Dictatorship (eBook)

Now available in English for the first time, Dictatorship is
Carl Schmitt's most scholarly book and arguably a paradigm
for his entire work.

Written shortly after the Russian Revolution and the First World
War, Schmitt analyses the problem of the state of emergency and the
power of the Reichspräsident in declaring it. Dictatorship,
Schmitt argues, is a necessary legal institution in constitutional
law and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of a
so-called dictator.

Dictatorship is an essential book for understanding the work
of Carl Schmitt and a major contribution to the modern theory of a
democratic, constitutional state. And despite being written in the
early part of the twentieth century, it speaks with remarkable
prescience to our contemporary political concerns.