Are ruthless leaders effective leaders ?

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It surprises me that most countries in the world are not democratic and are run by authoritarian regimes or by regimes that are a bit of both. I remember a while ago when we had prime ministers leaving office in the UK from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, I couldn't help but think other countries were seeing that and thinking ''You're democracy is a joke, one person leaving after another.'' Obviously I do want to point out though that of course I don't agree at all with authoritarianism, I just seem to feel as though unlike a democracy, they impose laws that whilst are harsh, reduce crime and disorder and stuff like that and that to have political opposition would bring to them chaos. I also seem to think in some countries where there is a death penalty like some states in the USA, that still hasn't deterred people from committing really appalling crimes. I have have even read about cases of serial murder in countries like China and Iran where they have authoritarian laws and yet even in those places they still commit horrific acts.

you're saying that Britain had a "revolving door" of prime ministers for that one ...half of a year or whatever.

What seems strange to an American about the UK system is that-the US government is divided into "branches", those being the judicial, the executive, and the legislative.

In contrast, the UK is...all legislature! And its not even a whole a legislature. Imagine if the US were to (1) get rid of the supreme court, and (2) get rid of the Presidency, and (3) get rid of the U.S. Senate. And were to keep only the House of Reps, and from thenseforth have the House run the country all by itself. Thats the normal UK! Lol!

The role of "the executive branch" is taken by the monarchy. But the monarch is just a powerless figurehead.

The Brits dont have a president. What they have is a prime minister. And the Prime Minister is, essentially the same thing as the Majority leader of the equivalent of the House of Reps. And thus is a member of the legislature. And not a part of any executive branch of the govt.

You never hear about Britain's "supreme court". So apparently they dont have one.

But Britain's equivalent to the US congress, Parlaiment, though superficially like Congress, in that it has two "houses" is quite different. The US has the House of Reps, and the Senate. While Britain's Parlaiment has the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

BUT the House of Lords, is only slightly less powerless than the Monarchy. Its also a figurehead institution.

So for practical purposes -when analyzing British politics you can ignore both the monarchy and ignore the House of Lords.

So for practical purpose - Britain has no equivalent of a judicial branch, no executive branch, and only the equivalent of the one lower house of the US Legislative branch: the House of Commons (which is like our House of Representatives).

Americans think of British prime ministers as being equivalent to our presidents...Boris Johnson, and Theresa Mae, etc as being equivalent to Biden/Trump/Obama. But in fact the British prime ministers are more like Nancy Pelosi (majority leader of the House when the Dems were the majority in the house), and Kevin McCarthy (the GOP majority head now).

When a Yank like me tries to imagine the US being run by the House of Reps ALONE...its a horrifying thought!

So its amazing how you Brits function at all!

But also given the above its not surprising that you would have periods of revolving door prime ministers because we have sudden changes in which party is the majority in the House in off year elections.

Let's clarify a couple of things. Yes, the UK political system is different from US.

Not quite true. The leaders of the Government of the Day (The Prime Minister, The Home Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer) plus the Head of State (the Monarch) are the executive. But the are also representatives in the House of Commons - they are all elected Members of Parliament with a constituency. To that end, they are part of the legislature as are all members of the House of Commons.



Effectively, yes. The Monarch can in theory refuse to seal any law that has been passed in Pariliament. They have that power. They haven't used it in forever because it would be the end of the Monarchy if they did.



The Prime Minister is a part of the executive branch. Also a member of the legislature.



Yes we do. The difference is that our judges are not politically appointed. Our judiciary is independent of politics.



Not true. The House of Lords is part of the legislature, and a very important part. The House of Commons draws up new laws. The House of Lord's job is to scrutinise that piece of legislation. MPs in the Commons are often not legal experts, they're politicians, and often don't notice when laws are unworkable or have unintended consequences. The job of the Lords is to find these problems. If they do, they can block the legislation and send it back to the Commons to be re-written until it's a workable piece of legislation.

The Lords used to be controversial because of hereditary peerages - i.e. you could inherit your seat from your parent, and because of the large presence of religious seniors. These days it's more controversial because Governments can award peerages to whoever they want, basically. Recent governments, Conservative governments, have chosen to use peerages as a way to reward their supporters - in particular media supporters (sympathetic newspaper owners) and donors to their political party. You can effectively buy a peerage now. This is deeply problematic.



Superficially, yes. Given our diminished status in the world, all anyone outside of this country would need to concern themselves with is the House of Commons.

Thanks. Interesting.

To answer the original question, I think that authoritarianism is very attractive to a certain way of thinking.

If you are very fixed in your ideas, believe there is a right and wrong way to do things, then a democracy where half the people think differently to you is frustrating, and inefficient.

In the UK we have a roughly 50/50 split between right leaning and left leaning people. So when we have a right wing government, our laws pull us rightwards and the govenment tends to dismantle the state. When we have a left-wing government, laws pull back to the left and the state tends to expand. It's a constant process of do-ing and un-doing the other influence's work. If you picked one direction and stuck with it, you'd probably see more progress.

I think conceptually, authoritarianism works. But, as ever, you introduce humans into it and everything gets messed up. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. A benign dictator is a fantasy.

I actually think that democracy is fundamentally incapable of addressing the major challenge of the day - man made environmental collapse. Any action at the appropriate scale will be so politically unpopular as to be unimplementable. It may be that authoritarianism could do a better job at this existential threat because the necessary limits on human activity could be forced.

The trouble is that authoritarians tend to be only interested in maintaining their authority and less interested in the common good.

I suppose ruthless leaders are effective (for their own purposes) as long as they get away with it.

It doesn't much surprise me that governments are often undemocratic. Power and money are very tempting things. And it's only comparatively recently that governments have even pretended to be democratic. Kings used to be in charge simply because they had more military power at their fingertips than anybody else.

Yes. Its not "surprising" that most of the 200 countries in the world are "undemocratic". Its a miracle that few dozen that are democratic are that way, and the semi democratic ones are even close to that because democracy a recent idea.

i suppose it really depends on what the definition of effective is.

they are certainly effective in bringing about their own personal visions of what they want their country to be.

outside of that i dont know.

i dont think systems with so much riding on a single leader are sustainable. it seems sometimes these types have a high turn around and ultimately lead to more strife for the country. civil war, military coups, succession problems etc