Step 1. Take control over all types of media Step 2. Eliminate opposition Step3. ???? Step 4. Profites !

People keep voting for them because they foster and environnement where there is no one else to vote for.

Last election in Turkey may have looked like a close call for Erdogan. But during the campaign he got over 85% of media coverage, while the other candidates have to share the crumbs (I am pulling those numbers out of my ass).

There is a whole system of media devoted to getting normal folks to vote against their own interests. In the regimes you list (and I'd argue also in western so called liberal democracies too but to a lesser extent) the capitalist class and political class are so intertwined due to influence and corruption, that whatever the needs and whims of the leading politicians, the media machine will distract and manipulate. The same tactics that they use are the ones which have worked since the start of mass media, they know how human psychology works.

Appealing to emotional arguments, external threats, racism, nationalism. Remember these are political tools, unfortunately very effective ones, as we saw in fascism in the 1900s. A curious consequence is that often, the worse things get for the normal people, the easier it is for these malicious actors to spin and manipulate and blame it on an external force or political enemy which deflects blame or allows for more extreme political ideology to rise in a society. So you get an accelerated political extremism.

People like authoritarians. Especially one they agree with, which many do.

Even in the US we have children's programming replete with kings and queens ruling over people. How many people watch things like Black Panther and think "this would be so much better with a Congress debating what direction to take"? I mean other than me...

Dictators get things done compared to committees and legislatures. Nobody likes compromise.

Once a competent authoritarian leader takes root, it becomes very hard to remove him: the necessary mechanisms, formal or informal, tend to be sabotaged - not at once, but more and more over the years. It also helps when some of opposition have their lives broken, when uncertainty about one's own life is high, the value of human life low, when loyalty is placed above both competence and the law, and the law above competence, when the reputation of any possible contenders is questionable or made questionable, when people are used to the thought of futility of resistance (with fresh examples produced all the time) and being alone before the oppression, when somewhat educated people are made to think their views are in minority (independently of whether it's the case) and some of less educated people have some of their misery alleviated (and are occasionally given some power they did not deserve) in return for voicing the pro-government position (even if a good measure of said misery is a consequence of the government's actions).

The same reason Republicans still manage to win elections... through massive amounts of fraud and "gaming the system". People don't understand how thoroughly "representative democracy" is rigged - it can barely even be called "representative," never mind "democratic."

The short answer is that they think the authoritarian is on their side.

The long answer is that people in groups are stupid and they have been manipulated into thinking the authoritarian is on their side

Because compromise is messy and progress is incremental and sometimes hearing someone yell words that sound true will make you feel like you’ve found the answer to all the political bullshit.

Those leaders offer simple answers to complex social problems and claim to restore their country to the halcyon days of yore. The days when there were no immigrants, liberals, degeneracy or whatever "came later to ruin the country."

Also the voters may believe that voting against their interests somehow benefits them.

In Hungary, one big reason is that the government has all the media coverage, and they basically created a false narrative that if Orbán loses, then a) the previous government will come back and no matter how bad things are right now, it will be WORSE, b) migrants will come and wreak havock, c) our sons will have to go to war (in the last election, the opposition lost a lot of votes because there was a billboard campaign stating that the new PM candidate would send soldiers to Ukraine), d) there will be some kind of woke dictatorship.

People also think that the bad quality of life is mostly the fault of the EU and the previous government (which was in power over a decade ago...), and that it's okay that Orbán and his party steals from them because at least they're "on their side".

The government also provides some help to parents, which people find valuable, so they keep voting for FIDESZ.

People are seeing a massive drop in their quality of life before they vote for an authoritarian.

That's why they vote for strongmen - the neoliberals that were in charge before fucked everything up, and without any understanding of why that happened they just react by electing the opposition.

