On Authoritarianism, Competitive and Otherwise
And why I think future presidents will use the powers that Trump has demonstrated exist.
At its core, authoritarianism is simply a government that is based on the authority of some specific person or group. This stands in basic contradistinction to democracy, which is a system wherein the public governs as mediated through free and fair elections in the context of substantive protections of the civil rights and liberties of citizens.
Authoritarianism can take many forms. Here is a basic, but not exhaustive, list.
- A theocracy is an authoritarian form of government because the authority to govern is in the hands of the clerics.
- A monarchy is an authoritarian form of government because the authority to govern is in the hands of the king.
- A military dictatorship is an authoritarian form of government because the authority to govern is in the hands of a specific general or a military junta.
- One-party rule is an authoritarian form of government because the authority to govern is in the hands of the leadership of the governing party.
By the way, all of those kinds of regimes might have elections, but they don’t actually change who has the authority to govern.
Ultimately, the basic question is, always, “Who governs and what is the source of their power?”
I would note that the severity of a regime’s authoritarian control over the population can vary greatly. Life under such a system can even be pretty mundane; it needn’t be a totalitarian nightmare to nonetheless be an authoritarian system. Further, the negative effects of authoritarianism are not evenly distributed throughout the population; some suffer its effects far more than others.
The reason why I have been willing to say that Trump is governing like an authoritarian is that he, along with whoever he is listening to, is making pronouncements and decrees as if they carry the weight of law. In some cases, like blowing up boats in the Caribbean because he has deemed the occupants to be terrorists, the orders are being followed. Some, like declaring flag-burning illegal, have been untested. Many remain in abeyance until SCOTUS rules, like his declaration about birthright citizenship. Others, like deploying troops to Portland, are temporarily on hold. Yet again, others have led to extorting funds from universities and pro bono work from major law firms.
I will note that there are some ways to try and argue that at least some of the above is legal, at least enough to give the administration cover with potentially skeptical supporters.* There is also the case that the other branches seem more than willing to let him do what he wants, such as dismantling agencies and withholding appropriated spending, both in contravention of laws passed by Congress.
The core point, however, for this post is that there is a distinction to be made between the mechanism that installs a government and the manner in which that government governs. This is why it is possible to speak of Trump governing like an authoritarian and trying to consolidate an authoritarian regime (i.e., new or significantly altered rules about power in the US). That he is governing like an authoritarian does not mean, quite yet, that the system has been fully transformed, save to note that it is not going back to “normal.”
The tests are the midterms, roughly a year from when I write this, and then 2028.
The test at those infection points will be how much we retain the competitive portion of the system, flawed as it is.
I would add, also, that governing as an authoritarian does not always mean things like vaporizing boats, deploying federal troops to cities, or sending detainees to foreign gulags. It could be sending candygrams to every American citizen by illegally spending money out of the treasury. I note this because I am getting the impression that some people only associate “authoritarian governance” with stereotypically dictatorial behaviors.
I would add something that I usually assume goes without saying (or, more likely, because deep dives into definitions are not what most people want to read)** which is that democratic governance has to have some respect for what previous governments have established via regular means. For example, USAID was created, over time, via the actions of a number of elected presidents and Congresses. It was legitimately created and empowered via a series of legal and constitutionally empowered decisions. Therefore, to dismantle it should, in a healthy democracy, require using similar means to do so. Being able to do so via fiat is the hallmark of authoritarian governance.
A president who can say, despite decades of democratically legitimate actions, “I don’t like this thing, so I am shutting it down,” is governing based on his own authority as he sees it, and is doing so outside of the normal democratic process. A healthy system should be able to stop extralegal actions of that nature, and yet here we are.
Having said all of that, Trump won, for all the flaws of American electoral democracy, a free and fair election to office in 2024. There is no reason to dispute that fact. The same is true of the current Congress, although the democratic quality of the process as it pertains to the House is an ongoing area of critique for me, given serious problems with competitiveness. And it is requisite for me to note the Senate’s problem with representativeness.
Setting aside real critiques of democratic quality, the fact is that the current government was elected in a democratic election.
While I agree with various assessments that have downgraded its scores on the quality of American democracy, we won’t know for sure how to classify where were are until next year and then again in 2028. But I still stress, again, that there is little doubt about the deficiencies of American democracy, even with the best of outcomes over the next several years.
