To most, the concept of dictatorship evokes authoritarianism, antidemocratic, and lawless rule, usually by an individual. However, the history and theory of dictatorship is far more complex, dating at least as far back as the Roman republic and arguably permeating all of modern political thought. Initially meaning a temporary and provisional form of emergency governance intended to resolve the crisis of a political order, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, dictatorship increasingly became counterposed to constitutional government and the rule of law. By the middle of the twentieth century, dictatorship took on a unanimously negative connotation, becoming associated with authoritarian regimes on both the left and right. In the present, it is often invoked as the looming result of liberal-democratic backsliding and deconsolidation around the globe. What accounts for this conceptual transformation, and how can the concept of dictatorship help us to make better sense of the growth of modern executive power and the crises of capitalist states in the twenty-first century?
In this course, we will examine the changing meaning of dictatorship, alongside the changes in early and late modern structures of social and political power. We will consider how the concept evolved alongside modern conceptions of authority and sovereignty, and ask what, if anything, distinguishes dictatorship from despotism, authoritarianism, autocracy, fascism, and totalitarianism. What is the connection between dictatorship and emergency governance, and how necessary is it for the latter? Are dictatorial regimes akin to a condition of lawlessness, or are they compatible with legality and some form of the rule of law? What differences are there, if any, between reactionary-conservative and revolutionary forms of dictatorship? And how can we think beyond the posited dichotomy between dictatorship and liberal democracy that has persisted since the Cold War? Readings will include, among others, selections from Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Rousseau, Robespierre, Karl Kautsky, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Ernst Fraenkel, Clinton Rossiter, and Juan Linz.
