My current hunch is that developmentalist dictators are those who loved their mothers. . . , but when you read novels and biographies, the pattern becomes uncanny.

“The entire structure of incentives of academia in the United States works against taking big intellectual and political risks. Graduate students and assistant professors learn to package their intellectual ambitions into articles publishable by a few journals and to shy away from anything that might look like a political stance. This professionalism does advance knowledge of narrowly formulated questions, but we do not have forums for spreading our knowledge outside academia; indeed, we do not talk about politics even among ourselves. It has been decades since professional journals—”professional” is what they are called—published essays on “What is wrong today with the United States, with democracy, or what not?” or on “How to make the world better?” As far as I am concerned, we would be saying more if the American Political Science Review were simply closed. ”

That is, people who genuinely believe they are saving their country with ‘strong measures’, but just end up putting it further in the shit. Strong measures often have very bad results even if they’re delivered with good intent.

With regard to your quote, Saparmurat “More barking mad than a sack full of wet puppies” Niyazov is a data point against Przeworski’s thesis.