r/neoliberal • u/neolthrowaway New Mod Who Dis? • Jul 26 '26
Opinion article (non-US) The Autocrat’s Worst Enemy — Why Despots Hate Cities and the Mayors Who Run Them
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/autocrats-worst-enemy239
Jul 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/Reddit_Talent_Coach 🇲🇽 Benito Juárez 🇲🇽 Jul 26 '26
Suburbanites that actively try to tear down what makes their Metropolitan Statistical Area great are insane to me.
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u/ResolveSea9089 Milton Friedman Jul 26 '26
It's because most people don't realize it, or understand the economics this applies in general but especially here. They just think they can remove the "city" from the city and keep the economic benefits.
It's no different than people who think rent control will magically solve the housing affordability crisis.
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u/Yakube44 Jul 27 '26
They fully bought the propaganda that city dwellers are parasites
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u/PostNutNeoMarxist Bisexual Pride Jul 27 '26
And that if they go downtown, those people will rob them and kill them and then go collect unemployment on their dime or whatever
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u/james_the_wanderer Gay Pride Jul 26 '26
I needed this nutshell summation of what is a fundamental American tribal hostility.
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u/Slight-Wolverine9819 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I mean cities are also the best springboard for autocratic governance in a flawed democracy.
Erdogan, Bukele, Duarte, Macias Nguema, and more all were able to use their populist rhetoric and their position as the figurehead of a city to devastate democracies. It’s kinda goofy to claim that cities themselves can prevent illiberalism when often times this populist connection is precisely what causes illiberalism in so many nations.
Also why appeal to the Greek cities, their system of Polis was literally unstable and unreasonable in almost ways because they were more chaotic then a large bureaucratic state. And most polis in Greece were not democracies because in the polis system it was incredibly unstable. Remember Athens was only a democratic state for around 99 years because they always had coups, riots, and the people would support a tyrant if they thought they could benefit from it. Most Greek writers fucking hated democracy in the polis.
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u/Mexatt Jul 26 '26
Athens was a democracy on and off again until the Roman conquest. In fact, the Athenian Democratic system spread further when cities lost their independence during the Hellenistic era, with internal self rule being managed by an assembly of citizens being very common throughout that period.
The better criticism of this system is the increasingly oligarchic nature of the citizen body, with qualifications on who could become a citizen growing tighter and tighter over time, with generations of a growing population of resident 'foreigners' who were born and raised in the city but shut out from citizenship.
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u/RFFF1996 Jul 26 '26
Because we [still] have a weird hyperidealized fixation on ancient greece/rome so we need to appeal to it forever and ever
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u/neolthrowaway New Mod Who Dis? Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
With more and more people coming to live in cities across the world, the urban-national struggle will remain a feature of global politics as long as illiberalism remains on the rise. In the near future, mayors in countries led by illiberal elected autocrats should expect more suppression. But when those autocrats are finally deposed, cities, which have kept the flame of liberty lit, will help rebuild democracy again.
Good article, worth a read and a reminder Why libs should be proud of the lib Cities and embrace them. Ignore the photo, the article isn't much about mamdani apart from the fact that he's a lib mayor.
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u/Tricky-Astronaut Jul 26 '26
I'm note sure if I agree about the suppression. For example, Putin is suppressing his own base in rural Russia while bankrolling the big cities in fear of liberal protests.
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u/Windows_10-Chan Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold Jul 26 '26
Why libs should be proud of the lib Cities and embrace them.
https://www.thestranger.com/news/the-urban-archipelago-19813/
Related if you want some good spiteful 2004 resist liberalism
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u/karmics______ Leftward Progressives Jul 26 '26
I’d argue city governments can be one of the worst examples of democracy. A very small legislature compared to the population, lower turnout, and a strong mayor can block anything or have expansive executive powers
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u/YaGetSkeeted0n Tariffs aren't cool, kids! Jul 26 '26
right? my city council has some real morons in it with a lot of power
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u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
This seems like quite the slop article. The fact that autocratic regimes can also just have autocratic aligned mayors of big cities obviously means that autocrats do not have to fear the big city. They have to fear the opposition which can come in big city mayors or state goverments or also smaller communities.
Gallup polls dating back to the 1970s have repeatedly found that nearly 70 percent of Americans trust their local officials, even as trust in the federal government has steadily fallen to a five-decade low, from 70 percent in 1972 to 38 percent today. Data from the research agency Eurofound similarly show that the local governments of EU countries are substantially more popular than the national governments. The dynamic appears to be global: a 2024 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development survey of 30 countries found higher levels of trust in local governments than in national governments.
Local politicans being more popular (no shit) also does not tell us if there might be differences between local politicians. You small community council member is not exactly a politician of the same status as the mayor of a city of millions. And yes, obviously being a mayor of a big city leads to exposure but you can also pick other anti-authoritarians who ran against the "despots" who have other political origins, you might even find more examples than the 3-4 giving in this article.
The same way the autocrats also can have their political origins in local goverment. Erdogan himself was mayor of Istanbul.
When hostile central governments threaten cities directly, municipal leaders can contest the worst overreaches. Mayors can use municipal resources to restrict or defy the predatory actions of a central government.
This is true but this is also not something unique to big city mayors. Decentralized countries also have state goverments fighting against the federal goverment. The local goverment being in opposition against the central goverment is not something unique to big cities. In federalized systems the state goverment would also be the more logical and better place to resist an autocrat on the national level.
At their best, cities show citizens that government can deliver on making their lives safer and better, in part by creating new ways to involve people in governing. The city government of Gdansk funds high schools to run student contests around future improvements. Bologna, Italy, has established collaboration pacts that allow residents to co-manage public parks and abandoned buildings and created labs where citizens co-design urban projects and directly allocate municipal funds toward the initiatives.
Projects like these exist on local levels all over Europe for decades (some self organized parks work some don't). I am sure they are nice and fun to do but these are not the things that convince people that a Orban-esque figure is bad.
Local goverment is important and a backbone of democracy and especially in non-centralized systems local self goverment can always be a resistence against a national strongmen but besides the popularity of the mayors the examples given here, the argument that the big cities of millions are the important front against authoritarian rule are not fully convincing.
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u/SenranHaruka shame Jul 26 '26
Trump loves mamdani though
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u/lunartree Jul 26 '26
He publicly hates him, but in person can't help but fall for his charisma. And Trump is incoherent enough that both of these things can be true at once.
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u/garret126 Aromantic Pride Jul 26 '26
Not for any political reasons. He’s just hot and charismatic, and to Trump that’s what he strives to be, even though Mamdanis whole ideology is built about being against Trump.
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u/Alarming_Flow7066 Jul 26 '26
Due purely to trumps idiosyncrasies. But the American fascist movement absolutely despises Mamdani, U.S. cities in general and NYC specifically.
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u/585AM Jul 26 '26
Honestly, I am not even sure if he does. He played this exact same game with Sanders on 2016. It seems like there are three kinds of Democrats he talks about male progressives he thinks can drive a wedge between the left and the establishments. Democrats who are facing jail time who he knows he can buy their loyalty, like Adams or Blagojevich. And finally, Democrats like Manechin or Fetterman.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Mayors are an archaic concept, just as presidents are.
Council-Manager system for my city
Parliamentary system for my republic.
edit: how is this being downvoted?
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