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The Strongman Era

Writer: Morgan McBride
Morgan McBride
Sep 10
7 min read

We are not talking about bodybuilders. Instead, the illiberal and increasingly autocratic global leaders dismantling global freedoms and democracy.




According to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, strongmen can be understood as a subset of authoritarians who expand their government’s executive branch until it overwhelms the legislature and the judiciary, leaving no checks on it. Does that sound familiar?


Strongman political leaders are often democratically elected at one point; however, during their term (or many terms), they adopt authoritarian behaviors. They wield their leadership through four primary tactics: strong personalities at the forefront, an embrace of machismo, corruption, and political violence.


Unlike history’s wide array of dictators, such as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong, the current era of strongman political leadership presents as a hybrid style of authoritarian leadership within diminishing democratic structures. Subtle manipulation has become a vital part of the strongman leader’s arsenal, as they redirect problems onto others, cultivate fear-driven messaging, and extract wealth and benefits for those deemed “important.” With breaking down democratic constraints as the name of the game, strongman leaders generally aim to consolidate and strengthen their own power, and often that of their close circle of economic and political elites.


“What makes a strongman is the willingness to take advantage of the weaknesses in institutions to accumulate power, money, military might, territory, and the ability to control and thereby subjugate others. Their appeal is contained in their offer to the masses: If you give up your rights, your agency, your personal sovereignty, you will be rewarded with security and even prosperity.” — Josh Rogin

Strongman politicians manipulate existing sentiments of voicelessness and misrepresentation, using those feelings to present themselves as “the voice of the people” fighting for their cause. They don't just rule by weaponizing fear; they also maximize control of the narrative. Strategically vague, emotionally charged, and intentionally polarizing, these tactics help such political figures dismantle opposition and maintain tight control of power. Phrases like “fake news”, “anti-national”, “special military operation” (when referencing an active war), and others adeptly illustrate how strongman leaders construct distinct narratives placing themselves and their allies in the “correct” position.


As populist and nationalist ideologies become tools of strongman politics, “us versus them” and “the righteous vs the enemy” remain powerful mentalities in the current geopolitical landscape.


Hal Brands aptly stated that foreign policy in a system of strongman politics is a mechanism for personal gratification. Many of these leaders cite their geopolitical achievements and ongoing tensions as reasons they need to maintain control over their nation. From their stance, they are the only people suitable to fight these battles and stamp out the “enemies of the nation”.


“The alarming truth is that the impact of strongman leaders is rarely confined within national borders. All too often, the undercurrent of violence that they introduce into domestic politics spills over on to the international stage.” — Gideon Rachman

Brian Lai and Dan Slater (political scientists and authors) defined strongman rule as a type of authoritarian leadership in the form of autocratic military dictatorships. Their research indicated that this era of strongmen is uniquely aggressive in its approach to interstate armed conflict. The growing consistency of global conflicts (e.g., civil wars, invasions of other territories, interstate wars, and more) is clearly visible in all regions of the world in 2026.


In recent decades, we have seen the growing presence of “strongman political leadership,” which has allowed illiberal leaders to gain significant control over many nations worldwide.




Xi Jinping (China) - Vladimir Putin (Russia) - Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey) - Donald Trump (The United States) - Viktor Orbán (former leader of Hungary) - Nicolás Maduro (former leader of Venezuela) - Narendra Modi (India) - Giorgia Meloni (Italy) - Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus) - Nayib Bukele (El Salvador) - Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel) - Jair Bolsonaro (former leader of Brazil) - Rodrigo Duterte (former leader of the Philippines) - and many more.



Understanding who strongmen are and what they seek remains crucial to our collective understanding of the world around us. Recognizing the powers at play is a critical step toward dismantling autocratic structures.



Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro


Jair Bolsonaro served as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023, creating an ecosystem of lingering tensions that persists even today, in 2026. As a right-wing nationalist politician, law-and-order advocate, and former army captain, his populist, anti-establishment campaign led him to the top leadership role in Brazil’s government.



The Petrobras scandal, which began in 2014, involved numerous Brazilian corporations paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Petrobras officials and politicians. Because Petrobras is a massive, majority-state-owned oil company, the scandal became a major political corruption problem for Brazil. A recession and economic crisis followed, cementing a broader landscape of economic and political strife within the nation.


In 2018, then-president Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office following accusations of financial accounting misdeeds. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) (2003-2011) sought candidacy in the nation’s next election, despite his previous conviction on corruption and money laundering charges stemming from the Petrobras scandal. Amid this complex political ecosystem, Jair Bolsonaro began campaigning for the presidency as an anti-establishment insurgent who disregarded political correctness. He quickly gained strong support from the nation’s large Evangelical Christian base.


