In recent years, many of the best writers on the subject of autocracy have emphasized the connection between autocracy and incompetence. Here is Masha Gessen in 2020, speaking of Trump, when asked "Do you think Trump's incompetence and ignorance might mitigate some of his autocratic tendencies? "
I don't. For two important reasons. One is that I think that his incompetence is militant. It is very much part of his political self. It's not that he would like to be smarter and better at this, but is falling short. It's that he's hellbent on destruction.
His campaign message was very much in line with other populists: things don't have to be so complicated. I can do this. Anybody can do this. It's all real simple. But his way of being president has been to create destruction, to dismantle agencies, to defund agencies, to deregulate. Part of it is the politics of deregulation, but mostly he doesn't think anybody should be good at this, because this is worthless. That's his contempt for government and his disdain for expertise.
And of course we've seen both the display and the consequences of that with COVID. That's one important reason why I think his incompetence is not a mitigating factor, it's very much the nature of the beast.
We've been living through a populist era, and an essential part of any populist era is the attack on the importance of knowledge. If you have knowledge, you are an elitist, therefore you are separate from the people, therefore you must be cast out and destroyed. The hatred of knowledge is the main reason why populism is illiberal.
The populist war against expertise is the motivation for the populist war against institutions. If the impulsive will of individuals should take precedence over procedure and rules and process, then clearly institutions are just an evil attempt to limit the will of the populists and their chosen leader. That institutions have rules and processes that are based on input from experts gives them a legitimacy that challenges the legitimacy of the populist rage, and therefore such institutions must automatically become a target for that populist rage. In 2016, Masha Gessen formulated rules for surviving autocracy, which included this:
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.
I actually disagree with the way she phrased the rule, since these are examples of weak institutions that still managed to offer some protection. The electoral system in Russia was weak but it still took Putin 4 years to gain full control over it. That offers a lesson about the power of institutions. This also suggests that strong institutions might be able to last enough years that the autocrat will lose power before they gain absolute power. Indeed, this is exactly what happened with Trump. America's institutions were strong enough to resist him for 4 years, so it was possible to vote him out of power. If Trump had remained in power for 8 years, it is likely that he would have had enough time to destroy all of America's democratic institutions. And so we should ask: is it possible for us to build institutions so strong that someone like Trump could be President for 8 years, and still the institutions would be able to resist him? What would be required for our democratic institutions to resist an aspiring autocrat for 8 years? Presumably we’d need a lot of committees that are truly independent, and this suggests the people on those committees would have to serve for very long terms, perhaps for 5 or 7 or even 9 years, to outlast a 2 term President, or perhaps for 18 years, which is the length of time that judges serve on the High Court of Britain.
The new generation of populists are trying to destroy the civil service
President Trump was supported by his aide Stephen Miller, who did his best to undermine expertise everywhere he could find it in the Federal bureaucracy.
In Britain, Prime Minister Johnson was initially helped by Dominic Cummings, who is determined to destroy expertise in the civil service, the better to subordinate the civil service to the will of the Prime Minister. For instance:
Mr Johnson is encouraged in this by the gang of Brexiters whom he imported into Number 10. Taking their lead from Dominic Cummings, they have a hyper-aggressive “never apologise, never concede” mindset in which they can never be wrong. The defining non-resignation was that of the prime minister’s chief adviser after the exposure of his lockdown-busting excursions to and around Durham. His contrition-free account of his activities included that “eye-test” defence of his side tour to Barnard Castle, the risibility of this excuse demonstrating complete contempt for any criticism. Mr Cummings refused to resign – and Mr Johnson to sack him – despite days of terrible headlines, serious damage to the government’s public health messaging, hot public anger and furious demands from many Tory MPs that he had to go. By successfully defying that level of pressure, the pair proved to themselves that no one can stop them tearing up the conventional rules about accountability.
Yet there will be consequences for the government’s novel doctrine of total power with absolutely no responsibility. When ministers start thinking that they will never be held accountable for their actions, they are that much more likely to make choices that are reckless, lazy, sleazy or stupid. We have a senior ministerial team that many Conservative MPs regard as extremely incompetent and at the same time this inadequate cabinet is being encouraged to believe that no ministerial screw-up, however grotesque, will be punished. That is a dangerously decadent form of government.
This is pure populism: the belief that a recently elected majority should be free of accountability because, after all, they represent the will of the people. This amounts to a war against checks and balances, a war against the system, a war against any limits on those who currently control the executive. Rather, everyone else in the system must be stripped of power, and made to bend the knee to the current executive. All traditional norms must be destroyed, they say. Such populists mock the idea that a strong civil service offers a stability that protects society from the chaos of parliamentary politics. After all, why would anyone want to protect society? Society doesn’t matter, what matters is whatever the populists want right now. Society must bend to them.
Only strong institutions can deliver a society that guarantees our civil rights
If, during the 1700s, one layer of elected representation was good enough for the expectations of democracies of that day, we should consider the possibility that the modern world needs more layers of representation. If the elected legislature lost the ability to pass laws, but instead only had the power to appoint people to specialized committees, and the specialized committees then had the power to make law, we should be able to achieve a government that both offers deeper expertise in forming laws, while also being better able to resist populist demagogues.
We should crave a system that allows good government, and we should crave, above all else, a government that can resist autocracy. Resisting autocracy means having strong institutions, as well as a functioning government that can actually give the public all of the benefits and services that the public demands, while also making difficult decisions about limited resources in a manner that is fair and transparent to everyone.
Expertise is important but on its own it’s not enough:
https://renewal.org.uk/experience-expertise-and-emotion-has-labour-had-enough-of-experts/