I say this as a political scientist and analyst. I don’t have the necessary data needed to make a definitive assessment of where to place the US regime type as it pertains to my post on Saturday. Again, the actual tests are coming, and along with them the needed data.
Still, I continue to assess the situation as one in which we aren’t going to return to “normal.” So, the question is, where are we headed?
To be clear: I have no crystal ball.
Saturday, I stated that I thought the most likely outcome is a kind of two-party competitive authoritarianism wherein there are relatively free and fair elections, but that the winner governs in a manner more akin to what we are seeing now from Trump, specifically by-passing Congress and using EOs to accomplish the goals of the president.
I received two kinds of pushback on this. On type was about my I thought 2b the most likely outcome. I will leave that to another post.
The second type was that the Democrats, if they won, wouldn’t behave that way. Paul Campos at LGM, for example, stated the following:
The option of a competitive authoritarianism. in which the Democratic party becomes a mirror image of the Republican, and we trade off back and forth between essentially anti-democratic authoritarian regimes with radically different policy goals, strikes me as wildly improbable. This would require a Democratic party that would bear essentially no resemblance to that which now exists.
This echoes some things from the comment section of my post, i.e., that the Democrats would not be willing to wield power the way Trump has. I simply do not understand why it would be the case, after four years of damage done via Executive Orders and fiat from the White House, that if a Democrat takes the office in 2029 that they would look at those tools and say, “Nah!” I would note one of Biden’s responses to Trump1 was to issue a bunch of EOs himself, many trying to reverse the ones that Trump issued. Trump has already issued almost as many in his first nine months as he did in his first four years (source). There is going to be a lot to undo, and there is little in the history of Congress in the last couple of decades to suggest they are going to be the ones to clean it up.
Indeed, the notion that the legislature is going to fix anything, regardless of who controls it, seems more fantastical to me than a hypothetical Democratic president governing as I am positing.
I would stress that everything I am talking about assumes that some kind of real competition exists, which fits the Levitsky and Way conception of all of this. Again, I may be stretching how much competition would continue, but my point is predicated on the obvious, long-term dysfunction of the legislative branch, coupled with a very energetic executive that Trump seems to be demonstrating is possible.
All of that can lead to keeping a lot of the forms and appearance of the pre-Trump constitutional order, but with the power dynamics being substantially rearranged.
I would note, too, that Obama’s EO on DACA and Biden’s on student loans were both examples of executive action in the face of the inability to get Congress to act (I would argue this was especially true for DACA). For a number of reasons, I place these moves in a different category than things like Trump’s EO about birthright citizenship and flag-burning, and I am not seeking to relitigate them now, but simply would note that that is the kind of executive action that Juan Linz’s view of presidentialism would have predicted.*** He noted that executives, hamstrung by legislative inaction, might turn to other methods, even questionable ones, to get policy accomplished.
Again, without getting into the legality of DACA, which has been challenged and questioned by courts, it is a good general example of what could increasingly be our future: programs and structures created by one president and cancelled by another, while Congress just stands over the corner and worries about the mid-terms, doing nothing. Then such EO-created programs become either the domain of a new EO and/or of slow-moving courts that leave things in weird limbo. That is not the system the US Constitution purports to create.
The notion that the next Democratic president is not going to feel forced to continue to EO parade strikes me as unlikely (Indeed, some may welcome it with open arms). Moreover, as a general axiom of politics, once a power has been discovered and deployed, it is rare that those who come to office after the discovery and deployment of power will eschew those tools.
I would put it this way: extrapolate out four years of Trump2 that look a lot like the first nine months. A Democrat wins control of the White House and both branches of Congress, but does not have 60 votes in the Senate (and, like with Biden’s first two years, lacks the votes to remove the filibuster). Do we really think that such a Democratic president will look around the Oval and see all the tools Trump used to govern by fiat and not deploy to fix the damage? Or, you know, to do things they think are good and needed?
This seems unlikely and cuts against human nature and the collective history of politics.
Democrats may not order troops into the streets, but they may want to send candygrams. And candygrams distributed by authoritarian fiat may well be sweet, but they are nonetheless still the products of authoritarian rule.
Maybe the tl;dr is this: Congress has demonstrated a long-term inability to fix obvious problems (e.g., immigration and the budget process). Trump has demonstrated at least some ability to ignore Congress to accomplish his goals. In what universe does the next president not build on that power grab?