On September 6, 2018, Bolsonaro was stabbed while campaigning in southeastern Brazil, and he was then rushed into lifesaving surgery. He continued his campaign from his hospital bed, where he built a strong social media presence for an audience of millions.


The Superior Electoral Court of Brazil deemed Lula da Silva ineligible for the presidency, so the Workers’ Party named a replacement candidate, Fernando Haddad. However, this change a month before the election swung significant favor toward Bolsonaro’s campaign. Jair Bolsonaro officially won the presidency on October 28, 2018, with over 55% of the vote.


“In the 2018 presidential election, Bolsonaro put together a distinctively Brazilian populist coalition, described by Lapper as ‘beef, bible, and bullets’. The beef was the powerful agricultural and ranching interests attracted by Bolsonaro’s promise to do away with the environmental restrictions that restrained their expansion. The bible was the 30% of Brazilians who, like Bolsonaro, had embraced evangelical Christianity. The bullets represented Brazil’s powerful gun lobby.” — Calvin Wee


During his 2022 re-election campaign, Bolsonaro’s messaging cast heavy doubt on the country’s electronic voting system, as he alluded to a high potential for voter fraud. Bolsonaro lost to Lula by a slim margin in the first round of voting on October 2nd, which led to a contentious runoff election. Lula won narrowly on October 30th, earning 51% of the vote. Bolsonaro initially stayed quiet after his election loss, but although he never explicitly conceded defeat, he said he would cooperate with the transfer of power. In the aftermath of such results, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the National Congress building in Brasília on January 8, 2023. Government buildings were rioted, vehicles were placed in a manner to block traffic on roads and highways, individuals camped outside military buildings, and more.


In November 2024, Bolsonaro and about 40 others were indicted on charges related to an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2022 election results. The investigators spotlighted the audacious plotting of an assassination of Lula, Lula’s vice-presidential running mate, and a Supreme Court justice. The execution of those ideas would have allowed Bolsonaro to declare a “state of siege”, which would let him suspend the branches of government and become Brazil’s caretaker president. Bolsonaro then faced house arrest in the lead-up to his trial, which culminated in his September 2025 conviction for attempting to orchestrate a coup and other related charges. Saddled with a 27-year jail sentence, Bolsonaro's political career seemingly came to an end, despite his assertions that he would run in the 2026 presidential elections.



Despite the controversial end of Jair Bolsonaro’s political reign, his family has maintained a foothold in Brazil’s political ecosystem.


Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, began his presidential campaign for the October 2026 election. Flávio Bolsonaro served four terms in Rio de Janeiro’s state assembly from 2003 to 2019, before winning his 2018 Senate campaign with over 4 million votes. With the help of endorsements from Argentina’s Javier Milei, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and America’s Donald Trump, his supporter base of particularly men and evangelicals from the south and southeastern parts of Brazil remains strong.


Reporting indicated that a Brazilian court convicted and sentenced Eduardo Bolsonaro for lobbying American authorities to help his father, Jair Bolsonaro. By pushing for U.S. authorities to impose tariffs on Brazilian goods or sanctions on the court’s justices, while current president Lula da Silva is in office, Eduardo Bolsonaro allegedly aimed to use this to aid his father’s court case. In 2025, Trump announced 50% tariffs on Brazilian exports as a penalty for the “government of Brazil’s treatment of former President Bolsonaro,” as he claimed that the trial was a form of “political persecution.” Eduardo Bolsonaro currently lives in the United States, where he remains in exile.


Most analysts expect Brazil’s 2026 presidential election to be tight and divisive. Furthermore, a September 2026 Datafolha survey projected a 46% to 43% split in a runoff election between Lula and Bolsonaro, respectively.


The Bolsonaro family’s contentious political presence in Brazil remains a lingering concern. Kickstarting his career in the traditional “strongman” fashion, Jair Bolsonaro brought his family to the forefront of the nation’s elite circle by breaching democratic norms, making discriminatory statements, and gravely mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic.



What does this mean for the world's future?



Grounded in fear and victimhood, the strongman mode of nationalism utilizes past and present grievances as a cornerstone of this wave of authoritarian governance. Strongmen around the world often utilize external and sometimes existential threats to bolster the rationale that fuels their leadership. Immigration, political opposition, diversity, abortion rights, and other threats have fueled strongman politicians and their supporters in recent decades. As these tactics and trends continue, the world continues to slip away from post-World War II democratic norms and ever closer to a global autocratic ecosystem.


“The politics of fear and resentment … is now on the move. It’s on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. I am not being alarmist, I’m simply stating the facts. Look around — strongman politics are on the ascendant.” — Former U.S. President Barack Obama (during a 2018 speech in South Africa)



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