Dictatorship is not a modern concept. Two thousand years ago, during the period of the Roman Republic, exceptional powers were sometimes given by the Senate to
dictators such as Sulla and Julius Caesar. The
was that the dictatorship would be temporary and that it would make it
to take swift and effective action to deal with an emergency. There is some
as how the term should be applied today. Should it be used in its original form to describe the temporary exercise of emergency powers? Or can it now be
in a much broader sense as common usage suggests?