Populism is seemingly on the rise in every country that bothers to hold elections. Sometimes its origins are on the left (think Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez) and sometimes the right (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán).

Sometimes it finds traction in nationalism, sometimes in religion, sometimes in class resentment. But populists of all shades share a core belief – namely, that the “true people” need a strong leader to set things right.

And not just any kind of strong leader. To the populist way of thinking, a leader should be ready to act without constraint, ignoring legal rules that attempt to limit executive dictat. A recent Ipsos poll asked people in 28 nations what they thought about the statement, “to fix our country, we need a strong leader willing to break the rules.” Some 49 percent of respondents agreed, while only 27 percent disagreed. In the United States, the breakdown was not far from the world average: 40 percent agree versus 27 percent disagree.

The Republican ticket in the U.S. presidential campaign of 2024 has made no secret of its readiness to break the rules. Donald Trump has spoken about “terminating” certain rules, “even those found in the Constitution.” Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has advised Trump to “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. …  When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson [referring to an apocryphal quotation] and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Even the U.S. Supreme Court seems to have signed on. In Trump v. United States, rather than fretting about rule-breaking, the court found the president to be broadly immune from criminal prosecution for official acts. The president should be free to take “bold and unhesitating action,” and exposure to criminal liability might make the president “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties."

But what does it really mean to be a “strong leader”? Does a Kim Jong Un or a Nicolas Maduro merit the title just because they are able to hold onto power year after year by ignoring rules? Or should we reserve “strong” for leaders who know how to run a government that fulfills the hopes of its citizens? As an economist, my response is to find out what the data say. Here’s what I learned.

What It Takes To “Fix What Is Broken”

I focused on three questions. Start with how exactly to measure the ability of a government to “fix what is broken.” Political theorists call that “state capacity” – wonk-speak for the ability of a government to accomplish whatever it sets out to do. Forget about whether its aims are good or evil. A government that efficiently carries out a program of ethnic cleansing could earn just as many state capacity points as one that sets out to feed the poor. The metric I use to measure state capacity covers the efficiency of the bureaucracy, the success of police and the military in keeping the peace and the ability of the national treasury to collect taxes and pay debts.

Next, how to measure the degree to which leaders follow the rules or break them. I looked at four kinds of rules. First, those that constrain executive power, like term limits, and checks and balances. Second, rules that govern the honesty of the judicial system. Third, rules that control corruption. And fourth, rules that maintain orderly markets, like property rights and enforcement of contracts. I mash these together into a single score for “rule compliance.”

Moving on, for a measure of democracy. I start with a narrow measure of procedural democracy that focuses on a country’s commitment to holding free and fair elections. But you might say, “Democracy is more than that! Don’t human rights and personal freedoms matter, too?” I supplement the narrow measure of procedural democracy with a separate index of human rights and personal freedom. (Interested readers can find the full data in this online supplement to this longer research report published by Niskanen Center.) 

In what follows, I use “strong” or “weak” for countries with scores above or below the global average for state capacity and “rule followers” or “rule breakers” to mean rule compliance scores above or below average. I use “democratic” to mean an above average score for procedural democracy and “authoritarian” or “autocratic” for those that are below average.

The Big Picture

The figure puts all three variables together in one graph covering 166 countries. Each country is scored on a scale where zero is the world average, with positive scores for those that are above average and negative scores for those that are below. The horizontal axis in the figure measures procedural democracy while the vertical axis measures state capacity. Rule compliance scores are shown by the size of the colored bubbles that represent each country. Solid bubbles show greater than average rule compliance; empty bubbles are below average.

Even without mining the data for deep statistical insights, two key findings jump right off the page.

Finding #1: Democracy matters, but not as quite as much as you might hope

If you’re looking for strong governments, look among democracies. Of 70 high-capacity governments in the top half of the chart, 52 are democracies in the upper right and just 18 are authoritarian in the upper left. If we focus on the right side of the chart, the pattern is even clearer: stronger democracies tend to have stronger state capacity. 

Interestingly, though, if we look only at the left side of the chart, the authoritarian countries, there is no systematic relationship between the lack of democratic characteristics and state capacity. The bubbles are scattered pretty much randomly across their respective upper and lower quadrants. For example, Malaysia, which is just slightly to the left of the cutoff between democracies and autocracies, has about the same moderately strong state capacity as Saudi Arabia, which is highly authoritarian. In the lower-left quadrant, Lebanon, which retains some vestiges of democracy, has about the same miserably low state capacity as Eritrea, which ranks as the second-most authoritarian country on the planet.

