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The Introduction of Strongmen begins by describing the past friendship between Vladimir Putin of Russia and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Ruth Ben-Ghiat surveys the eerie similarities between the two men’s authoritarian regimes and gives the reader a preview of her theories of how strongmen—leaders who use power and charisma to rule by force—behave and influence each other. The key takeaway is that all strongmen, no matter their place in time, geography, or politics, follow the same blueprint and the same patterns of behavior. Demonstrating this, Ben-Ghiat explains, is one of the many goals of her book. Not only does she intend to expose patterns of authoritarianism, specifically in situations following the destruction of democracy, but she also aims to explore the historical roots of authoritarianism and the playbook and tools pioneered and used by authoritarian rulers throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Ben-Ghiat also uses the introduction to explain the structure of her work as well as to introduce some of the overarching concepts she will explore. She defines three eras of the strongman and authoritarian leadership: the fascist era, from 1919 to 1945, the era of military coups, from 1950 to 1990, and the new authoritarian age, from 1990 to the present. These three eras will each be explored throughout all three sections of the book, which focus, respectively, on how strongmen attain power, how they stay in power, and how they lose power.
When strongmen gain power, it is often in times of social turbulence and upheaval: they take advantage of chaos in the wake of social progress, using negative emotions such as fear to their advantage while providing an appealing alternative to the establishment. While in office, strongmen thrive on further chaos, using it to exploit for personal gain both the machinery of government and the people surrounding them, buoyed by the approval and support of both common citizens and the elite. Losing favorable public opinion is often the beginning of the end, and in that end, one can find the hope of survivors amidst the despair over the destruction the strongman has wrought.