BTW, I would note that if one listens to John Stewart’s The Weekly Show podcast, for example, the most recent episode with Tim Miller and David Faris, you will hear Stewart more or less advocating for what I am describing. He did so back in some late summer episodes as well. Indeed, Farris wrote a piece for The Nation that illustrates what I am talking about here: The Alternate-Universe Version of Trump’s Executive Putsch. The piece is meant to be over-the-top, but it may help readers understand what I am trying to say here.
Note: I did not get my views on this topic from Stewart and Farris. I’ve been thinking about some version of this since the early days of DOGE when it was clear that no one was going to stop the Trump administration from closing offices, firing people, and ignoring Congress. Our system does not have the guardrails to stop these actions.
Again, I see nothing inherent in the Democratic Party that will forestall future Democratic politicians from using this power.
When faced with using the Ring of Power, most people are like Boromir, i.e., convinced that they will use it for good. Galadriels and Gandalfs who refuse to be corrupted are rare. Rarer still are those who would risk life and limb (or career) to destroy that power, as per Frodo and Sam.
(Having managed to be both a political scientist and an Ancient Geek, I will now stop typing.)
*Because I do not want to be misunderstood: I am not saying that those arguments are valid, but they do provide cover for supporters to ignore the lawlessness. For example, as a general matter, we, as a society, have come to accept that the president, as CINC, can order the military to use force as he sees fit. As such, a lot of people will fall for the notion that these fast boats are, actually, terrorists who deserve to be blown up. There is also the sad reality that if SCOTUS allows the president to engage in pocket recisions, that would make it constitutional (and SCOTUS’s role in all of this is its own serious problem).
**The reality is that complex social phenomena like “democracy” or “authoritarianism” often require long and complex definitions to fully explain, but blogging is often a poor place for such digressions.
***See Juan Linz’s now classic article, “The Perils of Presidentialism.” Journal of Democracy, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1990, pp. 51-69.
The Founders put guardrails in place, but those guardrails assumed a level of intelligence and integrity on the part of both the elected and the electors that has gone by the wayside. The Founders apparently believed that the voters (propertied white males) would never entrust the presidency to a grifter/buffoon like Trump, and if they had done so they would correct the mistake via impeachment. The Founders built in separation of powers so a run amok president could be reined in (if not impeached), but Congress has ceded both the power of the purse and the power to wage war to the president, while neutering impeachment as “a partisan political tool.” So here we are, with an addled, likely mentally ill president breaking the law and violating the Constitution every day, egged on by nihilists, xenophobes and opportunistic plutocrats, and indulged and enabled by spineless Republicans and an openly corrupt Supreme Court. As Dr. Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Looks like keeping it was too much to ask.
Totally agree. I dont see a Dem POTUS doing the same things that Trump has done, but I do foresee them using the same principles that Trump is establishing ie that old norms dont matter. The EOs will continue, especially since we arent getting 60 person majorities. While I hope those Eos will be better than those of Trump I also think some of them will be questionably legal/constitutional. You can almost always find a lawyer(s) to tell you what you want to hear so the next Dem POTUS will find those lawyers.
However, what if the next POTUS is a Republican? That’s really scary as unlike when past presidents lose power and stay out of politics, I think the Trump cult will remain intact. The next Republicans POTUS will have to prove his worthiness by being even more Trumpier.
Not seeing how we break this cycle.
Steve
Absolutely agree. I’d go further. The Constitution and the US as a functioning republic have failed. Like all giants, the fall will be long, but (to mix even more metaphors) the genie is out of the bottle. Personally I blame Gingrich for breaking the House in the 90’s, and McConnell for destroying the Senate in the oughts/early teens. With the most important (Article 1) Constitutional branch in total disarray and not-functioning power naturally devolved to the Executive and Judicial branches. Then the Judicial branch was captured by a radical (in terms of US history anyway) reinterpretation of executive power that gave even more power to the executive over every other branch. Unfortunately I see nothing in the current US environment even remotely capable of restoring Congress to a functioning institution, and giving Congress the power it has gleefully surrendered back.
It’s all over but the crying.
I just thought to note that what has happened is what we call in gaming an exploit. The rules have been subverted and are now being abused or flouted.
There are very few rules that can’t be exploited. A lawyer friend of mine was fond of saying that the law was not a bunch of magic incantations (despite what most sovereign citizens think). The law is a person, he would say.
The Constitution has been exploited. This has been in the planning stages for generations, I suspect. They found their opportunity and took it.
