Trusted Incompetents

I think it is very common to see authoritarian leaderships decay into cesspools of incompetence, whereby incompetents get increasingly assigned to leadership positions, causing an overall decay of the system. This does not seem to make sense, since a solid system is what would help authoritarian leaders stay in office as long as possible.

However, the other thing that is obvious to such a leader is the fact that a personal support network must exist in order to stay in power. Given that not everyone close to a person can reasonably be expected to be exceptionally competent, it is only inevitable that an authoritarian leader wind up placing incompetents in charge of various areas. Over time, this nepotism will start taking its toll, leading to the characteristic decay of authoritarian regimes.

It is a pattern that is seen to repeat in pretty much every authoritarian regime that I know of. Infrastructure gets from bad to worse, selected parts of the economy are buffed while everything else slides to ruin. Indeed, non-authoritarian systems can and do face similar problems from incompetence, but it does seem that incidences of such trusted incompetents planted where they really shouldn't be does occur more often amongst the authoritarians. Even if the authoritarianism is localized within the organization.