"Benevolent Dictatorship" is meaningless so stop suggesting it.

In nearly any conversation dealing with creating a utopian society or ideal form of government, somebody will propose a "benevolent dictatorship" as the best form. I've had it up to my eyeballs with that.

"Benevolent" anything is not a form of government. It doesn't describe its structure, powers, or anything dealing with how it runs. Saying a government is "benevolent" is just shorthand for saying, "It does what I think it should do."

One could just as easily say the best form of government is a "Benevolent Meritocracy" or a "Benevolent Plutocracy" and the ultimate statement is the same. "Benevolent" describes what a government does or should do, the form describes what it actually is.

So for the love of Pete, please stop with the "Benevolent Whatevers" already.

You're disputing your own argument. "Benevolent" describes the attitude and effect of the government; "Dictatorship" describes the type of government. There's nothing inherently contradictory about a "Benevolent Dictatorship."

How about Benevolent Anarchy...?

And what Madrugada said. You have the system of government and the policy 'flavor' they base their decisions on - so the above example wouldn't even work, since there's no one to even make decisions, let alone have those decisions based off of any benevolent/malevolent axis or things.

But I will agree - the 'Benevolent' part is probably not the right word to use, despite clearly communicating the overarching attitude of said government.

This site is a benevolent dictatorship; Eddie does not need to consult with anyone to do whatever he wants.

Benevolent is an adjective meaning roughly "well intentioned". Dictatorship is a noun meaning roughly "government has absolute power". Ergo, a "Benevolent Dictatorship" is a "well intentioned government that holds absolute power" although there's an assumption that it will not be corrupted.

edited 29th Apr '11 10:28:29 AM by Deboss

For the reasons explained by Maddy, this is a well-established term in political philosophy; it's not just something that random people on the Internet came up with yesterday. It is fair to say that whilst there isn't anything contradicatory about the concept in theory, in practice benevolent dictatorships often tend to end up becoming nastier ones. Power corrupts, and so on.

Probably follows some modified form of the Evil Overlord List, too.

But "Benevolent Dictatorship" is just a vague enough term to work!

Clearly there can be no flaws...except of course, maintaining the benevolent part.

Now there we have problems. Surely you don't expect the person suggesting one to solve EVERYTHING though...

I never said "Benevolent Dictatorship" was contradictory. I said that it was meaningless as a form of government because it doesn't describe what the government is, only what it does.

Uh, the "Dictatorship" part pretty well describes what the government is. That's kind of the point of the word.

As its own label, it doesn't stand much...

It's really just a dictatorship, in which the guy actually looks out for his people.

But what other kinds of "Adjectival Dictatorships" are there anyway?

< Whoops. O_o

edited 29th Apr '11 11:08:10 AM by Keybreak

I figured it describes what it is, and not what it does because dictators have a tendency to differ wildly in there actions but go about government in a similar manner.

edited 29th Apr '11 11:08:06 AM by Usht

This. "Dictatorship" describes what type of government it is. One man in complete control.

Let's see there's Brutal Dicatatorships (very common model), there's probably a few more, I'm just not sure what kind as I'm not a political theorist.

See, there's still a problem with a benevolent dictatorship. Just because the dictator is well-meaning doesn't mean he's going to do the right thing. Unless we define "benevolent" in this case to mean that he does, in which case we're begging the question

^ We're what?

Can't rightly name any well-meaning good-of-the-people dictators, so I suppose it's only viable as a theory, and not a practice.

Which isn't to say that it's impossible; just that I can't think of any.

edited 29th Apr '11 2:06:36 PM by pvtnum11

Well, the point is that you not only need a dictator who isn't power corrupt, but one who isn't a retard either. Or easily distracted. It's basically a "if we had one perfect leader, we could make this work".

Great, but as a leader, a dictator is still human and can easily get side wiped since he or she is only a single person and can't see everything coming.

That's more of a thing with events and life than with politics though, so I don't see it as undermining of a potential Benevolent Dictatorship. For one, I recall some open source projects that had a B.D. in their early stages, in particluar when they had to deal with defining new protocols and stuff.

, , we must obviously find Vetinari and put him in power.

The original benevolent dictator is Cincinnatus, who really just wanted to plow his own fields.

Benevolent Dictatorship is what Christians think the universe is.

The only way to have a benevolent dictatorship is to have a reliable way to overthrow the dictator if he stops being benevolent.

On which case, it ain't really a dictatorship anymore.

There actually is one possibility that would get around the main flaw in benevolent dictatorships, immortality.

Regarding alternate types of dictatorship, there's also the eccentric dictatorship.

I think the question here is... why a benevolent dictatorship? Why not a benevolent de4mocracy, or a benevolent oligarchy, or even a benevolent kleptocracy? By attaching 'benevolent', you're basically saying 'the best kind of government is a good government'. If you want to compare governments on a level playing-field, it's functionally meaningless.