[Rich]

So I'm using the term Strongmanism, but the category clearly includes Marine Le Pen and arguably even Margaret Thatcher displayed moderate strongmanist tendencies. So in my book Putin is just a strong man, and not even a particularly nasty one, by the standards of strong men. The problem is he seems to have established a dictatorship and sits a top the worlds biggest pile of nuclear weapons. I feel with strong men its better if we can intervene or inhibit them earlier in the process. the same even goes for Hitler, I feel he only really became a problem when he established himself as uncontested dictator of Germany.

The West is clearly not free of strongmanism, this isn't just a problem of barbarous Russians, Chinese and Turks. Putin's war making methods actually seem quite restrained compared with what Trump has proposed. And Trump, quite possibly the next President of the united States was praising Putin two days before the invasion. Anyway I suggest a number of ways to combat Strongmanism.

1 No separately elected mayors, Governors or Presidents. The leader should be instantly recallable by the parliament / council representatives.

2 No primary elections for the leaders of parliamentary factions. The parliamentary faction leader should be chosen by the parliamentary representatives not by party membership. It was this that gave us Boris, who certainly displays moderate strong man tendencies.

3 Proportional representation. This inhibits the dominance of a single strong man in a number of ways.

4 Fixed term elections, on a fixed date with terms no longer than 2 years. If elections are relatively frequent there's no need to waste time and energy on special election campaigns.

Will this sometimes produce deadlock, politicly fragmentation confusion and even a bit of chaos? Yes but we should accept this as actually representing the will of the people, rather crying out for a strong man or strong woman to solve our problems at the first sign of difficulty.

[ness31]

I quite like strong men. Is it possible to change that sexist term to strongpersonism?

[Steve_American]

I quite like strong men. Is it possible to change that sexist term to strongpersonism?

Almost all strongpersons are really men.

I wonder if Margaret Thatcher was actually a trans "man" who could not come out due to the times not accepting it.

I base this on a book I read about over 20 years ago, that said that brain scan machines are able to separate Male type brains from Female type brains, as well as homosexual & lesbian type brains from straight type brains.

Thus, trans children who have male genitals can (and do) actually have female type brains, so they really do *feel* like they are female. This error in development is quite rare, being IIRC & AFAIK, about 0.3% of the population, or 2.5 to 3.5 examples per 1000 kids.
.

[wat0n]

The US system has some very good checks against someone trying to take over power. Perhaps that's the easiest place to look for.

Among all of those, I'd say a strong federal system would be one of the strongest checks against caudillos.

[ness31]

Almost all strongpersons are really men.

I wonder if Margaret Thatcher was actually a trans "man" who could not come out due to the times not accepting it.

I base this on a book I read about over 20 years ago, that said that brain scan machines are able to separate Male type brains from Female type brains, as well as homosexual & lesbian type brains from straight type brains.

Thus, trans children who have male genitals can (and do) actually have female type brains, so they really do *feel* like they are female. This error in development is quite rare, being IIRC & AFAIK, about 0.3% of the population, or 2.5 to 3.5 examples per 1000 kids.
.

Yes, I’ve heard that being male predisposes you to violence. I just don’t see what strength has to do with it. I like strong men. We need strong men. It’s criminal to put a pejorative slant on strong men.

[Rich]

Off the top of my head Thatcher is perhaps the biggest "strongman" Britain has had in recent centuries. I don't think that Churchill or Lloyd George had quite such unconstrained power as her for such a long period. Blair of course was in a coalition government and had to share power with the Gordon Brown party. She got a secure majority in 1979 with 43.9% of the vote and she got less, but higher majorities in 83 and 87. but for most of time in office the opinion polls showed her having only about a third of the voters behind her.

A lot of people thought this was right. in Britain Italy was ridiculed for its frequent changes of government. They felt they were entitled to strong government. particularly after the chaos of the nineteen seventies, people said Britain needed strong government even if that government only had minority support. But the chaos and dysfunction of the nineteen nineties in Russia strike me as far worse than the chaos and dysfunction of the UK in the nineteen seventies. Were the Russians not entitled to strong government?

What's so funny about Putin is that the Liberals liked him at the start. The same with with Erdogan and Xi. Oh they liked strong government and strong men when they thought these men were taking things in the direction that they thought was right.