Researchers identify another common problem associated with dictatorships. Dictators are not evil by definition, but many do share a particular set of unfortunate personality traits. They might harbour fantasies of unlimited power, beauty, glory, honour and domination, paired with a lack of empathy. “Probably, the job opening of dictator appeals to the nastier end of the range of our species, in particular, to narcissists” says Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University.

Life under a dictatorship would appear to have many drawbacks, then – but more countries than you might think could be legitimately labelled as dictatorships according to the academic definition. In fact, Freedom House, a non-governmental organisation headquartered in Washington DC that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, estimates that about two-thirds of the world’s citizens live under a dictatorship, and two billion people suffer from an oppressive rule. Freedom House says 106 dictatorships or partial dictatorships persist today, accounting for 54% of the world’s nations.

The causative factors that give rise to dictatorships in the first place have not changed much over the centuries. Some of the first were established in Classical Rome in times of emergencies. “A single individual like Julius Caesar was given a lot of power to help society cope with a crisis, after which that power was supposed to be relinquished,” says Richard Overy, a historian at the University of Exeter. “But usually, he wasn’t so keen to relinquish it.” Many modern and recent dictatorships – those of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, for instance – were also established in times of turmoil, and future ones likely will be, too. “Over the next century, there will be acute points of crisis,” Overy says. “I don’t think we’ve seen the end of dictatorship any more than we’ve seen the end of war.”