Types
Since 1945 Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East have been common areas for military dictatorships. One of the reasons for this is the fact that the military often has more cohesion and institutional structure than most of the civilian institutions of society.
The typical military dictatorship in Latin America was ruled by a junta (derived from a Spanish word which can be translated as "conference" or "board"), or a committee composed of several officers, often from the military's most senior leadership, but in other cases less senior, as evidenced by the term colonels' regime, where the military leaders remained loyal to the previous regime. Other military dictatorships are entirely in the hands of a single officer, sometimes called a caudillo, usually the senior army commander. In either case, the chairman of the junta or the single commander may often personally assume office as head of state.
In the Middle East and Africa, military governments more often came to be led by a single powerful person, and were autocracies in addition to military dictatorships. Leaders like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Sani Abacha, Muammar Gaddafi, and Gamal Abdul Nasser worked to develop a personality cult and became the face of the nation inside and outside their countries.
Read more about this topic: Military Dictatorship
Famous quotes containing the word types:
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)
“The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators.... Provision should be made in all union constitutions for the recall of leaders. Big salaries should not be paid. Career hunters should be driven out, as well as leaders who use labor for political ends. These types are menaces to the advancement of labor.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)