February 07, 2023
Personalist Strongmen: Challenges and Trends
Looking back, 2022 was a bad year for strongmen. Take Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s poor judgement led to a war that has not only devasted Ukraine, but left Russia seriously weakened and Putin’s own hold on power more tenuous. In China, as well, widespread protests over the country’s heavy-handed COVID restrictions tarnished the increasingly personalist Xi Jinping’s image, culminating in the most overt signs of dissent that observers have seen there in years.
Personalist authoritarianism is harmful to global democracy, as these regimes are the least likely form of dictatorship to democratize upon their collapse.
Even outside of autocracies, the world’s strongmen faced setbacks last year. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro lost re-election in October 2022, prompting calls among his supporters for the military to intervene and overturn the result. Likewise, in the United States, the Republican Party’s poor performance in mid-term elections in November 2022 dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s image and prospects for returning to power. The bad news for strongmen trickled over into 2023 too, with the Czech Republic’s former highly personalist Prime Minister Andrej Babis losing in the country’s presidential election in January.
Read the full article from Democracy Paradox.
More from CNAS
-
Trump and the War in Ukraine with Michael Kofman and Robert Lee
Podcast
More than 1000 days into the War in Ukraine, questions about continued support for the Ukrainian effort and the prospect of a negotiated settlement in the months to come have ...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Rob Lee & Mike Kofman
-
RUSI Recording: The Impact of the U.S. Presidential Election on European Security
Video
Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow in the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program, joins RUSI to discuss the impact the next US presidential administration will have on NATO, ...
By Jim Townsend
-
Sharper: Trump 2.0
Commentary
Donald Trump's return to the White House is widely expected to reshape America's global priorities. With personnel choices and policy agendas that mark a significant break fro...
By Charles Horn & Gwendolyn Nowaczyk
-
More Escalation in Ukraine: British Missiles and U.S. Land Mines
Podcast
Jim Townsend, adjunct senior fellow in the Center for a New American Security Transatlantic Security Program, joins to discuss British long-range missiles and U.S. land mines ...
By Jim Townsend
