giving people what they want isn’t democracy working. democracy working means aggregating everybody’s interests and values from everybody in a way that results in high quality decisions that deliver well to some “fair” balance if those interests and values. 1/

so if more personalist regimes can’t be held accountable in a way that’s meaningfully better than more institutionalist predecessors (or otherwise deliver superior outcomes), i wouldn’t describe it as democracy working, however popular the strongman might be. /fin