Systems of Government
Military Dictatorship
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A military dictatorship is a system of government in which supreme political power is held and exercised by a member of the armed forces, typically seized through a coup d'etat rather than won through election. Power may rest with a single military strongman ruling without meaningful institutional constraint, or with a junta, a committee of officers drawn from different service branches ruling collectively.
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Disputed
Origin YearJozef Pilsudski's 1926 coup in Poland is one of the earliest twentieth-century European instances typically cited alongside Spain (1923) and Portugal (1926); the form itself has much older precedents, including shogunal rule in medieval Japan from 1185. Founding ContextA system in which supreme power is held and exercised by a member of the armed forces, typically the commander-in-chief or the leading figure of a military junta. 1 Sources
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