives of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Edi Amin, you will discover how charismatic these men really were.

Their charisma is also put on display to the world. This, however, does not excuse the awful deeds dictators can commit. All people live in a certain way. For example, American people focus on making money, spending time with family and friends, and engaging in social activities.

Some nations, such as Vatican City it is considered an independent nation , focus on religious worship, engaging within a religious activity, and making money. Some countries are more relaxed with their approach to life, such as the people of Costa Rica.

The dynamics of any nation will immediately change with a dictator. That person has the ability to transform a society immediately. They can turn a money-obsessed society into a place of poverty. They could also make a laid-back and happy nation, angry and chaotic. Dictators can even make people within their society into financial slaves. Their governments can be made rich, or the dictator could become a billionaire by heavily taxing the people.

Nearly all dictators who have ever taken power over a country already had some previous political experience. This is a necessary point for people to understand. That type of thing might have happened in the past among monarchies but not most modern nations. Hitler was a German soldier as a young man. He eventually joined some political parties before rising to national prominence. The same is true for most other dictators.

Again, most people cannot rise and become a dictator. Most dictators were already involved in some facet of government. Military leaders are also a part of the government as well, and they too can lay claim to rulership if they can get most of their military forces to back them. Again, this is where charisma comes in. Ultimately, many dictators already had some type of experience in government before rising to power.

In a democracy, the leader cannot change the laws on a whim. The law first needs to be passed by the House and the Senate. The leader changes the laws at any time simply by issuing an order. This means that any law, even something entirely unfair to a specific class of people, can go into effect right away.

Sadly, it is those in the lower classes who suffer. This is great for the upper-class citizens; however, if the government structure were to fall and the dictator were to lose power, there is a chance that the new regime can strip the wealthy of their net worth.

If the government collapses, a person can be a wealthy, upper-class citizen one day and a peasant the next. Dictatorships force their citizens to work using fear. Unfortunately, fear is not the best motivator. People do what they need to comply with the law, but their main focus is to get through the day.

After a while, this can hurt manufacturing and agriculture. North Korea is a perfect example of this. The leaders of the government can get anything that they want.

Rather than focusing on work to make the economy strong, they are more worried about their daily needs, which causes their work to suffer. To remain in power, dictators need to put fear in their citizens. It is not uncommon for mass killings in a dictatorship, and the people are often innocent.

If there is even a whisper about a takeover, the dictator will strike fast and hard. The only way to stay in power is to take every threat seriously and handle it by putting the offending citizens to death.

In a democracy such as the United States, citizens are allowed to oppose their opposition to the government or specific laws publicly. Take the recent police brutality protests in the United States, for example. The police and the government were not allowed to shut down the peaceful protests because people are allowed freedom of speech and assemble peacefully to protest under the First Amendment.

Sadly, the government voiced their hopes to use the military to shut down peaceful protests, but they had no choice but to allow the protests to go on under the Constitution. This is not a luxury that citizens of a democracy have. Anyone who is seen opposing the government will be punished harshly and swiftly. There is no room for opposition in a dictatorship. If a dictatorship leader were to step down or die, and there is no succession plan in place, the government can become complete chaos.

When this happens, unrest can occur in society, making things more difficult for the citizens in the long run. Thus, most dictators will put a succession plan in place based on what is best for them. They will do whatever necessary to make sure that things go their way. For example, the North Korean leader, Kim Jon-un, had his half-brother murdered to prevent a fight for political power in the future. If something like this were done in a democracy, the leader would be held accountable. Something like this is not even frowned upon in a dictatorship.

They need to remain in charge of making the policy changes that they see fit. Unfortunately, this ultimate power can result in disaster. Take Hitler, for example. His policies resulted in the deaths of around 50 million people. If a dictator goes off the rails the way that Hitler did, there is nothing that anyone can do. People can rebel, but this will often result in their death. Mill when he wrote of:. A majority in a single assembly easily becomes despotic and overweening, if released from the necessity of considering whether its acts will be concurred in by another constituted authority.

One of the most indispensable requisites in the practical conduct of politics, especially in the management of free institutions, is conciliation: a readiness to compromise; a willingness to concede something to opponents, and to shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of opposite views. This attitude was totally different to that of Dicey three decades later.

It must be admitted, though, that when this sovereign Parliament was prepared to take action with which Dicey disagreed-as in Home Rule for Ireland-his respect for the Constitution seemed to vaporise.

He recommended a referendum so much for the sovereignty of Parliament and, if a majority voted for Home Rule, he was prepared to see armed insurrection so much for respect for the British Constitution. The authors of the American Constitution were almost obsessive in their desire to have checks on executive power, and they created a system of division between executive, legislative and judicial power which is still unique. Several flaws in the model they created have emerged over the years, but the dangers of elective despotism which they sought to prevent are real.

Responsible government as it has developed in the four countries we are considering does little to control these dangers. What they have is party government, where the party which wins the majority of seats in the lower house forms the government, and its leader become prime minister.

