Barrington Moore, Jr. in his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), explored the origins of dictatorship and democracy in Germany and Japan. Catonism in Ancient Rome and Populism in Turkey: Political Psychobiography of Cato the Elder and Erdogan expands on that to include the history of the AKP and Erdogan in relation to the concept of Catonism. This rejects the assumption that the behavior of a class in any situation is determined by the 'economic factor' rather than the 'religious factor' or the 'diplomatic factor'. Nevertheless, conservative and radical imagery can help explain the origins of dictatorship. Radical and conservative rhetoric helps authoritarian regimes control the whole country. The example of the Roman political figure Cato the Elder illustrates this phenomenon, and this book uses a pyschopolitical approach to link Catonism with the policies of the AKP under Erdogan's populist leadership.

Çaglar Ezikoglu is lecturer in the department of history, politics and war studies at University of Wolverhampton. Dr. Ezikoglu received his PhD from the Department of International Politics at the Abersytwtyh University.