Mini-Trumps Are Running for Election All Over the World

To many political observers, Marine Le Pen’s defeat in the French presidential election halted a worrisome political trend in the developed world. However, the style of leadership she epitomized—along with Donald Trump and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan—continues to roll on around the world. The old-fashioned term “strongman” can be used to describe those who’ve adopted the style—with a difference. In the past, a strongman was a true dictator, someone like Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union or Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt who grabbed power through undemocratic means and then ruled over an authoritarian state. Today’s strongmen, by contrast, win real elections but then undermine democratic norms to control power. In Turkey, Erdogan eked out a referendum victory on changes to the constitution that could give him vast powers. In the U.S., Trump has been using presidential executive orders, the firing of the FBI director, and Twitter bombast to disrupt the status quo.

Of course, today’s strongmen can be women, too. Le Pen may potentially be one. She rode a wave of French anger to deliver by far the best result for a far-right party in French history, setting the stage for her—and her strident National Front—to mount a stronger bid for the presidency in 2022 if Emmanuel Macron fails to address the country’s problems.