mething close to it has been more the rule than the exception: Sukarno and Suharto in Indonesia; Nasser, Assad, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Kadafi, and others in the Arab world; Bokassa, Idi Amin, and a host of others in Africa; Peron, Batista, Castro, the Duvaliers, and more in the Western Hemisphere.
It may be useful here to introduce some distinctions among autocratic or oligarchical systems. Not every "military dictator" is a personalist autocrat; sometimes the term has been used, as an exercise in opprobrium, of persons who were simply the chief members of juntas or committees, not autocrats at all. But the distinctions are more of degree than kind. As part of the continuum of oligarchically controlled political power and of the quest for total societal subservience, dictatorships often differ only in degree from run-of-the-mill authoritarian systems. At one extreme of the continuum of authoritarianism is found the tyrannical variant of dictatorship. A highly idiosyncratic, brutal, and personalist system of social repression set up by a civilian or military leader, tyranny is the epitome of personal rule unfettered by moral constraints or political structures and unsupported by society.
A distinction, then, can be drawn between those leaders who -- however autocratic -- show some sign of regarding themselves as exercising a public trust on behalf of their people, and those who show little sign of any motive beyond personal gratification. The classic example of the capricious, "pure" dictator in post-colonial, sub-Saharan Africa is Idi Amin, whose bloody rule showed no sign of any agenda beyond self-aggrandizement. A subjective but practical operational test of the distinction might be called the test of luridness. Where an autocratic leader's career is surrounded by bizarre and horrific tales of personal whim and capricious action, we are dealing with a pure, personalist dictator. The rule of less personalist, more "r...