NO SMALL ATTRACTION OF AUTHORITARIANISM FOR THE lEFT/rIGHT...:

[I]t is their lack of the very things that make democracies so far from perfect (the factions competing for voters; the endless bickering) that make autocracies worse.

Even if the believer in autocracy would accept this conclusion, they might still defend its superiority on the grounds of its second promise: decisiveness. Decisiveness can be considered as a virtue in itself, separately from the quality of the decision itself (at least up to a point). In politics just as in other spheres it is often more important that a reasonable choice is made and effectively acted on than that the very best choice is made. For example, suppose someone falls to the ground clutching their chest on a busy street. The bystander effect describes the phenomenon that where there are lots of people available to help, each individual becomes less likely to step forward and act, mainly it seems because lines of responsibility become unclear. The best thing might well be for someone to step forward and take charge ('You call an ambulance. You and you, hold other people back so we can have some space. Now, does any one of you know CPR?') regardless of whether they are the best medically qualified of the people there or whether their instructions are a close match to the Red Cross' latest first aid guidance.

Likewise, in situations like the Covid epidemic, there were a number of plausible policies available to governments (and no perfect ones). It was more important that some policy from that list was chosen and then systematically implemented than that the policy chosen was the best possible. The strongman Xi Jinping opted for Zero-Covid and implemented it systematically, resulting in a tiny death rate in the very country where Covid originated. In contrast it is easy to find evidence of dithering democracies switching continuously between different incompatible disease control regimes, with attendant unnecessary deaths. Boris Johnson's government spent $1 billion subsidising people to eat out in August 2020, and then put the UK into lockdown 8 weeks later as cases rose alarmingly; many federal systems such as the USA implemented multiple incompatible policies at the same time; and so on.

And yet once again the dithering of democracy turns out to be a feature not a bug of successful policymaking (a point made very eloquently by David Runciman). The very decisiveness of autocrats risks locking them into a course of action that may well turn out to be disastrous. The very indecisiveness of democracies allows them to think about and experiment with alternatives and so adapt to changing information or circumstances and to correct mistakes before it is too late. Consider how Xi Jinping's signature Zero-Covid policy changed from a source of gloating triumph over weak-willed democracies to a threat to his own regime as more virulent Covid strains appeared.

Moreover, the problem faced by decisive strongmen like Xi Jinping is directly related to their success in achieving a unified and harmonious political sphere. Because the decisiveness model requires everyone to do as they are told, no public disagreement or second guessing of the situation can be permitted. Everyone must behave as if the strongman leader is infallible, and all his underlings must strive to help maintain that impression - that this policy is the right and thus only possible choice. Hence, even within the government organisation itself, there can be no acknowledgement of the possibility of failure and no planning for alternatives. In Xi Jinping's case this meant that the public was caught by surprise by a policy U-turn (a more appropriate term is 'policy collapse') that was never even formally announced and for which almost no preparation had been made (increasing vaccination of at risk groups; stockpiling medications; preparing hospitals for a wave of cases; etc). It is estimated that the eventual collapse of Zero-Covid may kill more than a million Chinese citizens, but the bigger impact may be to the halo of infallibility on which the regime's popular legitimacy rests.

In contrast, democratic governments are constantly barraged by suggestions for policy amendments and alternatives, and so the public is not surprised when things do change. There is no myth of infallibility around a democratic government. There could hardly be when every mishap and gaffe is broadcast to the nation and picked over gleefully by political opponents, journalists, Twitterati, and cable TV comedians. To the contrary, seeing one's leaders publicly humiliated is entirely normal in a democracy - and thus no threat to the regime. This greatly reduces the costs of admitting mistakes and changing course, while the costs of those mistakes are still small.

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