2024 the year of elections: India, Mexico, the EU, the UK, the US and dozens of others. Perhaps it is impossible to extrapolate meaningful global trends but in this most crucial of years for democracy's struggle against authoritarian alternatives, I was struck by the recent words of Ruth Ben Ghiat, one of the English-speaking world’s leading experts on authoritarianism.

She was recently asked what is your definition of a 21st century strongman? Here is here answer (and how much of it do you recognise in your own country’s politics):

Authoritarian leaders are those that damage or destroy democracy by using a combination of corruption, violence, propaganda, and exaggerated machismo. A strongman’s personality cult elevates him as both a "man of the people" and a "man above all other men". Authoritarianism is about reorganising government to remove constraints on the leader which in turn allows him to commit crimes with impunity, while exaggerated machismo is essential to present the head of state as omnipotent and infallible.

Strongmen exercise a form of governance known as "personalist rule". Government institutions are organised around the self-preservation of a leader whose private interests prevail or national interests in both domestic and foreign policy; public office therefore becomes a vehicle for personal enrichment (of the leader and his family and cronies).

Personalist rule is obvious in totalitarian and one-party states. But it can also emerge in degraded democracies when a politician manages to exert total control over his party, develop a personality cult, and exert outsize influence over mass media.

Because personalist leaders are always corrupt, they and those close to them usually will be investigated when they come to power in a democracy. In such cases, governance increasingly revolves around their defence. More party and civil services resources will be devoted to exonerating the leader and punishing those who can cause him harm such as judges, prosecutors, opposition politicians, and independent journalists.

Even where investigating a strongman leader is no longer possible, a formidable army of lawyers, trolls, bureaucrats, and others will sustain the leadership cult and watch for any cracks in the armour.

Their impulsive and mercurial personalities will make their cabinets a circus of hirings and firings, with the chaos drowning out sound advice. 

Normalising extremism has also been a key facet of personalist rule. Strongmen work hard to condition their people to accept authoritarianism as a superior form of government, and this emotional re-training has proceeded along several vectors. For example, they seek to change perceptions of political violence using mass rallies to market it as necessary and justified. Strongmen also routinely praise their counterparts in other countries while delegitimizing democratic leaders and institutions, from elections, to the courts, to the free press.