I wish I had the time to do it justice. The following is kind of haphazard, but you can connect any loose dots yourself:

The simplistic answer is that people are attracted to solutions where they get the free lunch. Where they can have things they want with somebody else paying for it. That they can have peace without the military, technology without industrialism, energy without any impact on the environment.

Of course anyone offering these things, rational or not, is going to get a lot of support. Especially if the government has been given enough power to appear to be able to deliver it. Someone pointing out that the real road to progress has a few more bumps is not going to be as popular.

Then there's a more complicated answer.

It was obvious to me even before my politics were fully developed that human societies tended strongly toward collectivism and authoritarianism. It seemed astonishingly easy to drop a Marxist regime or a dictatorship onto a nation. Nations with a high level of individual freedom were few and far between, and those that slipped back seemed to outnumber those that became free. Libertarian societies? Almost unknown in history. Maybe some small ones, like old Iceland.

Humans evolved from tribal primates. Most primates (there are exceptions) are intensely heirarchical. There seems to be a real psychological need to be either Boss Ape or Flunky Ape. Even "Bottom Ape" seems to be better than "Lone Ape." As long as one has a place. So this need to fit into such a structure is built into our species, and it emerges given almost any opportunity. Why are gangs so popular?

Unfortunately, this imperative seems to operate on smaller scales most effectively. There is a natural size for a tribe that I believe humans would devolve into if no other forces were in operation, much as dogs would settle into a "big yaller dog" form if left alone to breed for a thousand years or so. This number can be forced into larger modes: regional, or in a few cases even national, but it's hard work, and highly unstable. We look with smugness on nations like Iraq or Yugoslavia. Do we realize that if our complex order broke down, even the U.S. would end up a gigantic pile of counties? Anybody ever see a map of Europe a thousand years old or so?

Add to this the biological tribal imperative, also as old as time, of "Our Guys" and "Their guys," and you have a mess.

So far, so good. Explains a lot, including why so many people seem to be, if not happy, at least content under dictators or collective rule. Someone will tolerate a lot Explains why gangs are popular, and tribal affiliations. Why the hostility toward the "different" is so prevalent.

None of this is probably a blinding breakthrough for anyone who has given it much thought, and people here have recommended

So why are most dictatorships economic wrecks? Third World nations afterwards, if not before.

I came up with another side theory (take it for what it's worth. I'm no anthropologist.) I like to say it's what Ayn Rand and Jane Goodall would have come up with if they had been stuck on an island together for a year.

Add to this heirarchical ape, by the usual half-assed methods of evolution, a brain which makes reason the prime survival function of this ape. Reason, as Rand put it, is largely an individual process, and humans, by virtue of their minds and personalities, not their biological differences, are among the most individual species on Earth.

Now, you have what we call in evolution a "kludge." An individually-operating survival mechanism combined with a tribal imperative. That this can be dealt with, and even succeed, is obvious. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have done quite well for themselves.

There is nothing that makes reason and cooperation exclusive. In fact, voluntary cooperation is a good thing. Even the most brilliant humans would have a hard time surviving as millions of separate "Robinson Crusoes." Being able to cooperate in large numbers has driven a lot of our progress.

Where the tribalism comes into it is the urge to force cooperation, to jam the tribe into a single mold, to drive thought into a single solution and permit no analysis. Intelligence and reason don't work that way.+

You don't get a lot of intellectual progress in nations that live by forcing people into a mold. Collectivism will fail every time to give its people prosperity, but it still sells itself as the answer, and pushed by various imperatives, people still want to buy it.

Libertarian fantasy societies, like those in the "Probability Broach" books, are attractive, but I'm not sure it will ever happen for this particular primate. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if humans had evolved from something like the orangutan, which does not form tribes. It's still highly territorial, so I suppose war would still be with us.

So, here we are, on the cultural knife edge. The human ground state is the warring tribe. Civilization is the difficult exception. It's actually amazing that we've come so far, and by our reason and culture, overcome so much of our own nature. We look at the wars and strife and see the problem. It's not as obvious to look at a place like New York City and see how many people of radically different backgrounds live in close proximity without violence.

Somebody with more skill and background could probably get a decent paper of some kind out of this. Biology is by far not the only factor. The book "Guns, Germs and Steel" has been recommended here, which tracks, among many other things, how cultural evolution into an agricultural society began to force tribes into larger groups, for better and worse.

Sorry for the lousy presentation, but maybe this helps explain my views.