Benevolent dictatorship is a form of government in which an authoritarian leader exercises political power for the benefit of the whole population rather than exclusively for his or her own self-interest or benefit or for the benefit of only a small portion of the population. A benevolent dictator may allow for some democratic decision-making to exist, such as through public referendums.
According to the Donella Meadows Archive former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew was a benevolent dictator.[1]
British journalist Alistair Cooke described Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency of the United States of America in the two years from his inauguration to the Supreme Court's declaration that the National Recovery Administration was unconstitutional, as a benevolent dictatorship.[2]
Many dictators' regimes portray themselves as benevolent, often tending to regard democratic regimes as messy, inefficient, and corrupt, but few are widely viewed as such outside their country or supporters. Such leaders as Napoleon Bonaparte, Fidel Castro, Josip Broz Tito, Ho Chi Minh and others have generally characterized themselves as "benevolent dictators".
In the Spanish language, the pun word dictablanda is sometimes used for a dictatorship conserving some of the liberties and mechanisms of democracy. The pun is that, in Spanish, dictadura is "dictatorship", dura is "hard" and blanda is "soft". Analoguely, the same pun is made in Portuguese as ditabranda. In February 2009, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo ran an editorial classifying the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985) as a "ditabranda", creating controversy.[3]
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