How can autocratic rulers came to power

People tend to feel happier and perform better when they feel like they are making contributions to the future of the group. Since autocratic leaders typically do not allow input from team members, followers start to feel dissatisfied and stifled.

The autocratic style can be beneficial in some settings, but also has its pitfalls and is not appropriate for every setting and with every group. If this tends to be your dominant leadership style, there are things that you should consider whenever you are in a leadership role. You might not change your mind or implement their advice, but subordinates need to feel that they can express their concerns. Autocratic leaders can sometimes make team members feel ignored or even rejected. Listening to people with an open mind can help them feel like they are making an important contribution to the group's mission.

In order to expect team members to follow your rules, you need to first ensure that guidelines are clearly established and that each person on your team is fully aware of them.

Once your subordinates understand the rules, you need to be sure that they actually have the education and abilities to perform the tasks you set before them. If they need additional assistance, offer oversight and training to fill in this knowledge gap. Inconsistent leaders can quickly lose the respect of their teams. Follow through and enforce the rules you have established. Establish that you are a reliable leader and your team is more likely to follow your guidance because you have built trust with them.

Your team may quickly lose motivation if they are only criticized when they make mistakes but never rewarded for their successes. Try to recognize success more than you point out mistakes. By doing so, your team will respond much more favorably to your correction. While autocratic leadership does have some potential pitfalls, leaders can learn to use elements of this style wisely. For example, an autocratic style can be used effectively in situations where the leader is the most knowledgeable member of the group or has access to information that other members of the group do not.

Instead of wasting valuable time consulting with less knowledgeable team members, the expert leader can quickly make decisions that are in the best interest of the group. Autocratic leadership is often most effective when it is used for specific situations.

Balancing this style with other approaches including democratic or transformational styles can often lead to better group performance. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter.

Wang H, Guan B. Front Psychol. Thomas University. What is Autocratic Leadership? How Procedures Can Improve Efficiency. Updated June 1, Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data.

We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Definitions of democracy vary. All citizens in a democracy have the ability to vote in elections, which should be free and fair. Independent media, freedom of speech and assembly and the rule of law feature in most contemporary perceptions of democracy. In the old days, autocrats often came to or retained power through military coups and violent crackdowns.

Now the shift from democracy to autocracy is slower and less obvious. I spent more than 15 years with the United Nations, where I advised governments and democracy advocates on how to strengthen the rule of law, human rights and democratic governance.

They are smarter, more resilient and can adjust their methods to take account of new developments, like modern technologies and a globalized economy. The key is to use legal means that ultimately give democratic legitimacy to the power grab.

Extreme forms of this include abolishing presidential term limits, which was done in China ; and regressive constitutional reforms to expand presidential power, like in Turkey. Restrictions on funding and other bureaucratic limitations silence the ability of the people to hold accountable those in power. More than 50 countries have passed laws that stifle citizen groups. Democracies have also jumped on this bandwagon.

Limitations on permits for public protest, detention of protesters and excessive use of force to break up demonstrations are frequently used tools. Economic growth and prosperity are critical to retaining elite or oligarchical support for autocratic leaders. Yet President Trump was willing to jeopardize that in the name of weakening the council because it denounces such Israeli policies as the crippling closure of Gaza and the discriminatory and illegal settlement regime in the West Bank.

The Human Rights Council made major advances despite—and in one case arguably because of—the US absence. In response, the Human Rights Council, where there is no veto, stepped in to create a semi-prosecutorial investigative mechanism to preserve evidence, identify those responsible, and build cases for the day when a tribunal becomes available to judge these crimes. That effort won overwhelmingly, with 35 in favor and only 3 against 7 abstained , sending the signal that these atrocities cannot be committed with impunity, even as senior leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the army continued to deny they occurred.

And in what may be an alternative route to the International Criminal Court ICC that does not depend on the Security Council, the ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary examination into the alleged deportation of Rohingya from Myanmar, using for jurisdiction the fact that the crime was completed when the Rohingya were pushed into Bangladesh, an ICC member state.

Yet the Human Rights Council resolved to continue an international investigation started last year of war crimes in Yemen by a vote of 21 to 8 with 18 abstentions. A resolution, led by a group of Latin American nations, won by a vote of 23 to 7 with 17 abstentions. In addition, five Latin American governments and Canada urged the International Criminal Court to open an investigation of crimes in Venezuela—the first time that any governments have sought an ICC investigation of crimes that took place entirely outside their territory.

Other governments, including France and Germany, supported the move. A group of Latin American governments led by Argentina also organized in the context of the Human Rights Council the first joint statement, signed by 47 countries, on the worsening repression in Nicaragua, as President Daniel Ortega responded with violence to growing protests against his repressive rule. Beyond the Human Rights Council, governments mounted important defenses of human rights in other venues as well. One was the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW , which had been empowered to determine in any given case only whether chemical weapons have been used, not who used them.

Russia opposed empowering any international investigation to attribute responsibility, given its backing of and cover for the Syrian government as it repeatedly used chemical weapons, and its own apparent use of the Novichok nerve agent in an attempted assassination of a former spy in Britain. The pushback came in an initiative led by France and Britain, over the opposition of Russia, which resulted in the member states of the OPCW voting 82 to 24 to grant it the mandate to begin identifying the users of chemical weapons.

A Russian effort to block funding for this new mandate was also rejected. Poland is the largest recipient of EU funds, and Hungary is among the largest per capita recipients. The investigation led to resignations, various penalties, and the introduction of new lobbying rules.

The multilateral action that may have saved the most lives over the past year focused on Syria. Today, an estimated three million people live there, at least half of them displaced from elsewhere in Syria. But with Turkey having closed its border after having received 3. The Kremlin held the keys to whether this feared slaughter of civilians proceeded because the Syrian military was incapable of sustaining an offensive without Russian aerial support. Intensive international pressure on the Russian government ultimately persuaded President Putin to agree with Turkish President Erdogan to a ceasefire in Idlib, beginning in September.

Whether that ceasefire fails, as others have, or holds remains to be seen at time of writing in early December, but its existence shows that even in as complicated a situation as wartime Syria, concerted pressure can save lives. The Saudi government advanced a series of changing cover stories, each refuted with evidence released piece-by-piece by the Turkish government which continued to persecute its own journalists, activists, academics, and politicians who dared to criticize President Erdogan.

Gradually, the United States and Canada imposed targeted sanctions against many of the Saudis implicated in the murder. In Europe, Germany took the unprecedented step of barring 18 Saudi officials from entering the nation Schengen Zone, while Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland stopped arms sales to the kingdom.

Many members of the US Congress from both parties—along with members of the US media and public—denounced this callous calculation. Pressure from a group of African states was key to finally persuading President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo to schedule elections for his successor.

Barred from seeking reelection by constitutional term limits yet reluctant to give up power, Kabila had deployed security forces to detain and even fire upon pro-democracy activists. He relented only after coordinated pressure from African states—foremost Angola and South Africa—as well as such Western governments as the United States and Belgium. At time of writing, it was unclear whether the elections scheduled for December 23 would take place and whether conditions would be free and fair.

The threat of mass African withdrawal from the International Criminal Court continued to ebb in the wake of pushback from African governments and civic groups supporting the ICC. To date, the only African state to have withdrawn is Burundi, whose president, Pierre Nkurunziza, hopes to avoid criminal charges for his brutal repression of opposition to his amending constitutional term limits on his tenure. But the last year saw greater scrutiny of the downside of such unaccountable government.

International businesses also came under growing pressure not to become complicit in these intrusive practices. Speaking to the Human Rights Council just one week after her appointment, the new UN high commissioner for human rights, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, expressed concern at the crackdown on Uyghurs and called for access to the region. In the West, the most divisive issue seized upon by autocratic politicians was immigration, even in such places as Poland and eastern Germany that have relatively few immigrants.

Some centrist politicians calculated that the best way to defeat this autocratic threat was to ape it, even at the cost of mainstreaming its rhetoric of hate and divisiveness.

By contrast, the most outspoken German opponents of the far right, the Greens, enjoyed unprecedented success. The results of local elections in the Netherlands and Belgium and general elections in Luxembourg sent similar messages.