Dictatorship

Now available in English for the first time, Dictatorship isCarl Schmitt’s most scholarly book and arguably a paradigmfor his entire work. Written shortly after the Russian Revolution and the First WorldWar, Schmitt analyses the problem of the state of emergency and thepower of the Reichspräsident in declaring it. Dictatorship,Schmitt argues, is a necessary legal institution in constitutionallaw and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of aso-called dictator. Dictatorship is an essential book for understanding the workof Carl Schmitt and a major contribution to the modern theory of ademocratic, constitutional state. And despite being written in theearly part of the twentieth century, it speaks with remarkableprescience to our contemporary political concerns.