What's the difference between autocracy and dictatorship?

Autocracy


Definition:

  • (n.) Independent or self-derived power; absolute or controlling authority; supremacy.
  • (n.) Supreme, uncontrolled, unlimited authority, or right of governing in a single person, as of an autocrat.
  • (n.) Political independence or absolute sovereignty (of a state); autonomy.
  • (n.) The action of the vital principle, or of the instinctive powers, toward the preservation of the individual; also, the vital principle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Copts stand to lose more than any other group in Egypt's current drift following the fall of an unpopular autocracy, and now face an uncertain future with a wide spectrum of possible outcomes, from a liberal democracy to an Islamic republic, or most likely of all, a continuation of army rule with different window-dressing.
  • (2) At the beginning, David Cameron spoke respectfully of "President Mubarak" and the "Egyptian government"; by this weekend, the prime minister is using the much more pejorative "regime" to describe the crumbling autocracy.
  • (3) The privy council only provides the flummery which camouflages their autocracy.
  • (4) Without question, the increased access to people's lives that the data revolution brings will give some repressive autocracies a dangerous advantage in targeting their citizens.
  • (5) The leader of the world’s largest autocracy will enjoy a 103-gun royal salute and a sumptuous, white-tie state banquet attended by three generations of the royal family; he will address the houses of parliament and at night will sleep in the palace’s Belgian Suite, in the very same bed that Duke and Duchess of Cambridge used on their wedding night .
  • (6) After five days away from his homeland, Abu Majid is convinced that the four decades of unshakable autocracy he left behind are now steadily unravelling.
  • (7) A toy autocracy may easily invite a real one; it was recently revealed that nuclear war would have made the monarch a genuine tyrant with the power to appoint a prime minister without an election, although it is hard to imagine Elizabeth II – with her rugs bearing a knitted royal crest, and her tiny dogs – as Gaius Julius Caesar.
  • (8) The book’s success was celebrated by the entry of a new word into the Russian lexicon: oblomovism, which became a term of abuse for the class that helped the autocracy survive for so long.
  • (9) The Kremlin, whose long slide into autocracy shows no sign of relenting, made deals with several of them, knowing it would be easier to keep them on side than to open up Russia's economy to proper procedures, competition, and fair trade.
  • (10) All of which confirms a country slipping from democracy back towards autocracy.
  • (11) The relentless expansion of markets over recent decades has generated a growing disconnect between citizens and states, be they military autocracies or august procedural democracies; for better or for worse, from the rise of maverick politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to institutional chaos in southern Europe and the dissolution of national borders in the Middle East, existing political models are buckling under the strain.
  • (12) A chaotic session of parliament before Christmas saw the annual budget voted through outside the main chamber without opposition support, while the outgoing president of Poland’s highest constitutional court accused Law and Justice of setting the country “on the road to autocracy”.
  • (13) An arrogant assumption, of course, to imply she spoke for all her people – and exactly the question that is impossible to answer in such a repressive autocracy.
  • (14) No more regressive form of taxation has been devised on this continent since the old autocracies were overthrown.
  • (15) For instance, in his speech, Jeb called for strengthening Egypt, the sclerotic autocracy the United States propped up for decades and whose torture and repression birthed Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood (out from under whose robes al-Qaida scuttled into the world); its current president took power in a coup and is hardly known for his weakness on anything but human rights and press freedoms .
  • (16) "So when Sisi stepped forward and did what he did, it was seen as a heroic act, taking a last-step measure to save the country from an ailing economy and a religious autocracy."
  • (17) True, he played a significant role in steering his country from pariah autocracy to a democracy embraced by the international community.
  • (18) In the conservative autocracies of the middle east, Qatar, a wealthy gas-rich emirate, has built up a reputation as a maverick, epitomised by its ownership of the al-Jazeera satellite television channel, which has often infuriated many Arab leaders.
  • (19) "This is not going to be an autocracy," Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, told the Guardian on Sunday.
  • (20) During the 2011-12 fiscal year, under President Bingu wa Mutharika (the current president’s older brother) donors withdrew budgetary support because of poor governance and the then president’s increasing autocracy.

Dictatorship


Definition:

  • (n.) The office, or the term of office, of a dictator; hence, absolute power.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) How can the CHOGM leaders condemn the dictatorship of Musharraf but happily wine and dine with Museveni?
  • (2) My rule of thumb is that if you see a commentator or politician praising a dictatorship, plutocrat or corporation, the best course is to assume that they have been got at unless they can prove otherwise.
  • (3) What goes on in The Handmaid’s Tale [the overthrow of the US government by a theocratic dictatorship that suppresses the rights of women] is actually confined to what used to be the United States.
  • (4) Resisting dictatorships is more worthwhile than accepting them and thinking things will change by themselves.” Asked if the suffering for a majority of South Sudanese citizens could be stopped if Machar and his colleagues gave up the fight, the rebel leader says “giving up would be irresponsible” and that “history would not forgive him” for it.
  • (5) As a result of the restrictive reproductive health policies enforced under the 25-year Ceausescu dictatorship, Romania ended the 1980s with the highest recorded maternal mortality of any country in Europe--159 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989.
  • (6) They "have joined the long list of Americans and others used by the Kim family dictatorship for political advantage", Bolton wrote in the New York Daily News.
  • (7) 'Azerbaijan is turning into a dictatorship – we shouldn't fall for its caviar diplomacy' Read more The crowded courtroom was growing increasing stifling as the air-conditioner could not cope with mid-August heat.
  • (8) They accused the decree of attempting to topple the legal state, make Morsi a God whose decisions cannot be reviewed and build a dictatorship unlike any other Egypt has ever witnessed.
  • (9) Pervitin allowed the individual to function in the dictatorship.
  • (10) The only real black spot was that a cowardly Britain stood by in the 1930s and allowed Hitler and Mussolini to help General Franco win the Spanish civil war , pushing it into dictatorship and encouraging Nazi Germany to launch the second world war.
  • (11) The fact that it failed is related to the atomised society left behind by 40 years of the most brutal and erratic of dictatorships.
  • (12) Iranians finally rose up and proclaimed a constitution, but Russian forces bombed parliament and re-imposed royal dictatorship.
  • (13) Polls opened at 4am across the country, which suffered decades of army-led dictatorship followed by a stumbling reform process.
  • (14) Of the Iraqi people, groaning under years of dictatorship.
  • (15) He admired the demagogic black separatist Louis Farrakhan for his insistence that blacks and whites could never live together, and the dictatorships of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Ayatollah Khomeini for their hatred of Jews.
  • (16) He said his father had been born at a difficult time – a reference to the dictatorship in Portugal – and had moved to France to provide a better life for his family.
  • (17) Belarus – often referred to as "the last dictatorship in the heart of Europe" – has been run for 16 years by Lukashenko, the 56-year-old strongman who has routinely crushed political dissent.
  • (18) While the US is dominated by big oil and big money, China is run by big hydro and big brother – a dictatorship of engineers.
  • (19) Data released this morning showed the jobless rate has hit 24.6% – the highest level since records began in the mid-1970s (following the end of the Franco dictatorship).
  • (20) Maathai was clubbed unconscious by police in 1992 while pressing for the release of political prisoners, the scrapping of a planned sixty-storey building in Nairobi's Uhuru Park and the abolition of single-party dictatorship in Kenya.