The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century

by Moisés Naím

From Russia, Syria, and Kosovo to Venezuela, North Korea, and Honduras, mafia states radiate lawlessness, exporting gangland tactics even as they offer safe harbor for the world’s criminals.

A mafia state anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

In today’s international system, Vladimir Putin’s Russia plays an outsized role in sustaining this loose global confederation of mafia states. Russian diplomats, spies, hackers, and trolls poison the waters for democrats everywhere.

The first step is simple: follow the money. Ramp up the discovery and sanction of places where mafia state leaders stash away their assets, and you’ve greatly undermined their model’s attractiveness.

Thomas Carothers has called for democracies to “make collective, mutually supportive commitments to improve their own democracies and to stand up for democracy whenever it is threatened in other countries.”22

To defeat them, we need a kind of political anti-trust doctrine, one designed to protect the competitive dynamic at the heart of democracy.

Whether dealing with campaign finance, redistricting, voter registration, or media regulation, policymakers must squarely confront one question: Do the current rules foster fair and constructive competition?

To reestablish its role as a stabilizing force in the international system, the United States needs to reimagine its central political institutions, beginning with the presidency, to curb the threat of autocratic backsliding. It needs to reform how Congress is elected and how it operates to allow it to make timely and difficult decisions. It needs to revolutionize an election system that produces intractable partisan gridlock and rancor by default. Most urgently, America needs to rethink the role of money in politics to curb the plutocratic takeover of its most important institutions.

Post-truth populists don’t need to stick with hard facts. They’re free to promise painless, instantaneous solutions that rekindle hope, boost expectations, and promise revenge. At the moment, this toxic tale feels good to their followers. And therein lies its power. What do democrats offer in reply? Abstract ideas and process. The rule of law. Checks and balances. Freedom. The power of the market and the possibilities opened by economic opportunity. All attractive ideas for those who don’t have to worry about basic needs. To a chronically unemployed father who needs to provide for his hungry children, these ideas are remote, irrelevant, and surely not a solution to his family’s problems. Liberals offer a complicated explanation for why conducting politics in a certain way will lead to the best results for all. Not only is this

counternarrative full of abstract ideas, but it often lacks an identifiable hero and villain. Our “good guys” are just those willing to commit to a set of abstract ideals and procedural rules, and our “bad guys” are those who refuse to do so. The entire package can feel lifeless, bloodless, hatched in a lab. I passionately believe it is correct … but I also have to accept that it doesn’t get people’s adrenaline pumping the way a 3P narrative does.

But while we can never entirely overcome it, we can blunt the impact of the 3P autocrats’ advantage by stressing that freedom and democracy lead to human flourishing in a way autocracy never can. We can give people something substantive to be for, not just against. We can make an argument for a good life with deep roots in the traditions of the West that may not be intoxicating but remains honest.

The fact that democracy has survived over the last three centuries in no way guarantees that it will prevail against its enemies once more.

Consider ranked-choice voting, the reform on offer that is perhaps most likely to drain the life out of aspiring 3P autocrats.

A political system that uses ranked-choice voting to elect its representatives will, as a rule, elect politicians who try to embody the preferences of the broad center of the political spectrum.

Under ranked-choice voting, politicians still compete—fiercely!—for power.

And the voice of reason might just begin to break out above the din.

Another illustrative example of high-impact reforms is the widespread adoption of citizens’ juries and citizens’ assemblies—representative groups of citizens randomly selected and then brought together to discuss a specific problem and devise recommendations on how to address it.

Probably no country has done this better than Ireland, which uses these panels to present official recommendations on which the parliament must then vote.