Interesting how they consider a dictator to be anyone in charge of a country that was rated as "Not Free" even though some of them are technically elected officials. Not saying its wrong I just wouldn't have thought of them as dictators
Dictators are often elected officials who imprison political adversaries, eliminate any true competitors, and hold onto power through intimidation, rigged elections, etc.
Time to update. Mugabe is fertilizer now as Zimbabwe is lead by Emmerson Mnangagwa and yes, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is a dictator too. Also in Gabon, Bongo changed his first name to Ali and Omar Al-Bashir was deposed in a coup d'etat in Sudan last year to be replaced by Abdalla Hamdok.
I made this quiz with the data of the NGO Freedom House, who defined a country ruled by a dictator as a "not-free" country, meaning a country where "individual freedoms - ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law—can be affected by state or nonstate actors." Coming from this perspective, being elected doesn't necessarily mean ruling over a free country. A lot of Head of States in this list have been elected - Putin, Maduro, Kagame, even Lukashenko - but with elections not being perceived as free and equal, the term "democratic" looses a lot of its implicit meaning.
Like I said in previous comments as well as the description, this quiz solely relies on the statistics from the NGO Freedom House and I therefore am not the originator of this differentiation. I only transformed the data into a quiz.
But aside from that aspect, I think Freedom House does actually differentiate between absolute monarchs and dictators. That why the Vatican is not featured in this list, while Bhutan and Nepal weren't declared dictatorships in older listings (before they abandoned their absolute monarchies in 2006 and 2008). While there are certainly differences between a classical dictatorship and an absolute monarchy, the rulers of Saudi-Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Brunei and Eswatini also qualify as corrupted monarchies, or in other words as tyrants. The differentiation between an modern-day absolute ruler, a tyrant, a despote or a dictator is quite fluid and therefore exceeds the purpose of this quiz.
There is a difference between the pope and the sultan.The sultan usually rules with an iron fist and unfairly, treating the people like there a bunch of peasants.The pope is kind of like a usual Prime Minister or President
But aside from that aspect, I think Freedom House does actually differentiate between absolute monarchs and dictators. That why the Vatican is not featured in this list, while Bhutan and Nepal weren't declared dictatorships in older listings (before they abandoned their absolute monarchies in 2006 and 2008). While there are certainly differences between a classical dictatorship and an absolute monarchy, the rulers of Saudi-Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Brunei and Eswatini also qualify as corrupted monarchies, or in other words as tyrants. The differentiation between an modern-day absolute ruler, a tyrant, a despote or a dictator is quite fluid and therefore exceeds the purpose of this quiz.