I spent a chunk of my morning — when I wasn’t dropping the kids off at the bus! — reading a new piece in Foreign Affairs that proposes a framework to think about a) what Donald Trump is doing in office and b) what it will mean for American political life.
The piece is called “The Path to American Authoritarianism:What Comes After Democratic Breakdown” and it’s authored by Steven Levitsky of Harvard University and Lucan A. Way of the University of Toronto.
I am not sure I agree with everything in it. But it’s a worthwhile read regardless.
I took 3 main points from it:
The lack of resistance — from Republicans, Democrats and the broader culture — to Trump’s 2nd term is a marked change from the start of his first term. It also coincides with a Trump who is far more skilled in getting what he wants — and a Republican party that is now entirely in his thrall.
The authors write:
Democracy survived Trump’s first term because he had no experience, plan, or team. He did not control the Republican Party when he took office in 2017, and most Republican leaders were still committed to democratic rules of the game. Trump governed with establishment Republicans and technocrats, and they largely constrained him. None of those things are true anymore. This time, Trump has made it clear that he intends to govern with loyalists. He now dominates the Republican Party, which, purged of its anti-Trump forces, now acquiesces to his authoritarian behavior.
We aren’t going to have a dictatorship — no matter what Trump does. This part of their argument is, to me, the most important. That while Trump may well bend traditional norms in MAJOR ways, we are not, in fact, headed toward a dictatorship.
Here’s the key bit on that:
U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country’s professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
We are headed toward what the authors describe as “competitive authoritarianism.” What does that mean? This:
What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
The piece is long. But it is intriguing. And whether you like Trump or hate him, it’s hard to argue he is trying to fundamentally transform American government. The only real question is what it will look like when he is done. This article poses a vision of that future that is worth grappling with.
This is a FREE post. But all of this only works if you are willing to invest in independent journalism. Which is why I hope today is the day you become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. It’s $6 a month or $60 for the year.
Share this post