Trip one's taken to the south exposing dictatorship (5)
I believe the answer is:
junta
'dictatorship' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both groups as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'trip one's taken to the south exposing' is the wordplay.
'trip one' becomes 'jun' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'taken to' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'the south' becomes 'Confederate States of America' (synonyms).
'exposing' says to take the centre (I've seen 'exposed' mean this (outside letters removed)).
The middle of 'confederatestatesofamerica' is 'ta'.
'jun'+'ta'='JUNTA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for junta that I've seen before include "Military group in power after coup d'etat" , "Group of military rulers" , "Jaunt (anag.)" , "Military cabal" , "meeting" .)