The Springboard to Dictatorship

Author: Fathali Moghaddam

December 3, 2025

How do authoritarian leaders continually rise to power across vastly different cultures and eras? In this chapter, Berkley Center Faculty Fellow Fathali Moghaddam and coauthor Anya Mehta address the overlooked field of autocratic psychology, observing that autocracy—not democracy—has historically served as the dominant environment shaping human behavior. They detail how latent dictatorial figures capitalize on social contexts to transition from potential autocrats into dictators. It was published in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (2025).

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