Is America a two party Dictatorship? A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual: a dictator . It has three possible meanings: 1. A Roman dictator was the incumbent of a political office of legislate of the Roman Republic . Roman dictators were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman...