Is this what authoritarianism looks like?

Over the weekend, Turkey's ruling party lost municipal elections in the country's two main cities, Ankara and Istanbul. These results are widely seen as a popular rebuke to President Erdogan for the poor state of the country's economy. That sounds like politics as usual, except that Americans have been led to believe by many reporters and commentators that this sort of thing shouldn't happen in Turkey. Erdogan is seen as one of the democratically-elected "authoritarian" leaders around the world who use fair means and foul to consolidate their personal power while making elections ever more difficult for opposition parties. According to the "authoritarian" scenario, Erdogan should have rigged things so his party would win these elections, but while some suspicious observers note that his party plans to appeal some of the election results, in theory things never should have reached that point. Likewise, Nicolas Maduro's party should not have lost control of Venezuela's legislature because, as an alleged authoritarian and the heir to Hugo Chavez, he should have rigged the system to guarantee majorities for his party. It doesn't follow from any of this that no political leader ever schemes to corrupt the electoral process for his own benefit, but perhaps we shouldn't assume that such things happen as often as some Americans like to believe.

Americans are quick to decide when foreign leaders have overstayed their welcomes, even when those leaders' constituents appear to disagree. It grows more difficult for Americans to imagine leaders retaining popularity for so long that they can continue to win elections, in the face of varying degrees of opposition, beyond the point when we think a withdrawal from public life is appropriate. We take our phenomenon of "fatigue" with presidents and their parties after two terms to be the global democratic norm when there is no reason to believe that other nations are or should be as polarized ideologically as the U.S. is. When nations and electorates deviate from our model, our tendency is to assume that their leaders are pulling a fast one on the people with an eye toward doing away with elections altogether, or rendering the franchise no more than a rubber stamp. No doubt many Americans felt that way about Franklin Roosevelt, since his four election victories are the main reason the Constitution was amended to limit presidents to two terms. Objectively, however, it's hard to think of FDR as an authoritarian unless you're a limited-government laissez-faire fanatic. Still, the constitution was amended to give the two-term tradition he broke the force of law, and it was done without much controversy because Americans, more or less reasonably, dislike the idea of an indispensable leader. Liberalism presumes that any number of people can rise to any occasion, and that's really how it should be in a democratic republic. But it doesn't follow from that presumption that someone who thinks himself uniquely qualified to lead indefinitely, or as long as the voters want him, is an inevitable tyrant. In any event, we can't understand the persistent if controversial popularity of so-called authoritarians, or the actual vulnerability of their positions, without a better understanding of their countries. Our temptation is to reduce the political issues in countries like Turkey to whether the strong man is as great as he thinks he is, when voters in most places from Venezuela to Iran have material as well as (or "instead of") dogmatic reasons for voting as they do. We might better measure the potential for any sort of authoritarianism in any country by paying more attention to its voters than to its politicians, but that might be too much work for people who want to blame politicians for every problem at home or around the world.