In my forthcoming book, I look for ways to try to steelman the case for populism. One conclusion I come to is that, while populism is usually a terrible idea in developed states, it can make sense in poor nations where things are actually quite broken, and something akin to strongman rule can have beneficial lasting effects.
I think Latin America demonstrates this most clearly. Achieving a monopoly on the use of force is the most basic function of a state. When you see a country with a high murder rate, the costs go way beyond the actual deaths suffered by victims. The numbers are a reflection of the general unpleasantness of life there. Countries with high murder rates suffer from bad behavior that degrades the human experience across the board, from robberies and violent assaults to gang intimidation of normal citizens and loud music in public.
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This is a plausible theory, but I'm not entirely convinced:
1. I am uneasy that so much of the thesis depends on one particular region--Latin America. It seems plausible that some other aspect of Latin American culture is to blame, not "democracy".
2. Even worse, there are very few dictatorships in Latin America, and the largest one (Venezuela) has a very high crime rate. El Salvador seems like the strongest evidence for this hypothesis, but it's too soon to say how that will turn out in the long run. Can they imprison so many young men indefinitely?
3. Tough on crime policies are very popular with voters--as you acknowledge. So why should democracy be the problem?
4. I am reminded of theories that you need a strongman to promote efficient economic policies, even though almost every single side-by-side comparison shows that democratic countries are richer (India/Pakistan, China/Taiwan, Colombia/Venezuela, Poland/Belarus, Thailand/Burma, etc., etc.) If democracy is indeed better for the economy, then looking at crime rates by controlling for GDP per capita tends to unfairly penalize democracies.
Other Latin American countries are beginning to see Bukele-type candidates. Let's see how they do before we abandon democracy.
I've been on a Latin American history kick for a few months now as it one of the places in the world I had a big knowledge gap on. The "imperialism is to blame for all of the Third World's problems" explanation of history is obviously bad and wrong, but it comes closer to being true for Latin America than for just about any other place. The Spanish system was uniquely stupid - entrenching more or less feudalism, incentivizing convoluted color-based status obsessions, disenfranchising local native talent in favor of Spanish born mediocrities, kneecapping development, and more. And it lasted for 300 years. The conditions for building successful democratic societies was very poor because of all this at the time of the rebellions from Spain.
It *did* lend itself to rule by strongmen (caudillismo), but the strongmen themselves seldom were strong enough to fend off other strongmen or various peasant rebellions. Figuring out how to reign in the incessant military coups took another 200 years and it's only now that most of Latin America has finally pulled out of this for more than a few decades. Mexico was precocious here in building a coup proof central government, but it still has problems with crime violence. One reason for this is that in order to protect from coups, a successful strongman had to embed and ingratiate himself in elaborate corruption/patronage networks with local bosses (caciques). So, on top of crappy state capacity to fight crime, these states often developed an elaborate "pay under table" system which might be good for avoiding coups but is also a great way for organized crime to pay officials to look the other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudillo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacique#Caciquismo_and_caudillismo
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-mexico-built-a-state/