The Hindenburg-era German government is described as authoritarian rather than a dictatorship. Lowering the threshold for the term makes it harder to identify what distinguishes a full dictatorship. Authoritarian or autocratic government can be a route toward dictatorship without already being identical to it. Imprecise political vocabulary can blur the institutional changes that historians need to explain.
Notable Point · 2:36:07-2:41:01
Why authoritarian government is not synonymous with dictatorship
A political-history aside argues that precise labels matter because authoritarian rule and dictatorship describe different thresholds of power.