The government is responsible, not to the parliament, but to the caucus of the government party MPs. The lower house merely registers the laws proposed by the government, after discussions with the government party caucus.

The caucus relies for its electoral success on the party organisation, which in some of the parliaments may give orders to the parliamentary party. The power of such a party government is not invariably absolute. The procedure in the British House of Commons, where the party discussions take place in public in a standing committee rather than in the relative privacy of a caucus meeting, has much the same result, though it must be said that the resultant cross voting has beneficial results on the independence of MPs in other areas.

Another problem occurs if the government does not have an absolute majority in the lower house. If this happens, there will be a coalition with other parties or Independents, or a minority government.

The government will negotiate with its possible allies with the aim of retaining government and keeping control of the lower house so that it can get a rubber stamp on its key legislation.

There are also other constraints. The doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament, under which its enactments cannot be struck down by any court, now applies only in New Zealand. Canada and Australia are federations, with entrenched constitutions. The powers are divided between the federal and state governments, and any disputes are decided by the courts. The UK is a de facto provincial member of the European Federation, with laws enacted by its Parliament liable to be overridden by European Union laws on certain designated subjects, and disputes resolved by a Union court.

These restraints still leave formidable and effectively unreviewable powers in the hands of a government which controls the lower house. The only remaining barriers to party despotism are upper houses, but these barriers are of very uncertain strength. If the government party has the numbers in the upper house it is really no barrier at all for, except in the UK, where party members of both houses meet in a common caucus where the upper house members are usually heavily outnumbered by those from the lower house.

The decisions of this caucus are usually binding on upper house members, even in cases where most of them actually oppose the decision. The House of Lords was a special case, for most of the peers did not accept party discipline. The answer was inevitable. Exploiting the non-elective character of the House of Lords, governments managed to reduce its power to a mere delaying role.

However, if the government party does not have the majority in the upper house-and this is becoming increasingly common, with four of the six elected upper houses using proportional representation-the upper house can be a formidable obstacle to an elective despotism, reviewing legislation thoroughly, and amending and sometimes rejecting it.

Government activities may be closely and critically scrutinised, and inquiries held into matters the government does not want investigated. If elected by proportional representation, upper houses can reasonably claim to be more reflective of actual community opinion than a lower house elected by single member constituencies. This claim should be slightly qualified, if only part of an upper house-usually half-retires at each election.

This is deliberately done to make the upper house a continuing body, without violent fluctuations in balance caused by temporary changes in public opinion. Despotic governments do not like this sort of behaviour at all, and have conducted substantial campaigns to destroy or emasculate their upper houses. Let the government govern seems to be the feeling.

Let the government set up such inquiries as it wishes, and prevent any inquiries and suppress any information as it wishes. After all, it is answerable to the voters at the next election, and that is enough. But is it enough? What are the dangers of such an elective dictatorship? Five such dangers stand out. First of all, the responsibility to the electorate is crude and unsatisfactory.

Three, four or five years is a long time to allow any group untrammelled power, and its ultimate accountability depends on the issues which can be brought to the fore at election time. The government can often manipulate the current issues as well as being able to choose the date for an election. Public opinion polls have a crucial influence on the choice of the date for an election, despite prime ministers frequently saying that the only poll that matters is held on election day.

Parliaments usually last their full term only if the polls are adverse. The power of a prime minister to call an early election when public opinion is, perhaps temporarily, in his favour is a very great political advantage, and a quite unjustifiable one.

The second objection is that an elective dictatorship is also most defective in its answerability to parliament. A government which controls the parliament can suppress information or inquiries which are to its disadvantage, sometimes by refusing to supply information, sometimes by using party numbers to head off or interminably delay threatening inquiries, and sometimes by throttling the parliamentary budget so that resources are simply not available for a proper inquiry.

Many people are appalled at the scandalous revelations which are periodically turned up by American congressional inquiries.

What they overlook is that equally scandalous events may be happening in their own societies but are not being uncovered by their supine parliaments.

Some outrageous financial deals have been done by governments in some of our twenty parliaments, and kept secret for years. There have been numerous cases of governments being able to suppress unfavourable stories until elections have been called and won, elections which would almost certainly have been lost if all the proper information had been available to the voters. The evasive devices are many: irrelevant answers at question time; excessive delays-sometimes years-in answering questions from MPs requiring written replies; orders to public servants not to provide information to parliamentary committees by claiming Crown privilege, or by asserting that a policy issue is involved; and the failure of ministers to give proper information to parliamentary committees investigating aspects of their responsibilities, and sometimes even failing to appear before the committees at all.

Two examples will suffice. During the UK parliamentary inquiry into the Westland helicopter affair, the responsibility or lack of it of civil servants to Parliament was laid down by the government.

Civil servants, the government claimed, are accountable to ministers and ministers are accountable to Parliament, so civil servants are bound by any instructions given by ministers and must observe confidentiality.