If we crunch the numbers systematically, it turns out that democracy accounts for only about 40 percent of the variation in state capacity among countries of the world. Something else seems to be going on.

Finding #2: Whether democratic or not, strong states follow the rules 

The something else, it turns out, is a matter of compliance or noncompliance with the rules of good government. If you want a strong state, one that can accomplish its aims (for better or worse), following the rules pays off. 

Maybe that’s not surprising if you confine yourself to democracies. Among the 52 democracies with strong state capacity, just four, represented by the empty bubbles in the upper right, are below the global average for rule compliance. In the lower-right quadrant, in contrast, there are only a handful of solid bubbles. Those represent a few countries like South Africa that are generally rule-compliant but score poorly on state capacity. Empty bubbles are much more common in that quadrant, representing countries like Argentina that do a poor job of following the rules and, at the same time, are weak on state capacity.

What is perhaps more surprising is that the same pattern holds even more strongly among authoritarian countries. All but one of the authoritarian countries that are rule-followers (solid bubbles) lie in the upper-left, high-capacity quadrant. The exception, Rwanda, is barely below the line that divides strong autocracies from weak ones. 

The strongest authoritarian states of all, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, score as well for rule compliance as do most liberal democracies. However, despite safeguards on executive power, independent courts, low corruption and orderly markets, they differ from their liberal democratic counterparts in one important respect: all score well below the global average for personal freedoms and human rights.

The Bottom Line: Competence and Rule-breaking Don’t Mix Well

Putting these two findings together makes it clear that if you want a strong government that can fix what is wrong, keep the peace, field an honest police force and maintain a competent bureaucracy, beware the promises of rule-breaking populists! 

Heed the case of Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians voted enthusiastically for the populist Boris Yeltsin, who became famous as a heroic figure standing on a tank in front of the parliament building, staring down a Communist coup attempt. But under Yeltsin, thugs in leather jackets ruled the streets while oligarchs stole the state’s industrial crown jewels.

By the time the populace became disillusioned with Yeltsin, Russia’s brief experiment with democracy was over. Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has long since given up on competitive elections. And, like most rule-breaking autocrats, he has fallen far short on promises to build a prosperous economy or an effective modern state. Only his vast stores of leftover Soviet tanks and nukes, combined with his appeals to Russian chauvinism, keep him in business.

Is China the Exception That Proves the Rule?

It seems that every set of data has an outlier that does not fit the overall pattern. In this case, that looks like China, the one authoritarian rule-breaker that manages a decent score for state capacity. But does China really show that a government whose leaders thumb their noses at conventional rules of good government can nonetheless build a powerful and effective state? A closer look suggests a more nuanced story.

China’s great transformation began with a set of reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping after Mao Zedong died in 1976. In several ways, those reforms steered China toward a more rule-based style of government. Whereas Mao was a nihilist when it came to rules, Deng showed a more positive attitude toward the law. Perhaps his most famous innovation was term limits for high officials. And although there was no big-bang transition to a market economy, small village enterprises and special economic zones pioneered steps toward property rights, enforceable contracts and investor protections.

Deng’s reforms achieved a stunning increase in state capacity followed by three decades of rapid economic growth. However, in recent years, Xi Jinping has been less enthusiastic about following Deng’s rules. Most conspicuously, Xi blew through the idea of term limits by insisting on a third term in office. Rule of law, government integrity and adherence to market rules also appear to be on the decline. 

If China had maintained its peak rule-compliance in each of these areas, its compliance score would now be moderately positive, and its place on the graph would be a solid bubble right beside Qatar. Taken as a whole, then, the arc of China’s development from Deng to Xi does not represent a clear exception to the story that rule compliance, not rule-breaking, is the path to a strong state.

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Some readers may doubt that the academic notion of “state capacity” adequately captures what voters have in mind when they seek a strong leader who will fix whatever ails. They may point to more specific populist concerns, such as porous borders, street crime and an ever-more-visible gap between the rich and the poor. But the most charismatic populist leader can’t do much to fix those things sitting in an office giving orders. The orders will come to nothing without a competent civil service, well-trained police and soldiers, and a treasury that can steer a fine line between crushing taxes and crushing debt. 

Fact is, the failure to build or maintain state capacity is a big reason populist leaders who achieve power often disappoint their supporters. And when people see that the system is still broken, populist leaders or their successors all too often start breaking the rules of democracy itself. Could that happen here?