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The Divine Right of Populists
Like US President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson owes his political success and hold on power to the idea of a fully sovereign executive. Advanced most forcefully by the German jurist Carl Schmitt to defend the Third Reich, this line of thinking threatens to render the world's two oldest democracies unrecognizable.
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LONDON – Countries undergoing political crises often favor the leadership of strongmen who promise to restore order and prosperity through sheer force of will. The allure of such authoritarians is obvious, especially when they portray normal checks and balances as only exacerbating chaos and dysfunction. That was the thinking behind the original model of a constitutional dictator: in the Roman Republic, a “commissarial dictator,” elected by the Senate, was granted powers unchecked by constitutional norms until the crisis was resolved. The abnormality of the situation called for the abandonment of normality.