After the strongman

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Early in the 2017 movie The Death of Stalin, the dictator is found unconscious on the floor after a stroke. His underlings Khrushchev and Malenkov, and the secret-police chief Beria, are terrified of even the prostrate psychopath. They argue about calling a doctor. Malenkov stalls, “As acting General Secretary, I think that, um, well, the Committee should decide.” Khrushchev protests: “But our actual General Secretary is lying in a puddle of indignity! I mean — I think he’s saying ‘Get me a doctor, now.’” Malenkov isn’t keen: “I think, uh, I think that we should wait until we’re quorate.” “Quorate?!” asks Khrushchev. “The room is only 75 per cent conscious.” No competent doctor is called on time, and Stalin dies aged 74.

A real-life, if less funny, version of this scene could play out in the coming years in several of the world’s most populous countries. A theme of our times is the rise of the “personalist regime”, led by an individual whose will matters more than any ideology. Now, those individuals are getting old. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were all born between 1950 and 1954, meaning they’re approaching Stalin’s age at death. Indonesia’s incoming president, Prabowo Subianto, born in 1951, is in the same strongman mould. Donald Trump, the potential next US president with a personalist style of leadership (“I alone can fix it”) is even older. As these leaders approach death, the likelihood is growing chaos, unpredictability, but also the hope of something better.

From around the time of Stalin’s death in 1953 until 1990, personalist regimes were rare. In post-Stalinist communist states, it rarely mattered much who the leader was. Committees of grey men ruled. When the general secretary died, the next apparatchik got his turn. But after communism fell, committee-based regimes grew scarce. Cuba’s Communist party and Iran’s mullahs are two rare survivors.

More common nowadays are “sultanist” regimes led by almighty presidents for life. That describes Putinism, but to some degree also previously committee-based China, where Xi occupies the three main leadership roles. So what happens when the sultan nears death?

First, his time horizon narrows. An ageing leader has to act fast to secure his legacy. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Putin invaded Ukraine after he reportedly began travelling with oncologists. Xi’s latest biographer, Michael Sheridan, reckons China’s president has given himself a five-year window to take Taiwan.

Things become even more dangerous when the sole decider’s judgment decays with age, as in Trump’s apparent cognitive decline. Certain leaders could no longer get a job as a bookkeeper, yet they have access to the nuclear button. Their political obsessions were typically formed aeons ago. Putin is busy trying to repair the collapse of the USSR, while Xi’s formative nightmare was the chaotic 1960s cultural revolution. These men are less animated by, say, climate change or AI.

Adding to the unpredictability, none has an obvious heir. Only in weak, youngish states like North Korea or Turkmenistan can a personalist ruler create a de facto hereditary family monarchy. In Russia or Turkey, various contenders are now jockeying to become leader. The first mover could win the prize. In personalist dictatorships, writes Sarah Hummel of Harvard, “coup attempts and irregular removals are more likely as leaders age and their death becomes imminent”.

Some of these regimes may simply fold when the leader dies, as General Franco’s Spanish regime did after his demise in 1975. Analysing “a global sample of dictatorships from 1946-2008”, Anne Meng of the University of Virginia found “most ruling parties are unable to survive the death or departure of the founding leader”. Even when leaders supposedly ran “single-party regimes”, the parties often turned out to be mere personal vehicles.

Regimes with the best chance of surviving rest on large mass organisations, says Ora John Reuter of the University of Wisconsin. Modi’s BJP, Erdoğan’s AKP or Xi’s Communist party meet that criterion. But Putin and Trump barely have grassroots local organisations, meaning Putin’s regime and Trump’s movement may well die with their leaders.

There’s a caveat. Trump’s children could benefit politically for decades to come from the family brand, as have other children of personalist rulers who later established personalist rule themselves, such as Filipino president Bongbong Marcos or Bangladesh’s recently deposed Sheikh Hasina.

Sometimes, when a personalist regime collapses, so does the state, as in Venezuela after Hugo Chávez’s death. But there’s reason to be hopeful. As with Stalin, what comes next is often at least somewhat less terrible.

Email Simon at simon.kuper@ft.com

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