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During the Cold War, coups d’état accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic breakdowns.
Democracies in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Uruguay all died this way.
Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.
Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.
Because there is no single moment—no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution—in which the regime obviously “crosses the line” into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.
we are defining a democracy as a system of government with regular, free and fair elections, in which all adult citizens have the right to vote and possess basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech and association.
Will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them? Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended—by political parties and organized citizens, but also by democratic norms.
Democracies work best—and survive longer—where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America’s checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives.
America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies. There are,
On January 30, 1933, von Papen, one of the chief architects of the plan, dismissed worries over the gamble that would make Adolf Hitler chancellor of a crisis-ridden Germany with the reassuring words: “We’ve engaged him for ourselves….Within two months, we will have pushed [him] so far into a corner that he’ll squeal.” A more profound miscalculation is hard to imagine.
The Italian and German experiences highlight the type of “fateful alliance” that often elevates authoritarians to power.
If a charismatic outsider emerges on the scene, gaining popularity as he challenges the old order, it is tempting for establishment politicians who feel their control is unraveling to try to co-opt him.
If an insider breaks ranks to embrace the insurgent before his rivals do, he can use the outsider’s energy and base to outmaneuver his peers. And then, establishment politicians hope, the insurgent can be redirected to support their own program.
This sort of devil’s bargain often mutates to the benefit of the insurgent, as alliances provide outsiders with enough respectability to bec...
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The abdication of political responsibility by existing leaders often marks a nation’s first step toward authoritarianism.
Building on Linz’s work, we have developed a set of four behavioral warning signs that can help us know an authoritarian when we see one. We should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.
Populists are antiestablishment politicians—figures who, claiming to represent the voice of “the people,” wage war on what they depict as a corrupt and conspiratorial elite.
Successful gatekeeping requires that mainstream parties isolate and defeat extremist forces, a behavior political scientist Nancy Bermeo calls “distancing.”
Take the Swedish Conservative Party (AVF) during the perilous interwar period. The AVF’s youth group (an organization of voting-age activists), called the Swedish Nationalist Youth Organization, grew increasingly radical in the early 1930s, criticizing parliamentary democracy, openly supporting Hitler, and even creating a group of uniformed storm troopers. The AVF responded in 1933 by expelling the organization. The loss of 25,000 members may have cost the AVF votes in the 1934 municipal elections, but the party’s distancing strategy reduced the influence of antidemocratic forces in Sweden’s
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Smoke-filled back rooms therefore served as a screening mechanism, helping to keep out the kind of demagogues and extremists who derailed democracy elsewhere in the world.
Party gatekeepers were shells of what they once were, for two main reasons. One was a dramatic increase in the availability of outside money, accelerated (though hardly caused) by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United
The other major factor diminishing the power of traditional gatekeepers was the explosion of alternative media, particularly cable news and social media. Whereas the path to national name recognition
antidemocratic leaders are often identifiable before they come to power. Trump, even before his inauguration, tested positive on all four measures on our litmus test for autocrats.
The first sign is a weak commitment to the democratic rules of the game.
Politico/Morning Consult poll carried out in mid-October found that 41 percent of Americans, and 73 percent of Republicans, believed that the election could be stolen from Trump. In other words, three out of four Republicans were no longer certain that they were living under a democratic system with free elections.
The second category in our litmus test is the denial of the legitimacy of one’s opponents. Authoritarian politicians cast their rivals as criminal, subversive, unpatriotic, or a threat to national security or the existing way of life.
The third criterion is toleration or encouragement of violence.
The final warning sign is a readiness to curtail the civil liberties of rivals and critics. One thing that separates contemporary autocrats from democratic leaders is their intolerance of criticism, and their readiness to use their power to punish those—in the opposition, media, or civil society—who criticize them.
Recall the lessons of democratic breakdowns in Europe in the 1930s and South America in the 1960s and 1970s: When gatekeeping institutions fail, mainstream politicians must do everything possible to keep dangerous figures away from the centers of power.
Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed.
The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives.
Democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint. Rather, as Peru’s experience suggests, it can be the result of a sequence of unanticipated events—an escalating tit-for-tat between a demagogic, norm-breaking leader and a threatened political establishment.
The process often begins with words.
If the public comes to share the view that opponents are linked to terrorism and the media are spreading lies, it becomes easier to justify taking actions against them.
eventually cross the line from words to action. This is because a demagogue’s initial rise to power tends to polarize society, creating a climate of panic, hostility, and mutual distrust.
The new leader’s threatening words often have a boomerang effect. If the media feels threatened, it may
abandon restraint and professional standards in a desperate effort to ...
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Democracy is grinding work. Whereas family businesses and army squadrons may be ruled by fiat, democracies require negotiation, compromise, and concessions.
for outsiders, particularly those of a demagogic bent, democratic politics is often intolerably frustrating. For them, checks
and balances feel like a straitjacket. Like
For would-be authoritarians, therefore, judicial and law enforcement agencies pose both a challenge
and an opportunity. If they remain independent, they might expose and punish government abuse. It is a referee’s job, after all, to prevent cheating. But if these agencies are controlled by loyalists, they could serve a would-be dictator’s aims, shielding the government from investigation and criminal prosecutions that could lead to its removal from power.
elected autocrats often need crises—external threats offer them a chance to break free, both swiftly and, very often, “legally.”
Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps and ambiguities. No operating manual, no matter how detailed, can anticipate all possible contingencies or prescribe how to behave under all possible circumstances.
Constitutional rules are also always subject to competing interpretations. What, exactly, does “advice and consent” entail when it comes to the U.S. Senate’s role in appointing Supreme Court justices? What sort of threshold for impeachment does the phrase “crimes and misdemeanors” establish? Americans have debated these and other constitutional questions for centuries. If constitutional powers are open to multiple readings, they can be used in ways that their creators didn’t anticipate.
only the “thin tissue of convention” prevents American presidents from capturing the referees and deploying them against opponents. Likewise, the Constitution is virtually silent
on the president’s authority to act unilaterally, via decrees or executive orders, and it does not define the limits of executive power during crises.
All successful democracies rely on informal rules
two norms stand out as fundamental to a functioning democracy: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.
Mutual toleration refers to the idea that as long as our rivals play by constitutional rules, we accept that they have an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern.
