What is a one-party state?
In GCSE History, a one-party state is a country where only one political party runs the government. This means that other political parties are banned or cannot gain power.
Many examples of one-party states are dictatorships. This is the opposite of a democracy, meaning people lose their right to vote in elections. An extreme one-party state will go so far as to remove all of people's basic human rights, such as freedom of speech. To enforce these rules, one-party states are sometimes called ‘police states’ or ‘military dictatorships.’ These states use a secret police force or the Army, to keep the leader of the government in power.
There have been many one-party states in history. Some examples are:
Nazi Germany (1933-1945)
Fascist Italy (1922-1946)
Communist Russia (1917-1991)
Communist China (1948-present)
As the examples above show, one-party states usually have either Communist or Fascist political beliefs.
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