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The Authoritarian Paradox
Conservatives around the world love autocracies, but where are successful ones?
[Published first on my substack, The Halfway Café. If you enjoy liberal takes on contemporary politics and foreign policy, subscribe!]
The premise of authoritarian governments is that with more centralized control over the policy-making process, dictators should be able to enjoy greater freedom of action and faster political results than democracies. Without the constant partisan infighting, competing special interests, and reliance on electoral approval, public opinion, and protection of minority rights for legitimacy, autocracies ought to be, in theory, streamlined paragons of governmental success.
Authoritarian regimes tend to have several relative ideological advantages thanks to their state-sponsored corruption of all aspects of political life, including tight control over the media, loyal police and paramilitary forces, rubber-stamping legislative bodies, and hyper-partisan judicial courts. With such centralized control, authoritarians should be able to act more strategically toward long-term goals and initiatives, enact more coherent and consistent policies, and implement them more efficiently. Additionally, when some policies inevitably do not work out as intended, dictators should be able to quickly and effectively course-correct toward better policies.
