The rise of strongman leaders has become a defining trend in contemporary politics. Long confined to the realm of autocracies, strongmen have now come to dominate democracies too. In a variety of domains – ranging from media reporting to political campaigns – politics has become more personal, with elected leaders taking on outsized influence relative to their political parties or the institutions that surround them. despite this uptick, the political consequences of the new personalist era are less understood, particularly in terms of what it means for democracy. Authoritarian regimes are becoming more oppressive, and the world is seeing a rise of strongmen leaders in countries where it was thought democracy was taking hold. During the spring of 2011, democrats rejoiced as citizens in the Arab world rose up against oppressive regimes. Strategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore,” U.S. President Barack Obama commented that May, of 2011 hailing the “shouts of human dignity” in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. If democracy could gain a foothold in a region that had resisted it for so long, the possibilities appeared endless.
Before the year of 2011 was out, there were already signs of a slide back into a metaphorical winter. Today, with the exception of Tunisia, the nations looked to with optimism have returned to their authoritarian ways. Far from the hoped-for democratic wave, authoritarian regimes are becoming more oppressive, and the world is seeing a rise of strongmen leaders in such countries as Turkey, Philippines, Venezuela and Hungary, where it was thought democracy was taking hold. there are fears the trend will only worsen and it has become a reality following spring of 2011.
Freedom House, a U.S.-based non-government organization that researches democracy and human rights, reported that in 2016, for the 11th straight year, more countries suffered declines in political rights and civil liberties than experienced gains. The organization’s annual Freedom in the World report detailed gains by populist and nationalist forces in democratic states and brazen aggression by authoritarian powers the following years. All of these developments point to a growing danger that the international order of the past quarter-century — rooted in the principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law — will give way to a world in which individual leaders and nations pursue their own narrow interests without meaningful constraints, and without regard for the shared benefits of global peace, freedom, and prosperity.
Turkey, Venezuela and Hungary,india,Poland naming some are among the countries experiencing the sharpest declines in the Freedom House rankings, and recent events suggest their slide is continuing. The world has never been immune from strongmen, but there are signs that defence mechanisms are eroding. Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on political theory at Harvard University, has studied decades of data from the World Values Surveys, an initiative begun in 1981 to measure beliefs and values. In a paper published in 2015 in the Journal of Democracy, he and Roberto Stefan Foa wrote that people in North America and Europe have become “more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives.”
For example, the proportion of Americans who think it would be a good thing or very good thing for the “army to rule” has risen from one in 16 in 1995, to one in six today. A similar increase has been seen in those who favour “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with parliament and elections.” The trend is most pronounced among people born after 1980.The trend is more pronounced among less educated sections of the country than the educated class. Earlier generations have a real sense of what it means not to live in a democracy,” Mounk said in an interview. “They have fought against fascism or have experienced fascism or they have been alive at a time when communism was a real force in the world. When they assess liberal democracy, they assess it in relation to these other systems, and they recognize these other systems are bad.” younger people do not have the same negative experience of alternatives to democracy: “They look at the present reality and they find things in it which they have reason to be pissed off about, like the stagnation of living standards and other things. And so they say, ‘Why not try something new? How bad can things get?’
In a book “The People Versus Democracy,” written by Yascha Mounk identifies three factors that are undermining people’s faith in democracy. Living standards for ordinary citizens in the West have stood still since 1985. At the same time, Europe, and to a lesser degree North America, is undergoing a gradual transition “from mono-ethnic and mono-cultural countries to multi-ethnic ones, which part of the population is embracing, but another part is rebelling against.” Finally, the rise of social media has reduced the technological advantage that political, financial and academic elites have over the rest of the population. Brian Klaas teaches politics at the London School of Economics and is the author of The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy. He said in an interview that “the sheen has been taken off” Western liberal democracy by its failure to deliver economic results to an increasingly alienated population. And under President Donald Trump, he said, the United States has abdicated its traditional role of pressuring other countries on human rights, press freedom and fair elections.
The most worrying element of the strongman’s rise is the message it sends. The systems that powered the Cold War’s winners now look much less appealing than they did a generation ago. Why emulate the U.S. or European political systems, with all the checks and balances that prevent even the most determined leaders from taking on chronic problems, when one determined leader can offer a credible shortcut to greater security and national pride? As long as that rings true, the greatest threat may be the strongmen yet to come. What do xi jinping, Boris Johnson and Prince Muhammad bin Salman have in common? More than you might think, and more than is good for the rest of humanity, writes Gideon Rachman, a columnist for the Financial Times who previously worked for The Economist. He sees all three men as proof of the advent of “The Age of the Strongman”, as his wide-ranging and astute new book is titled. They present a threat not only to the well-being of their own countries, but also to a world order in which liberal, cosmopolitan ideas are increasingly embattled. To varying degrees, the strongman leaders claim to speak for the common man, while undermining institutions, stoking nationalism and cultivating a personal style of politics, if not an outright personality cult.
Mr Gideon Rachman argues convincingly that the strongman style is a continuum, in which its exponents’ affinities are amplified or muffled by the particular political system in which each operates. The harm is not just to the people they oppress or the national political systems that they corrode. Strongmen also chip away at global institutions, international norms and multilateral co-operation. Many are suspicious of free trade. Few are inclined to endure much inconvenience to curb climate change. They are prone to adventurism and aggression in foreign policy—witness Mr Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine. Mr Gideon Rachman’s most powerful point concerns not the strongmen themselves, but Western politicians’ and commentators’ wishful thinking about them (including, on occasion, The Economist). When Mr Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin, he was hailed as a man who could stabilise Russia’s listing democracy. Mr Erdogan, too, was greeted with optimism, as someone who could reconcile Islam and democracy. Abiy was going to put an end to Ethiopia’s ethnic divisions; mbs was going to drag the Saudi monarchy into the 21st century; and so on. The world’s genuine democracies may not be to blame for the rise of the strongmen, but they have not been very shrewd about warding them off, either.
