The strongman fallacy

No one is wise enough to exercise extreme power. Corruption and tyranny follow

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in support for the idea of a “strongman” leader in democracies such as the UK and, of course, the US. (Few people talk about a “strongwoman” leader even though the closest the British have come to an all-powerful prime minister in the post-war era was Margaret Thatcher.)

It seems clear that this support is mainly built on frustration with traditional politicians. They obfuscate; they talk in platitudes; they repeatedly change their minds; they never get anything done. By contrast, a strong leader can cut through the bullshit and take the necessary action.

That is the theory at least and it explains why, despite Trump’s blatant attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his threats to all and sundry, American voters re-elected him in 2024. The same appeal explains the appeal of Farage’s Reform in the UK, the National Rally in France and Alternative fűr Deutschland in Germany.

But there is a fallacy at the heart of this appeal. It is that there are clear answers to national problems that politicians could implement if only they were not so selfish or useless. At the start of my book on Trump’s economic policies, I include a quote from H L Mencken “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong”.

If there really were simple solutions to our problems, leaders will generally find them. Indeed, during Covid, Trump did play his part in ensuring the development of a vaccine (although he barely mentions it now, because of the anti-science bias of his base) and even Boris Johnson managed a quick roll-out of the vaccine in the UK. In 2008 and 2009, politicians around the world figured out a combination of fiscal stimulus and bank rescues to stop the financial crisis from turning into another Great Depression.

But as I have pointed out before, western economies are not growing as fast as they used to, and so almost every decision taken by a government involves trade-offs and, thus winners and losers. Improving public spending requires higher taxes; those who pay the taxes complain while those who use the public services are insufficiently grateful. Cut taxes without cutting spending and you are punished by the bond markets, as Liz Truss discovered. Improving infrastructure takes years and triggers complaints from those who live nearby about the noise and congestion. Allow immigration and people complain about a change in culture and overcrowding; restrict immigration and key industries, like social care and agriculture, run short of workers.

We have already seen with President Trump that easy solutions don’t work. The tariffs were supposed to rebuild US manufacturing. But the amount of money being spent on manufacturing construction has been declining since Trump came into office, along with manufacturing jobs. What about all that tariff revenue? The cost is not being borne by foreigners, as Trump claims, but by Americans; about 94% of the cost has been borne by domestic producers and consumers.

And here we come to the main element of the strongman fallacy. Yes, they can make decisions quickly; Trump has already signed more executive orders in the first year of this term than he did in the whole of his first stint (and outpaced the whole of Biden’s administration as well). But just as a strongman faces no barriers to taking good decisions, he faces no constraints on his bad decisions as well.

History is littered with dictatorial leaders who make disastrous mistakes. In 1941, Stalin ignored the signs that Germany was about to invade, leaving the Russian army unprepared; Mao Zedong pushed through the Great Leap Forward (which resulted in tens of millions dying from famine); Mussolini launched costly and deadly invasions of Abyssinia and Albania, and then picked the wrong side in the war; the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties all cheerfully signed up for the First World War which brought their rule to an end; Putin thought he could conquer Ukraine within weeks and is still at war four years later. And, of course, strongman leaders face no barriers on their ability to imprison and kill their opponents; there is usually no way of unseating them except violent revolution or conquest by another power.

Democracies may be slow and cumbersome when it comes to taking good decisions but they also provide a check on bad ones as well. That can be done by internal party opposition (Liz Truss in the UK), by an election, by constitutional checks (usually the courts), or by street protests. For all the horror of the Minnesota killings, the coverage by the media and the shift in opinion polls, means that the Trump regime cannot go as far as their Iranian counterparts.

I am not the greatest fan of Friedrich Hayek but he had a point when he argued that no individual could ever be in possession of sufficient knowledge to allocate resources efficiently; knowledge is dispersed throughout the system and is reflected in indicators such as price changes. Hayek was mainly thinking about economics but the argument holds true much more broadly.

Worse still, it is in the nature of strongmen that they will spend much of their time worrying about the possibility of being overthrown and this will devote more energy to crushing opposition than they will in ruling wisely. What is more, the nature of their rule tends towards corruption; if all decisions are taken by one man, then economic actors will seek to influence and reward that person. Only saints could withstand that temptation and, by definition, strongmen aren’t saints. Hence we have seen the Trump regime retreat from the anticorruption regulations imposed by his predecessors and openly exchange favours in return for donations.

We just have to hope that American democracy is strong enough to constrain him after the midterms and throw out his party in 2028. But it is far from guaranteed. Strongmen are like cockroaches; once you let them in the house, it is very hard to get them out again.