Dux Ex Machina: The Political-Economic Link Between Digital Technologies and Personalism

Personalism and personalist authoritarian regimes are on the rise. Ever since the Cold War, autocracies have converged toward personalist authoritarianism. Nowadays, autocratic strongmen are numerous and a phenomenon prevalent independent from geographic or cultural factors, or stages of economic development. Be it Xi Jinping in China, Putin in Russia, Al-Sisi in Egypt – party or military dictatorships seem to be far less en vogue than fifty years ago. However, even more astonishing is the rise of personalist strongmen in (former) democracies to the effect of democratic backsliding and even autocratization. Cases in point are Turkey under Erdogan, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Ortega in Nicaragua, and Modi in India – the list seems endless. Even more concerning seems the fact that the specter of personalist strongmen has also befallen democracies, as demonstrated by Trump's presidency in the US, or Hungary under Orbán. These developments beg several questions, but most importantly one comes to wonder why we see these trends in personalism. Several macro-structural arguments have been made concerning the side effects of accelerated globalization, rising economic inequality, and identity conflicts. Likewise, and especially in the case of elected strongmen, the impact of social media and new information and communication technologies come into play. Yet, we lack a systematic knowledge of the intricacies of new technologies and their effects on the rise of personalism. To contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the link between digital technologies and political personalism, this paper provides a political-economic analysis of mechanisms and traits inherent to digitization that contribute to the trends of personalist strongmen