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Alternate Political Strongmen and Strongwomen

Thinking about this, an interesting idea would be in the 20th century, either in a heavily decentralized or broken up United States, having strongmen and women in each state. I can definitely think of William Langer in North Dakota, Huey Long in Louisiana (a Long-led Louisiana petrostate has been a concept in the back of my mind for a while), and the Daleys in Illinois if they can get enough of a hold on downstate. Maybe Earl Warren in California (and/or the cliche of Jerry Brown of course).

Huh, I was intending this to be more modern like in a US has a USSR-esque collapse in the Cold war scenario but the first ones to come to mind were 30s.
 
wilcoxchar said:
Huh, I was intending this to be more modern like in a US has a USSR-esque collapse in the Cold war scenario but the first ones to come to mind were 30s.
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Funnily enough I was thinking about the US divided Russia style earlier today. Lakota National Okrug and the like.
 
Burton K Wheeler said:
Every time somebody tries to draw Native American autonomous regions on a U.S. map they're hilariously and laughably wrong, usually not even making sense at all.
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So exactly like the US Government would have drawn them?

Not limited to just Native Americans of course but all the oblasts, republics, krais, autonomous okrugs, federal cities and the Jewish autonomous oblast in Alaska.
 
If I may go on about Poland a bit more, I think Donald Tusk could have been one. He and Viktor Orbán are actually quite similar - both of them started out as idealistic young liberals who got their start as opposition activists but were never quite accepted by the intellectuals who made up the elite of the liberal opposition and were consequently relegated to a supporting role only to come out on top in the end by identifying political niches that were crying out to be filled. Of course, the niche Orbán identified was middle-class conservative resentment while Tusk's was a kind of populist Thatcherite sentiment that later morphed into a vague 'party of power order and normality' schtick, but had Tusk's career in the 90s been just a bit more crap and humiliating, I could see him becoming more resentful of the UW establishment and tailoring his politics just that little bit more towards the conservative populist culture-warrior end of the spectrum, and in Eastern Europe there's a very logical endpoint to that trajectory... (Perhaps he also ends up in a more solid alliance with the Kaczynskis than the one he had IOTL?)
 
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Would Jack Lang be a possibility for Australia? The man was incredibly divisive as NSW Premier, sure, but he had lots of fans and was headstrong, usually combatative, with little regard for consensus. Hell, there was a strong fear that he might use his powers to arrest the Governor (a veteran RAF officer no less) for subduing his plans by dismissing his government. Also a firm populist If Lang had more power and opportunities, especially if going beyond New South Wales, he'd probably be one of the most dangerous men in Australia.
 
I was discussing this more in depth on AH.com, but Imelda Marcos would make an interesting strongwoman in a world where Ferdinand beats the People Power Revolution or died sometime during the New Society. While seemingly devoid of any actual ideology, Imelda represented the Phillipines as dignitary of sorts, and was heavily involved with the policies of the New Society and propping up the unstable Marcos Regime.

It's kind of terrifying to imagine someone with no actual beliefs besides propagating her own power and general kleptocracy as President.
 
In Spain, Jesús Gil and Mario Conde could fill the role. The former definitely had national ambitions beyond his little fief in Marbella, and he would have been truly tremendous, being the closest thing to a Trumpian character we've ever had. Conde had a more technocratic but also very slimy character, and there were rumours in the 90s about him setting up a party to compete with Aznar. He later tried regional politics in Galicia before failing utterly even there and nowadays holds the honour of being the biggest defaulter to the Treasury in the country. From the left, you have Julio Anguita (he wasn't called the Califah of Córdoba for nothing), but you'd have to kill PSOE first for him to get a remote chance to achieve power. Maybe with an even bigger GAL scandal where there's enough evidence to put González and Guerra into trouble.
 
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Blackadder Mk2 said:
Knowing little to nothing about South Africa, Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party might have been a darker post-Apartheid leader in a world where the ANC are a less unified party/anti-Apartheid forces are less united. Thatcher certainly did more than a bit of flirting with him because of her suspicions of the ANC.
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Too much of a monarchist to project power much beyond the former KwaZulu homeland and the hostels in Johannesburg - without the help of the apartheid military. Same for Oupa Gqozo. Strongmen in their own small ponds.

Maybe Harry Gwala?
 
For India, one possibility is Jagmohan. He first came to power as vice chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, where he tied himself to Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency in the late 1970s and presided over the destruction of slums, predominately Muslim ones. He seems to have believed that Muslims in Delhi were would-be fifth columnists, a racist belief. He later became the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir from 1984 to 1989, certainly a bad appointment, and he presided over the rise of terrorism as well as rising tensions with Pakistan and may have been involved in brutal crackdowns of Kashmiri nationalists. On the other hand, he was well-liked by the Hindus of the state, taking over the notable Vaishno Devi temple and cleaned it up to Hindu acclaim. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was a cabinet minister with the BJP (from Sanjay Gandhi to the BJP - quite a few political turns). If he could be made Prime Minister somehow, he'd be a walking disaster and an authoritarian. Admittedly, the big thing stopping this is that India was a de facto monarchy until the late 1980s (with a few exceptions), so that limits the time required for his political career to emerge.
 
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