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the claim that Chernobyl caused a legitimacy crisis for the Soviet Union rests on sweeping causal claims that underestimate authoritarian resilience and oversimplify how complex societies really work

More than two decades after the end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, it should be clear that authoritarian regimes can endure chronic and acute crises that rival, if not exceed, the severity of Chernobyl. After all, the Soviet Union itself had done so many times, from the famines of 1921 to 1922, 1932 to 1933, and 1946 to 1947.

Many systems endure a long time even as they produce a plenitude of lies.

relying on analogical reasoning clutters rather than clarifies thinking about international relations and foreign policy.

The National Endowment for Democracy’s blog pivoted effortlessly from calling the January 2020 shootdown of a Ukrainian airliner “Iran’s ‘Chernobyl’ moment” to labeling the COVID-19 infection as “China’s biological ‘Chernobyl.’” The Atlantic Council mused (as did others) whether the coronavirus could be a “Chernobyl moment” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. An independent review panel suggested the coronavirus could be a “Chernobyl moment” for the World Health Organization—the clearest evidence the Chernobyl metaphor has become untethered from any evidence-based moorings.

Where the logic of the fable emphasizes how closed authoritarian systems promote untruths and thus engender disaster, the relatively open societies of the United States, Canada, Europe, Brazil, and now India have proved vulnerable to COVID-19, a failing that crossed ideological complexions of ruling parties and varieties of democracy alike.

the appeal of the fable is it reassures Western audiences that democratic institutions possess some natural immunity to the lies and bureaucratic dysfunction that poisoned the Pripyat marshes with radiation.

It may be true (indeed, it’s probably likely) that open systems prove more self-correcting in the long run than closed ones. Yet societies that pride themselves on being democratic are apt to overrate their own virtues—and their preparedness for disaster.

COVID-19 failures are already creating a fable in China that democracies won’t take the tough measures needed to halt disasters despite the counterexamples of Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Authoritarian systems are not fated to crumble because of one or another catastrophe, and democratic ones will not avert disaster out of their own innate virtues.

some of the continent’s more democratic states have failed to end corruption or deliver high levels of economic growth. On the other hand, Ethiopia and Rwanda achieved impressive successes, attracting international praise for reducing poverty and unemployment while consistently securing high economic growth

Ethiopia received almost $5 billion in foreign aid in 2018, while Rwanda received just over $1 billion. The figure for Rwanda is particularly striking when one considers that democratic Malawi, which saw a peaceful transfer of power to the opposition in June 2020, receives considerably less aid per person: $70 for each Malawian in 2018, compared with almost $91 for every Rwandan

recent trends in academic and policy research have played an important role in the rise of authoritarian development. These trends provided donors with an intellectual foundation for investing in countries that, on the basis of their human rights records, the EU and the UK might have been expected to avoid.

researchers suggested that when patrimonial systems are tightly controlled, waste can be minimized and resources channeled toward productive investments to support developmental outcomes

The combination of the rise of China, democratic malaise in the West, and the economic struggles of many African democracies has led citizens and political elites to increasingly question the value of democracy for development

there is some evidence that the empirical data used to identify Ethiopia and Rwanda as success stories may not be as impressive as it was first thought

official figures are part of a broader propaganda campaign designed to sell the regime both at home and abroad

The Tiger economies of East Asia, such as South Korea and Taiwan, entrenched the economic progress they achieved in the 1970s and 1980s by undergoing relatively smooth transitions to more open and inclusive—and hence legitimate and stable—political systems in the 1990s. The prospects for such transitions have always seemed less likely in Ethiopia and Rwanda, where opposition parties are not allowed to operate effectively and limited social and political cohesion remains a cause for concern.

While the jury is still out on Rwanda, the political foundations of economic development in Ethiopia appear to be crumbling. When the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1991, it initially appeared to have broken out of Ethiopia’s damaging cycle of repression and rebellion. Rather than seeking to enforce one ethnic identity over the others, the EPRDF committed to giving the country’s different communities the freedom and self-respect they had always desired. The government enshrined a right to self-determination in the Ethiopian constitution. However, the reality was very different

the ruling party kept itself in power by rigging elections and repressing opponents. As a result, many ethnoregional groups felt that in addition to being politically marginalized, they were denied the opportunity to press their concerns through democratic channels.

although he quickly won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for moving to end a long-running dispute with Eritrea and promising a raft of democratic reforms, Abiy was unable to return Ethiopia to political stability. Most notably, the growing political marginalization of the TPLF left the former dominant clique increasingly frustrated. Tigrayan leaders ultimately quit the government, while Abiy disbanded the EPRDF and replaced it with his own political vehicle, the Prosperity Party. From that moment on, civil conflict between the federal government and the TPLF, whose role was now limited to control over the Tigrayan regional government, became increasingly likely.

Since civil conflict began in November 2020, Ethiopia has had a new set of developmental challenges. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been displaced, major infrastructure has been destroyed, and Abiy’s reputation as a reformer has been undermined. Moreover, there is a serious risk that even though federal government troops have regained overall control of Tigray, the TPLF will be able to wage guerrilla attacks that will continue to weaken political stability and investor confidence.

Abiy, like his predecessors, will use coercion to maintain political control, building up more problems for the future. Although negotiated and smooth political transitions are not impossible, they are less likely in heavily divided societies and have been rare in sub-Saharan Africa.

Although Ethiopia and Rwanda are often mentioned in the same sentence, Ethiopia is the more important example for the argument that authoritarian government models would serve Africa better than democratic ones. With a small population, a distinctive history, and an intensely authoritarian government, Rwanda is not a promising case from which to generalize. By contrast, Ethiopia, with a large and extremely ethnically diverse population, provides a more compelling example.

The empirical evidence in favor of authoritarian development models in Africa has always been remarkably thin. The vast majority of African states were authoritarian in the 1970s and 1980s, and almost all had poor economic growth. Fast-forward to today, and there are very few authoritarian regimes with the potential to join Ethiopia and Rwanda as notable success stories. Instead, most studies have found that democratic governments perform better when it comes to providing public services or economic growth.

On its own, Rwanda’s small and aid-dependent economy cannot sustain the narrative that authoritarian regimes perform better on development—and if it does not, there is no justification at all for supporting repressive regimes.