The other day I had a commenter on YouTube channel ask this:
My response:
Great question! what I’ve noticed is that there are cases of benevolent authoritarianism / tactics.
The most successful case of this I found so far is Lee Kuan Yu, and how he turned Singapore from a third world country to a first world country. I see him as an integrationist technocrat, with connection to the soul and culture of his people. (Unlike the billionaire technocrats of the west) In the global south, that remains neo-colonized under the “illusion” of independence by western imperialism – I think its more relevant to the conditions of developing countries to have strong, skilled leaders.
Growing up in a euro-centric lens, we’re taught authoritarianism = bad. But in order for developing countries to break free from economic / social / spiritual (forced) dependency on the west – I’m finding that it may need a different blueprint than the west.
In the case of the Philippines, which is unfortunately, one of the most successful cases of colonization.. in mind, spirit, and culture (we became what LKY feared, a pseudo-western culture) we absorbed American democracy, its constitution, and 3 branch system of government that weakens executive power, but ignored its racial hierarchies and colonial roots.
Western democracy doesn’t fit the spiritual equation of post colonial nations. It’s not a one size fits all hat. When americans wrote the constitution in 1787, they wanted a weak executive president having suffered at the hands of King George II of England they wanted the opposite of a strong Monarch. But that isn’t the same spiritual equation as a developing nation transitioning from colonialism.
LKY, argues that postcolonial nations must reconcile imported institutions with indigenous /cultural values, or they’ll collapse under the weight of unresolved contradiction.
In the Philippines, because of our cultural DNA of Kapwa (a relational, shared sense of self) it kinda malfunctions as a national psyche of people-pleasing.. absorbing and accommodating colonial impulses with a smile. Its people are too forgiving, of bad leaders like Marcos and corrupt family oligarchies.
To navigate the complexities of neo-colonialism – it needs strong executive government to, in a sense, put its foot down against the “overbearing parent” (the west) to reclaim its land, culture, heritage, values, etc. through a decolonial lens to actually gain sovereignty. Especially against oppositional tactics used by the west like Jakarta Method techniques of the 1960s that attacked any such attempts in the global south with “anti-communist” rhetoric.
For this, I would say this is where authoritarianism could be needed in a “benevolent” vein of decolonization.
Our modern day examples of leaders doing this in real time (in the media spotlight) are Ibrahim Traore, and his predecessor Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso.
As for the 28%, did a quick search (your own due diligence is advised)
Liberal Democracies (V-Dem, 2025
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Latvia
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Seychelles
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
United States
Uruguay
Electoral Democracies (Freedom House, 2025):
• Albania
• Austria
• Bhutan
• Botswana
• Canada
• Cyprus
• Gambia
• Greece
• Israel
• Lithuania
• Malta
• Montenegro
• Portugal
• Slovenia
• South Korea
• Trinidad and Tobago
• United Kingdom
• Vanuatu
But with a decolonial lens and a good bit of reading – it changes definitions on what “democracy” actually stands for.
My question is which of these “democracies” are authentic in practice. Cause being in the United States, people are waking up to the fact that it isn’t in function.
It’s more of an oligarchy disguised as a democracy.
And also, what other “democracies” oppress and extract from the global south (or other nations) in the container of the parasitic global-capitalist-realism impulse.
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This was a great intellectual exercise for me!
Thanks for the question
~ Akino
P.S. What’s the ‘spiritual equation’ of your cultural background? How might that inform thinking about governance? Lmk in the comments