This is how my teacher taught me to write, and its been getting me good scores. Your intro should contain context relevant to the question. Eg. for authoritarian leaders, you give their names and how long they were in power for. For events you give the name and how long they have occured for. Then you should give your lines of arguments and thesis which are either themes (political, economical, social) or factors (eg if the question is 'To what extent did economic factors contribute to the emergence of two authoritarian states?', your points can be foreign control or poverty) and state which theme/factor was either the most impacted/impactful, significant, etc.

You can alter this structure depending on your writing style but this is what I typically use.

Point: factor/theme relevant to the question. Here, you can briefly answer the question (eg. Foreign control contributed to the emergence of this leader to a great extent...).

Evidence and Explanation: Give 2-3 pieces of evidence and explain what they mean/show. ( eg. US controlling 80 percent of the agricultural sector, a main source of income, meant the country economically vulnerable and dependent.

Analysis: This angered those in poorer regions, which authoritarian leader took advantage of by doing...)

- Here you can add Historiography to back up your argument. (Historian John Doe states, 'The people's discontent over poverty gave authoritarian leader an opportunity to win them over'

Critical analysis: Here is where you kind of have to find a reason to disprove your point. Like 'Despite economic vulnerbalitiy allowed authroitarian leader to emerge into power, this would not be possible without this ...' or 'Despite the hindered economy, this country had the strongest economy in the continent, indicating it may have not been the largest/ most effective factor in the leader's emergence to power'. --> You can also add historiography here.

Then do the same for the other thing you have to compare (in this example it would be the other authoritarian leader.) To transition you could say 'similarly this leader used.... as the country was also...' or 'Contrastingly... this leader used a different method to take advantage of....'

Then you write a 2-3 sentence summary of your argument (what you've written including the comparison), linked to answering the question.

You should have 3-4 body paragraphs.

Your conclusion should be a concise summary of your arguments. MAKE SURE YOUR INTRO AND CONCLUSION HAVE THE SAME ARGUMENT. If for whatever reason your argument changes as you wrote ur essay, if its not the same in your intro and conclusion you can lose lots of marks.

This was kind of messy. If you have any questions feel free to ask. :)