Cartoon by Christo Komarnitski

The age of the elected despot is here

by Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator

Financial Times:  We live in the age of charismatic elected would-be despots. His — it is almost always a “he” — are the politics of fear and rage. It takes a certain sort of personality to be a master of such politics. In the right — that is, the wrong — circumstances, such leaders emerge naturally. That is not surprising after a violent revolution. What is far more so is that such leaders have been emerging in well-established democracies.

We now see elected “strongmen” — actual and would-be — everywhere. Leading examples are Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Matteo Salvini in Italy and Donald Trump in the US. These leaders differ in degrees of sophistication. The countries in which they operate also differ. Some are economically developed, while others are not. Some are longstanding democracies; others, again, are not.

Yet these men are all characters in a story powerfully told by the independent US watchdog Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2019, published in February, reported a 13th consecutive year of decline in the global health of democracy. This decline occurred in all regions of the world, notably in the democracies that emerged after the cold war. Above all, it occurred in western democracies, with the US — the most influential upholder of democratic values — leading the way.

What sort of man is such a leader? In The Republic, the first work of western political philosophy, Plato (an anti-democrat) describes him as a “protector”. With a mob at his back, he feels no compunction about his promises or actions. What, asks Plato, will be his destiny? “Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf — that is, a tyrant?”

This idea of supposed protector as would-be despot is telling. But such a man does not present himself as a protector of everybody. He presents himself as a protector of the “real people” against foreigners, minorities and treasonous elites. This is a moral, not a political claim. His is also the politics of paranoia. If anything goes wrong, it is necessarily the fault of the “deep state”, or some other enemy within or without. Princeton professor Jan-Werner Müller calls this type of politician a “populist” in his superb book, What is Populism?

To be successful, a populist demagogue has to project belief in himself as a man of destiny. Self-obsession and even megalomania help; they may well be essential. In a compelling book, Disordered Minds, the Irish writer Ian Hughes suggests such men are narcissists or psychopaths. To a non-expert eye, they do appear deranged. How else can one sell the idea that “I alone am the people’s salvation” to oneself?

If such a leader wishes to subvert democracy, it is, alas, not that hard to do, as Harvard’s Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in How Democracies Die. First, capture the referees (the judiciary, tax authorities, intelligence agencies and law enforcement). Second, sideline or eliminate political opponents and, above all, the media. Third, subvert the electoral rules. Supporting these assaults will be a fierce insistence on the illegitimacy of the opposition and the “fakeness” of information that does not align with whatever the leader finds useful to state.

People will want to trust such a leader whenever they desperately wish to believe that someone powerful is on their side in an unjust world. That is what happens when trust in the institutions and norms of a complex democracy falters. When faith in sober policymaking disappears, the charismatic figure emerges as the oldest kind of leader of all: the tribal chieftain. When things become this elementary, the difference between developing and so-called advanced democracies can well melt away. True, the latter have stronger institutions and norms and a more educated electorate. In normal circumstances, that may be enough to resist. Some argue it will remain enough. Yet, we are human. Humans adore charismatic despots; they always have.

In developing countries, the election of would-be autocrats frequently follows the spectacular failures of predecessors (as in Brazil), or deep national humiliation (as in Russia) — or both.

How, then, can we understand the story in the US, where, as a report by special counsel Robert Mueller shows, the behaviour of the president would, in an earlier era, have been unacceptable? Why was Mr Trump ever elected? Why is he still trusted by so many?

The answer has two parts. One is the strength of the fear and anger. This is partly due to longstanding economic failures, partly to the financial crisis and partly to cultural changes. The other answer is the willingness of parts of the elite to exploit such emotions, to achieve huge tax cuts and eliminate regulation. I have called this approach “pluto-populism”. It can also be seen as the strategy of racial division used by the old elites of the US South, but modernised and applied to nation as a whole.

The US is much the most important case, because it has been the world’s principal defender of liberal democracy. But not so very dissimilar currents of feeling exist in other high-income countries. De-institutionalised rule by elected strongmen might be even worse than institutionalised rule by an appointed leader, such as China’s Xi Jinping. The politics of fear and rage bend towards tyranny. Institutions alone will not contain this threat. Only a politics built partly on hope can do so. As Abraham Lincoln suggested, a democratic republic will only endure if touched by “the better angels of our nature”.

Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”.