Whom Do You Want — Cincinnatus or Caesar?

Modern authoritarianism is not democracy’s enemy. It is democracy’s unresolved structural problem — in human form. Because democracy refuses the legitimate instrument of emergency leadership, it gets the illegitimate one. Not through coup. Through election.

I. The End of History and Its Promise

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published “The End of History.” The thesis: with the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy had won the ideological competition of history. There was no longer a credible alternative. Democracy was not merely victorious — it was final. The rest was administration.

Thirty years later: Putin has governed Russia for a quarter century. Erdoğan has systematically rebuilt Turkey. Orbán has declared Hungary an “illiberal democracy” — and the EU can do nothing about it. Xi Jinping abolished term limits. Bolsonaro drove Brazil to the edge of institutional collapse for five years. Trump was elected President of the United States twice.

This is not a return of evil. It is not democracy’s defeat by external enemies. These are democratically elected leaders — acting with the tacit or explicit consent of populations that want something democracy does not give them.

The question is not: why are there autocrats again? The question is: why do people want them?

II. Cesare Borgia and the Problem of Power

When Machiavelli wrote the Prince, he had a model in mind: Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, Duke of Romagna — the man who in a few years, through a combination of violence, cunning and ruthless consistency, had built a dominion that — had his father not died at an inopportune moment — could have become the foundation of a new Italian power.

Borgia had to fight for every inch. Every city, every alliance, every loyalty had to be acquired, forced or deceived. The structures worked against him: rival noble families, suspicious city-states, a Church whose favour expired with his father’s death. He did not fail from lack of ability. He failed because the world gave him no base on which he could permanently stand.

The modern autocrat does not have this problem. He conquers nothing. The structures come to him.

III. The Voluntary Submission of Structures

Putin was appointed Prime Minister by Yeltsin in 1999 — and elected President with over 50 per cent of the vote in 2000. Erdoğan won the Turkish parliamentary elections in 2002 with 34 per cent — enough for an absolute majority of seats. Orbán won the Hungarian elections in 2010 with a two-thirds majority that allowed him to amend the constitution. Trump was elected in 2016 by all the rules of democratic art — and again in 2024.

None of them overthrew a republic. All accepted an invitation. The invitation came from populations that wanted something existing institutions could not deliver: decision. Speed. Someone who takes responsibility. Someone who says what must be done — and then does it, without waiting for consensus.

That is the latent awareness democracy does not want to speak of: people know there are situations that require leadership. Not committees. Not protocols. Not twenty-seven sovereigns producing text everyone agrees on. Leadership. And when democracy does not institutionalise that leadership, people seek it elsewhere.

Borgia had to seize power. The modern autocrat is invited to power — because the need he serves is real and finds no legitimate vessel.

IV. The Unnamed Problem

Liberal democracy after 1945 — understandably, in reaction to Hitler and Mussolini — struck the concept of emergency leadership from its vocabulary. Every concentration of power in a person was associated with fascism. Every call for strong leadership was treated as a precursor to tyranny. That was historically explicable. It was structurally fatal.

Because the need for decisive leadership in crises does not disappear by not being named. It merely goes unmet. And unmet, it seeks another outlet.

The Romans knew this. Machiavelli knew it. Both said the same thing: republics that know no legitimate emergency mechanism will obtain one illegitimately. The question is not whether — but in what form.

The form the democracy of the 21st century produces is the plebiscitarily legitimised autocrat. He does not come with tanks. He comes with promises. And the promises meet a real need — one democracy itself created by ignoring it.

V. What the Autocrat Promises — and What He Delivers

The autocrat’s promise is always the same: I decide. I take responsibility. I end the paralysis. These are not demagogic tricks — they are answers to real experiences. The experience of the EU summit that always produces the same communiqué. The experience of the government that postpones every decision because the coalition partner will not cooperate. The experience of the parliament that debates while the crisis escalates.

What the autocrat actually delivers is something else: decision without control. Speed without direction. Leadership without resignation. He solves the short-term problem of paralysis — and creates the long-term problem of uncontrolled power. He is Cincinnatus without a constitution. Helmut Schmidt without accountability. Frederick II on the throne — but without the structures that would have compelled him to honour his own manifesto.

VI. The Difference That Makes All the Difference

The Roman dictator was appointed by a legitimised institution, for a defined crisis, for a limited time, with full accountability afterwards. The office ended automatically. Power returned.

The modern autocrat appoints himself — through an election he then rebuilds so it no longer permits a real alternative. He defines the crisis himself — and it never ends as long as he needs it. His term is unlimited — or he changes the constitution until it is. There is no accountability — he controls the institutions that should demand it.

That is the difference between the instrument democracy needs and the instrument it gets when it refuses the first. Both serve the same need. Only one does so without destroying democracy. The other does not.

Democracy has not produced too many autocrats. It has produced too few Cincinnatus mechanisms. The result is the same — but the cause is different. And only those who understand the cause can find the solution.

VII. Fukuyama’s Error

Fukuyama was not wrong that liberal democracy won the ideological competition. He was wrong that history thereby stops. History does not stop when a system wins. It stops when the winning system stops solving its own problems.

Liberal democracy has a problem it has not solved since 1945: how does a democratically constituted community act decisively in crises without undermining the democratic foundations that constitute it? The Roman republic had an answer. Modern democracy discarded it — for historically explicable, structurally devastating reasons.

As long as this question remains unanswered, democracy is not at the end of history. It is at the beginning of its next crisis. And in that crisis, the latent need for leadership will again seek an outlet. Whether it finds a legitimate one depends on whether democracy is finally willing to name the problem it does not want to name.

VIII. The Thesis Nobody Wants to Hear

The worldwide rise of authoritarianism since the 1990s is not a relapse into barbarism. It is not a failure of education, media or reason. It is the market solution for an unmet structural need. The demand for decisive leadership in crises is real. Democracy has no legitimate product for it. So people buy the illegitimate one — and call it democracy as long as it was elected.

That is the thesis nobody wants to hear: it is not the autocrats who have weakened democracy. Democracy has weakened itself, by refusing a legitimate instrument of emergency leadership — and thereby creating the space the autocrats fill.

Cesare Borgia fought against the structures. He lost. The modern autocrat is invited by the structures — because the need he serves, nobody else serves. That is not his achievement. It is democracy’s failure to think itself through to the end.

The answer is not less democracy. The answer is more — a democracy intelligent enough to give itself an emergency instrument before the next person comes along claiming to be one.