Why Strongmen Win in Weak States

Accounts for the ascendance of illiberal political movements across the West have centered either on the relative roles of economic squalor or "cultural backlash." Yet many of those "authoritarian populist" leaders out of the West-from Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines to Vladimir Putin in Russia to Narendra Modi in Indiaderive their legitimacy neither from economic promises alone, nor from social conservativism, but from a third commitment-to restore public order and state authority. Without such state capacity, this platform will remain particularly appealing to voters for some considerable time since the general erosion of state capacity in many developing democracies has gone hand in glove with deep crises of democratic confidence and an openness to populist alternatives.

Yet after five years of populist breakthroughs across Europe, the United States, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia, scholars are far from uncovering any "universal theory" which could explain why illiberal politicians appeal to voters in every time and place. Yet, theories that have been put forward recently exploring the respective roles of "economic grievance" and "cultural backlash," especially within the context of the West, have cast a light onto this issue. On the one hand, a growing literature, notably by Barry Eichengreen, Dani Rodrik, and Hanspeter Kriesi, has explored how the economic dislocations of globalization, such as increased income inequality, have made voters in the West's "left-behind" industrial and rural regions support extremist parties such as the French National Rally or Greece's Golden Dawn.1 On the other side of this debate, scholars such as Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have shown how the political cleavage between prosperous metropolitan areas and conservative hinterlands in Europe and the United States is rooted not only in socioeconomic differences but also in diverging values and beliefs, as formerly dominant groups react against socially progressive policies.2

In fact, to understand fully why authoritarian strongmen have been winning elections in so many developing democracies, one needs to pay due regard to the space that such leaders purport to fill-that of the erosion of political authority. In many such societies, corruption, criminality, and violence not only are pervasive but have worsened over time, lending the "law and order" pitch of leaders such as Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India, or Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro a reach that goes well beyond mere cultural conservatives. In particular, their platforms tend to appeal to that segment of the new middle class which is self-made and upwardly mobile, lying outside the existing network of patronage politics, and incensed at the persistence of urban crime, inefficient public services, and general clientelism and graft.

It is this coalition of supporters that has secured these leaders an electoral majority.4 In developing democracies it is not so much the losers but the "winners" of globalization who are most likely to support such forms of conservative populism—and ironically, perhaps, they do so precisely because rising expectations regarding probity in office, public order, and public-sector clientelism and graft have pushed voters away from establishment politics and toward antisystem parties and movements.

Democratization and State-Building

The divergence between state-building and democratization trajectories over recent decades has to be considered, therefore, if the rise of authoritarian strongmen in developing democracies is to be understood. Democratic reform and the building of state capacity in the early twenty-first century were generally represented as mutually reinforcing processes; international policy makers prescribed competitive multiparty elections as a panacea for countries afflicted by everything from endemic corruption to state fragility to deficiencies in infrastructure or welfare provision. Yet, in fact, elections cannot on their own guarantee any advance along the road of creating an effective bureaucracy, clamping down on organized crime, or guaranteeing schools, roads, and hospitals are efficiently and equitably provided. Figure 1 New democracies differ around the world in how much they have succeeded in building effective institutions and strengthening public accountability, and these divergent paths may be what explain where and when the authoritarian challenger emerges triumphant.

Since the "third wave" of democratization that swept the [End Page 53] world from the 1970s to the late 1990s, there have indeed been success stories, where democratic transition has brought newfound scrutiny of senior politicians by journalists and activists. Take South Korea, for example. The "candlelight revolution" of 2016–17 brought better executive oversight after years of presidential scandals and proved that, yes, a democratic culture has indeed taken shape since the country's 1987 transition.