Under crisis or perceived pressure, there is obvious distrust in the current system. And the desire for a strong leader comes out of a hope of the decisiveness and concentrated power will allow them to "cut through the red tape" and dislodge entrenched stakeholders preventing change. Additionally, if the political and economic system is really complex and have difficult problems that are very systemic and don't have clear and immediate causes, this simplifying of the politics to all power being concentrated in an individual becomes desirable (this is Joseph Tainter's idea that social systems that have become too dysfunctional will create "Caesarism", his name for desiring a strong man leader).

The other major consideration is that a popular leader that has ties to multiple groups can paper over or avoid conflict between multiple stakeholders or polarized factions in a political system. This is why so much veneration and executive power was given to Washington in the US post-revolution, because that got around a lot of arguments and factional issues between North and South and other colony's conflicting interests. Both Napolean Bonaparte and Loius Napoleon had this as their main opening for power in the post-Revolution chaos and conflicts in the Second Republic, respectively.

The simple answer is people are stupid, and half of them are even stupider then you might think they are.

Democracies work when the voting populace is educated and informed. Unfortunately, humanity willfully avoids being either in favor of opinion and bias.

I'd say the average person just doesn't want to deal with politics. Instead, they choose the easy way out and vote one or a small group of authoritarians to rule the whole system. Plus, authoritarians have historically been equated to social stability and security. Can't have violent political demonstrations or "problematic speech" under people like Putin or Kim Jung-un; everything is "politically correct." And once the authoritarians are in power, the people have no say or power anymore, and at the very least the people FEEL powerless against the government, and again choose the easy way out by keeping their head down and refusing to instigate a fight against the government force that would easily and brutally overpower them.

Plus, the authoritarian governments are quick to blame their enemies for the problems of the people, utilizing propaganda, and the people are either obediently putting their trust jn their government (many people in every nation, both liberal and authoritarian, tend to trust the "credible source" that is their government), or the people stay quiet to avoid becoming an enemy of the state. I could go on, but I think I'll just say I digress right here. Feel free to chip in and let me know what y'all think! :)

Demagoguery, something that Socrates critiqued as a product of democratic systems.

Socrates imagined an election between a doctor and a candy store owner. The doctor would tell the populace what they didn’t want to hear.
As Socrates described it, the candy store owner would say of the physician that he works many evils on you. He hurts you, gives you bitter potions, tells you not to eat and drink whatever you like. What fun is that? The candy store owner, however, would offer sweets and tasty things. He would appeal to what people wanted, not what they needed. He would provide easy and popular answers to all their difficult problems

source

unfortunately we have too many candy store politicians across the globe.

authoritarian brain-worms

Well, in Russia, Putin is having his opponents killed/thrown in jail. It's not a democracy, like in NK where Kim have 99.9% of the vote.

Democracy doesn't work. People don't have a fully free will and don't make informed decisions in a world where the rich dictate the narrative by being able to dictate what narrative gets put out to the people. Most voters I've interacted with are single issue voters. In many regions there is no real choice. Usually political options are someone who promises not to do anything at all, someone who obviously lies about potentially making some irrelevant stuff better but definitely won't and then someone who panders to some manufactured social issue and promises to handle it (they usually implement the most changes, for better or mostly worse). In most regions there is only right wing parties available to vote for and you can choose your flavour of religious right wing, hip right wing or eco-fash right wing. I always want to vote but then actually research the options and find there is literally no person I agree with the program of so at best I can choose the one I least disagree with. It's really sad. The world will never be fixed through democracy or voting. If either had the power to improve it, it would long had happened. The world is as it is because of people who aren't suited for power being in power, be it politics or through money.

They have control over the media so the only side of the story people hear is that they are wonderful leaders and that the only people who oppose them are low class idiots, possibly criminals.

Also, they have control over the elections as well so it doesn't really matter how people vote.

Kind of like what Republicans are trying to do in the US.

