Most authoritarian regimes installed by populist chief executives do not become full-scale, repressive dictatorships. As an explanation, scholars commonly highlight the charismatic appeal of populist leaders: Because they command voluntary mass support, they do not need harsh political coercion.
While corroborating this argument, the talk highlights a crucial complementary factor: Populist chief executives have difficulty marshaling large-scale political repression. After all, their insistence on
personalistic autonomy creates aversion among the military institution, which is unwilling to back the imposition of harsh autocracy by populist leaders, as an examination of contemporary Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru shows.
Kurt Weyland is the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of
Texas at Austin. Besides many journal articles, he has published several
books, including Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism, and
Authoritarianism during the Interwar Years (Cambridge, 2021); and most
recently Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat (Cambridge, 2024).
This talk was held via Zoom.