The idea that dictatorships get things done while democracies dither has an ancient provenance and enduring appeal. When times were tough in the ancient Roman republic, the Senate appointed a strongman with virtually unlimited powers (but a temporary term of office) to tackle the crisis. Abraham Lincoln, the savior of American democracy and the Great Emancipator, suspended the writ of habeas corpus and arbitrarily jailed dissenters to maintain the Union’s resolve to win the American Civil War. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini supposedly “made the trains run on time”—democracies cannot always do the same.
The argument that authoritarian governments outperform democracies in a crisis has found new life during the coronavirus pandemic, especially within the Chinese government. The Global Times, a newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Party as an arm of the People’s Daily, stated bluntly that Western countries “failed to prevent the virus from spreading in their countries … as a result of their governance systems” and that “the West cannot have a government that is as powerful as China’s.” Indeed, China’s reported deaths from COVID-19 are r
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.