What is Dictatorship?

These are all forms of government, i.e. ways that countries are run. A monarchy is simply a country which has a king or a queen (sometimes another term is used, e.g. emperor in Japan). That person is considered the head of state and has inherited the position -- they are not elected. A monarchy can be a country where the monarch actually has real political power or, as is the case in most monarchies today, is only symbolic, like in Britain. A Theocracy is a country where there is no distinction between church and state. The head of the official church is also, typically, the head of the state. The church rules the country. Puritan New England was sort of a theocracy as was Utah when the Morman church was completely in charge. Iran today is sort of a theocracy. A dictatorship is a country where one person is in charge with very few other sources of politial power. Often that person is in charge because he overthrew the previous government, but people can be elected to office and then become dictators. Nazi Germany was a dictatorship under Hitler and Cuba pretty much a dictatorship under Castro. An Absolute Monarchy is in a sense a country where the King is the Dictator. The king (or queen sometimes) has pretty much complete power. These are mostly only of historical interest now. So France in the time of Louis XIV was an absolute monarchy. Russia under the Czars was an absolute monarchy almost right down to the end.