Quico Toro in Persuasion:
Political scientists have thought carefully about the kind of situation we’re in. Back in 2011, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, who just won the Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote a paper together with Ragnar Torvik titled “Why Do Voters Dismantle Checks and Balances?” that doubles as a Rosetta Stone to our political moment.
Acemoglu, Robinson and Torvik built a model to show there are circumstances where it is rational for voters to prefer leaders who reject democratic institutions. This doesn’t normally happen in well-functioning democracies. But where unelected elites have outsized power, checks and balances can function to hem politicians in, preventing them from enacting policies a majority of voters want. In those circumstances, voters can rationally interpret a leader’s disdain for democratic institutions as a feature, not a bug: checks and balances come to be seen as the eggs you have to crack to make the democratic omelet.
More here.
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