Dictatorships need to consolidate all decision making and decision executing power in the hands of the executive, a Leader and his trusted lieutenants.
All independent sources of power, criticism, and potential resistance need to be either destroyed or tamed.
Here are those sources of power:
1. The military
2. The police
3. Education, including higher education
4. Administrative executive, including intelligence gathering
5. Courts / judiciary
6. Legislature: eg congress and senate in the US
7. Media and now social media
8. Civil society including
capacity to protest freely without military crack downs.
Capacity of private companies, including media companies, to abide by policies and practices not approved by the dictator and his clique.
These eight “mountains”, to echo Christian nationalist language (they usually enumerate seven), give a first shorthand to do a check on how dictatorial your society is.
"There are heroes in the seaweed", L. Cohen (vale). Several names, peoples, etc. changes later, the blog of an Australian philosopher-social theorist, mostly.