Dictablanda

Dictablanda is a word used by political scientists to describe a dictatorship in which civil liberties are mostly preserved rather than destroyed.

The word dictablanda is a portmanteau of the Spanish words dictadura ("dictatorship") and blanda ("soft"); there is also an element of punning involved in that blanda replaces dura ("hard").

The term was first used in Spain in 1930 when Gen. Dámaso Berenguer replaced Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja as the head of the ruling military junta (directorio militar) and attemped to reduce tensions in the country by repealing some of the harsher measures that had been introduced by the dictator. It was also used to refer to the latter years of the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco, and to the hegemonic 70-year one-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico.

The term "dictablanda" can be usefully contrasted with democradura, meaning an illiberal democracy: a system that is relatively deficient in civil liberties, such as Iran after the Islamic revolution.