THE TYPICAL LIFE CYCLE OF DICTATORSHIPS.

Dictatorships are not only cultural complexes which have recurrently appeared in history, each one is also a series of interlocked processes. Several analysts of dictatorships have devoted themselves superficially to this phase of the subject. When the strategic moment arrives, the dictator makes his thrust at power. It may be facilitated by the defeat of the contender, the crumbling and final defeat of parliamentary opposition, or the appalling state of general confusion which exists or which has been produced. In the early days of a dictatorship, before the free spirits have been clubbed into submission and other persons of independent mind have been expelled or otherwise eliminated, forces of resistance hold their own for a while. A few of dictatorships of history have converted themselves into a more or less permanent arrangement following the period of entrenchment. Reza Shah Pahievi seems to have formed a dynasty with some likelihood of persistence. The great mass of history's dictatorships, however, have eventually gone into a period of decline.