Despotism is a reign of ruler that has absolute authority, leaving others as totally subservient slaves. Often related to dictatorships, tyranny, or totalitarian regimes, despotism has a long history in Western political thought. Throughout, it is contrasted with democracy, republican government, the rule of law, and equality.

Aristotle described despotic governments in contrast to civilized Greek republics. The Asian and Middle Eastern "barbarians" lived under absolute despots whose personal tyrannical rule turned everyone else into a virtual slave. Absolute submission to the authority of the despotic ruler characterized non-Greek societies in Aristotle's view. By contrast, the Greek polis encouraged shared governance, widespread citizen participation, and free individuals. From Aristotle's Hellenistic view of "civilized," democratic societies and "barbaric," despotic societies, he concluded that some peoples were "natural slaves." This also justified taking such peoples as slaves once they were conquered in war. Similarly, although Aristotle's polis is the shared rule of free people, he allows "despotic" rule in the Greek household (husband over wife, parent over child, master over slave), but in the public realm, free citizens engage in collective deliberation and governance.

The middle ages used despotism to describe a tyrannical monarch in Europe. Modern international theory in Grotius and Pufendorf permitted European domination of colonial peoples on the ground that they were slaves by nature who were used to despotic rule and were incapable of self-governance. Thomas Hobbes saw the right of despotic enslavement from consent following conquest.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Reformation Christians often referred to the pope's absolute power over the church as despotic, the faithful being reduced to unthinking slavery. Frenchman Montesquieu argued that European monarchies that adopted oriental codes of absolute power became despots (such as Louis XIV). The Turkish, Islamic Ottoman Empire served as an example of despotic absolutist power (under the sultan) to 18th-century Westerners. The Chinese emperor was often regarded as an archetypical despot, and Oriental subservience as reflecting natural slavish nature. The Russian czar appeared to be oriental in this sense, with ignorant oppressed Russian serfs only capable of following a strong absolutist dictator. Rousseau charged that Czar Peter the Great tried to liberalize Russian society too quickly, as those centuries of despotic government made the Russian people incapable of self-government. Thomas Jefferson hesitated to extend full democratic rights to the people in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory on the grounds that, being used to the despotism of French monarchy, feudalism, and Catholicism, they were incapable of self-rule.

Karl Marx saw Asiatic societies (e.g., India) as despotic and economically stagnant, brought into modern world economics by British colonialism and capitalism. Contemporary military dictatorships in Africa and Latin America are sometimes described as despotic. Totalitarian communist regimes such as Cuba and North Korea are often characterized as despotic.

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