The political doctrine of enlightened despotism, after enjoying great prestige in the 18th century, has fallen on hard times in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the level of political theory, it was eclipsed first, in the late 18th century and through much of the 19th century, by the doctrine of limited constitutionalism, whether republican or constitutional monarchy. In the 20th century, it has been eclipsed even more forcibly by the doctrine of democracy. Even political systems that are in practice purely despotic now tend to veil themselves in the forms of parliamentary democracy.
Thus, few today will say a good word for despotism, enlightened or otherwise. Yet a strong argument can be made that, in practice, only an enlightened despot can intelligently solve a country's problems, particularly when that country is faced with a crisis. The natural tendency of a republican or parliamentary system is toward compromise and putting off hard decisions, which works well enough in good times, but in a crisis leads to paralysis. Only a despot (whether formal or de facto) can in such conditions take forceful, risky decisions.
Thus, in the economic crisis of the 1930s and the drift toward the Second World War, the Western democratic powers were largely paralysed. In the early 1930s, only in the United States, where FDR, though an elected republican leader, ruled in much the manner of an enlightened despot, was energetic action taken against the Great Depression. The purely economic success of the New Deal may be questioned, but on a more fundamental level it was successful: Americans in those years had a sense that someone was at the helm, while France and Britain went adrift. For France the drift was fatal; the Third Republic was divided and paralysed to the very end, and paid the price in 1940. Britain only narrowly escaped this fate, turning at the eleventh hour from the parliamentary compromiser, Neville Chamberlain, to...