That doesn’t mean we couldn’t do better with changes to the Constitution. We could.
I recall having this sort of conversation over the last 10 – 15 years with friends and fellow travellers:
Jay: Rule of law is really important!
Friend of Jay: Yes, but not as important as !
I do not agree with that. Rule of law is more important than any of them. Because it is rule of law that allows you to have any of the rest of those rights and policies.
And yeah, I am not a political scientist, but I too made the same associations with the One Ring.
Sainted Nine-fingered Frodo could not destroy the One Ring voluntarily when he had the chance, it took Gollum’s intervention. I wonder if there’s a lesson for us there.
I hope so.
Indeed. The average German of the 30s had it pretty good until the bombs started dropping.
It seems to me that “competitive authoritarianism wherein there are relatively free and fair elections” is a contradiction in terms. Can you cite an example of such? Serious question. Kurt Weyland cited Berlusconi as a failed authoritarian, and notes that Italian democracy was progressively degraded each time he took office. Is that the sort of thing you’re talking about?
For nearly a decade I’ve been saying here, “It ain’t just Trump”. I’m not going to now turn around now and agree that Dems would behave just like Trump and the GOPs. First, any discussion of the next D prez is purely hypothetical, depending on failure of Trump, or Vance, to secure the 2028 election or autogolpe. Also, one assumes a D Party much like the current feckless Party. If Ds go full national populist with captive media we’re just throwing meaningless labels around. And I need to add that differences of degree are still differences.
As it currently stands, there are major asymmetries between the parties:
– GOPs have bought SCOTUS and that’s likely to continue so for some time.
– Republicans are far less honest. Not less moral, but forced to lie a lot by the contradictions built into an oligarchic party dependent on a popular vote.
– As such, they are more prone to the authoritarian failure of believing their own bullshit.
– GOPs have a history of nominating somewhat ignorant prez candidates: Reagan, W, and the all time champion, Trump. It’s hard to see Dems doing so.
– GOPs have a captive media. Dems may try, but it doesn’t seem to work.
– Ds have nothing comparable to the Kochtopus and Project 2025.
Lurking in the background are Trump’s failing health and cognition, JD Vance, and the possibility of massive failure. ETTD.
You promise a later post on why you think this alternating authoritarianism is the most likely outcome. Perhaps that will include a more complete explanation of what you expect. If you’re talking about the GOPs failing to corrupt elections and basically a continuation of the currently evenly split electorate with neither party able to establish a more normal dominance, and each degradation building up, it may be that I largely agree with you.
I keep bringing up Mexico under the PRI, but I still think it’s a good example of an authoritarian regime that stays in power a long, long time.
The one positive aspect of that period is there was little in the form of repression. There was a great deal of censorship, and there were definitely some groups the government didn’t like, and there were plenty of restrictions, protectionism, massive corruption, and more. But abuses of power were things like closing off the freeway for an hour because the president had to get somewhere.
There was some repression, mostly political. the signal act was the Tlatelolco massacre on October 2nd 1968. This followed occasional arrests and murders of actual and potential political rivals, like union leaders. So it wasn’t all roses and rainbows, but we didn’t see mass raids and other forms of repression on a regular basis.
I’d argue an authoritarian regime does not need to be terrible as well. The more recent such regimes, like Orban, Mad Vlad, and El Taco, unfortunately chose fascism as well.
I wonder how any of this might be impacted by changes in how people vote. Part of what makes the program of voter-suppression effective is that we’re in a period of very close and competitive elections that get decided around the margins. Suppress a little here, gerrymander a little there, may be all that’s needed to stay in power. It’s easier to rig a close election than a landslide.
Big swings in who voters prefer can go in either direction. In 2024 it was the Republicans who enjoyed a big shift–but what’s notable is that the full impact of it was actually suppressed by the electoral college, as Trump’s biggest improvements happened in states that didn’t matter electorally because they went to the same party last time (and often the last several times). The flip side of this is that if the voters most likely to be souring on him now are these new ones (as a lot of recent polls indicate), their flipping back to the Dems would have only a marginal impact at best–thus making vote-rigging remain a big concern.
Of course even a Democratic landslide wouldn’t guarantee that the GOP doesn’t go full authoritarian by calling the election results fake and refusing to allow the newly elected Dems in, or by outright canceling the elections. But that’s a situation I don’t think Trump or his minions would hope for, because they know how bad it would look. They prefer destroying the democracy in a sneaky way whenever possible.
