Before harsh governments became dominant, what were the signs?

[JRDelirious]

@Little_Nemo

Arguably, the definiton of a stable democracy is one that doesn’t get replaced by a non-democratic government.

Indeed. However, my point was that in these cases, the ascent of dictatorial rule does not emerge “from” a preexisting real or nominal “democratic” dialectic – in the OP’s words, it may not have come from what were the local equivalents to Dems/Reps or Labour/Tories but have been a movement predicated on getting rid of both (or all, if more than 2) such factions.

Lemur866, you are right, in many countries the dictatorship such as it is is barely up to suppressing direct challenges, being just committed to simply preserving themselves in power and crushing opposition just for being opposition at all, and not so much due to a wish to have everyone on the same ideologic page (another thing you mention, I mentioned too: often what fell was a Democracy In Name Only, where there never was a true tradition of Liberty and Rule of Law, just the forms and rituals thereof, or else the Liberty and Rule of Law was only for the chosen classes to begin with).

Dicatorship does not equal efficiency, we know that… BUT, seeing what looks like the rulers disposing harshly of troublemakers, or ruining the rich, will often give the dispossesed and disempowered a PERCEPTION that someone is imposing order and putting people in their place, even if they’re only sowing terror.

[First_Amongst_Daves]

@Lemur866

But totalitarian governments are impossible in extremely poor countries, because totalitarianism requires a certain level of state organization. Most third world country might have authoritarian governments, but the reach of the government is extremely limited simply because the government doesn’t have the resources to oppress the populace.

And the notion that dictatorship is efficient is nonsense. Mussolini certainly didn’t make the trains run on time.

Apologies - I was thinking of European countries, not dirt poor anarchistic places in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere where a legitimate economy (ie. sans foreign aid and crime-generated economic activity) does not effectively exist. But even then, thinking about it, warlords are the ultimate facists, aren’t they?

Dictatorship can make things very efficient (the Holocaust is one grim and brutal example of authoritarian efficiency) but the appeal of facism from the economic perspective of the starving farmer, imho, is the perception that totalitarian control does not have to worry about liberal spuriousness like regulation, unions and the like.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Little_Nemo

I’d disagree. Italy and Spain were democracies before Mussolini and Franco took over. Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Mexico, Pakistan, Portugal, and Turkey are other examples of democracies where dictators took over.

I think you need to make a distinction between dictatorships that overthrow democratically elected governments, and dictatorships that emerge from democratically elected governments. Most or all of your examples are the former type, while Nazi Germany was the latter.

That’s indeed very rare. Two countries to keep an eye on these days are Russia and Venezuela