LIBERALISATION
Hubris among the fatal blunders that bring tyrants down
‘Daniel Treisman's list shows even the most capable of authoritarian rulers are fallible, with disastrous consequences,’ writes Leonid Bershidsky
As authoritarian rulers rise in many parts of the world, one wonders what must happen for their countries to liberalise. The likes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Xi Jinping in China are entrenched, experienced and not unpopular — so should their opponents simply resign themselves to an open-ended period of illiberal rule? According to Daniel Treisman — a University of California, Los Angeles, political scientist — that’s not necessarily the case. For a recent paper, he analysed 218 episodes of democratisation between 1800 and 2015 and found they were, with a few exceptions, the result of authoritarian rulers’ mistakes in seeking to hold on to power. The list of these errors is both a useful handbook for authoritarians and a useful reminder that even the most capable of them are fallible, with disastrous consequences for their regimes. Treisman’s list of mistakes is worth citing in full. There are five basic ones: • Hubris — An authoritarian ruler und...
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