The idea of someone that strong to make a change persuade people to vote them or they just already spreading fear to the people but not just that, this one is a bit unique, I think. Well, in El Salvador they got Bukele which basically a dictator, you can search it. In his term, democracy is decreasing but the homicide feel down drastically on country that so dangerous before, now they just could walk on the street without afraid getting shot and die.

more often than not, authoritarian leadership coincides with a strong chokehold on local media and strong dismissal or even attempts to completely bar entry of foreign media

think the great firewall, or local newsstation, being subsidiaries of fox, reading the exact same statements from a script across the USA

People who are afraid vote for someone they perceive as strong. Thus you'll see that right-wing media and politicians are constantly trying to instill fear in people. They want their voters to think that their way of life is under attack and there are enemies everywhere. The only one they can count on is their fearless leader to save them!

"Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may move you to vote Democratic, but deep down you long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king." -Sideshowbob The Simpsons

They control the media, so they are able to redirect blame for the drop in quality of life to other sources

If those leaders are not newcomers, which is true for Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Xi and so on, there is also another reason. People understand that these guys would not just leave if people would try to vote them out. They will use election frauds, threats and then open violence. So these attempts to overthrow them either fails at the beginning or would lead to violent turmoil which is highly likely to end up with bad guys winning and tightening the grip even further. A lot of people just want to save those bits of freedom and comfort that they currently have instead of risking it all for the sake of possible (but not exactly likely or guaranteed) better future. If you live long enough in such societies, this starts to work even on subconscious level.

Just look at Hong Kong - people were living in a relatively free society and they revolted against creeping injustice, revolt was violently crushed and society destroyed. Now people would be much more hesitant to even vote for alternative candidates (even if there would be any) because they know or suspect where it may lead

Who else would try to be elected into such a powerful position? I mean, why else would you run, except to exert your own authority?

Go ahead and try to fantasize about what you would do in your first week as the elected leader of your nation. Would you be tough on crime? Restrict access to guns? Criminalize transgender people? Criminalize people who want to hurt transgender people? What about war, or taxes? There's really no way to do the job without being authoritarian.

Edit: Shit, I was hoping the whole downvote-to-disagree mentality stayed over at Reddit. If you disagree, fine, but at least contribute something of substance to engage with.

Because the system gives them no other real choice. When all major parties serve the interests of the oligarchs, the people know that they're being screwed. Which makes them angry. And since the powers that be absolutely will not allow the emergence of a truly populist movement or leader, the people have no other option but to support a charismatic authoritarian leader who promises them whatever they want. I suspect that most of the people know that those leaders are lying, but at least they acknowledge that the people are being screwed!

Note that while the establishment never allows a leftist populist movement, they're fine with an authoritarian one. Translation: our owners won't allow their cattle to run free, but they're happy to have us all choose a leader to send us to the slaughterhouse for their profit.

An authoritarian isn't simply the person at the top, it is also all of the people who support them. Authoritarians like the comfort of being told what's good and what's bad. Life is simpler when those difficult moral choices are made for you and you free yourself of the responsibility of them. They don't believe they're at fault if those choices end up being disastrous because they were just following along, it wasn't their idea after all.

Of course that's all nonsense, but the point is that it's a comfortable fiction which means it is very appealing to someone who is susceptible to that mindset.

Depends on a lot of things.

Some people are outright sadistic, and just want to be able to step on others. Some people need a de facto father figure (I know a few that suffered under very abusive parents). Some just want a real-life tiny god they can worship. Some just fear. Some actually believe the lies about the fears of migrants, islamists, progressive politics, etc.

I personally voted for Orbán in 2010. I was told gay men will accuse me of homophobia if I reject their advances, that my tax will be spent on welfare for people that are able to work, that liberalism will destroy culture, that I'd be jailed for saying slurs, that "communists" will force me to do hard manual labor I"m incapable of (I'm somewhat disabled), and that feminists ruined my dating chances. I learned a week later, feminism isn't a "female supremacist" movement, then in a year, almost all of the other lies have crumbled. And now I'm forced to work in the communal work program for full time, below minimum wage, because those old "communists" can't differentiate between a computer and a Super Nintendo, and office work would turn me into gay (I'm bi with a strong bias towards femme people).