Chaos and dysfunction in Washington and London make liberal democratic government look bad—and embolden China and Russia to market authoritarianism as an efficient alternative.inston Churchill’s oft-quoted remark that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried” has long been considered axiomatic in many quarters. But the idea, which Churchill borrowed from someone else, is now contested across the globe. China’s authoritarian economic model has become a source of inspiration—or what President Xi Jinping has described as a “new option”—for would-be autocrats who are no longer persuaded that rights and freedoms are prerequisites for prosperity, much less their own survival in office.