1Tsarist autocracy in Russia endured for centuries before the revolutions of 1917 dismantled its institutional foundations.
2Does a modern surveillance state, even one with nominal elections, constitute a new technological form of autocracy?
3The philosopher Karl Popper did not consider Plato's ideal republic a benign utopia but rather a blueprint for intellectual autocracy.
4Distinguish carefully in your thesis between the populist dictatorship of the twentieth century and the older, dynastic model of autocracy.
5There is a persistent scholarly debate about whether the Byzantine imperial autocracy was genuinely absolute or constrained by unwritten customary law.