A universe where the next president isn’t a psychopath?
Humbly, I think you are underplaying the asymmetry in our parties’ current behavior. I don’t have to believe the next president will be a Gandalf or even a Boromir in order to believe they won’t be another Sauron à la Trump.
So yes, if it is accomplished through executive fiat, sending troops and sending candygrams are both authoritarian. But, in what universe do you see a Democrat arguing that the distribution of candygrams is existential to the future of a country under attack from the enemy within? Essential to Trump’s most pernicious power grabs is the fascistic Us versus Them rhetoric spewing forth on Fox and bro-podcasts from Miller, Homan, Noems, Vance, and the Orange One himself. While they aren’t going so far as to admitting that they are violating our laws, they are being very obvious about their need to do a lot of these things – sending troops to blue states cities, ICE raids, university and media censorship – because the country’s situation makes it necessary. “I’m not above the law, but even if I were, the country’s dire condition demands it.”
To be clear, I don’t have any problem imagining a universe where a Democratic administration took full advantage of the power Russel Vought at OMB or the DOGE crew have shown to be available and sadly acceptable. But, there is a highly significant difference between those power grabs (that are intended to advance a political agenda by circumventing Congress and legislation) and the uniquely Trumpian power grabs, such as quashing dissent, dictating election “reforms” to the states, intimidating voters in the opposition, or defying the courts to imprison immigrants without due process, (that are intended to prevent losing GOP control of the government). The DOGEy power grabs have been proven and will be used again. The totalitarian power grabs haven’t yet played out and if they become proven in 2026 or 2028, the country is doomed.
For some reason this discussion reminded me of George Washington and why he should remain on the list of best presidents. Supporters were pushing to make him king. He said no. Can anyone imagine Trump turning down the chance to be king?
Steve
@Jay L. Gischer:
Halting climate change and mitigating the effects of it that are already baked in. It’s an existential threat and will lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people at the least, potentially many more.
I would sacrifice rule of law to act aggressively and effectively on that. (Sorry, just needed to be contrary.)
Also, that’s not really an alternative we are being offered.
Sweet summer souls. A nanosecond after President Newsom/Beshear/Kelly tries to exercise expanded authoritarian power, The Rightwing Supremes will magically and suddenly remember that presidents can’t do that and happily reverse themselves.
Neither a Republican nor a Democratic congress — nor the media — would allow a Dem president to get away it. Remember Emailghazigatepalooza vs. the press’s kid glove treatment of Trump’s Russia collusion? There’s one standard for Democrats (as the preferred party of women, ethnic minorities, and gays) and another rule (i.e. no rules) for the party of white supremacist patriarchy. Like, helping debtor students is unfair socialism, reparations to slave descendants anathema but let’s give megabillions in bailouts to farmers, techbros, bankers, and unions.
One need not worry about a future Democrat emulating Trump, because American institutions simply would not tolerate it from anyone capable of winning 85%+ of black and Alphabet voters.
DK beat me to the punch with the point about the Supreme Court. Since Trump took office again it has bent over backwards to let him act in an authoritarian manner, carefully avoiding in many cases giving any reasons for its rulings. There’s little doubt it would come down hard on any attempts by a Democratic president to emulate Trump, again using the shadow docket to uphold or reject appeals quickly without the bother of having to explain its rationale.
Thomas has also given fair warning that if necessary, he at least is ready to ignore precedent if the “common sense” MAGA people admire so much requires it. I expect his MAGA colleagues would need little persuasion to do likewise if a Democratic president threatened to make serious inroads into the changes Trump and the MAGA movement have wrought in the US.
@Charley in Cleveland:
The Framers did not intend for citizens to vote for either the President or the Senate, only their state and local officials and their U.S. Representative. The Senate was to be elected by the state legislatures of the several states and the President via the slightly more indirect method of the Electoral College.
@James Joyner: Indeed.
Although it is worth noting that the design of the Senate (regardless of how they were chosen) was supposed to lead to national stability, and I would argue it is now doing the opposite.
And the design of the EC was supposed to avoid demagogues. But, of course, the EC never worked the way they thought it would.
@DK: @Ken_L:
BTW, I understand this critique, and while the Roberts Court is likely to be less friendly to a hypothetical Dem pres, putting some of this toothpaste back into the tube will not be like flipping a switch.
And the more they have broken things, and the more obvious that they are trying to rig things, the more likely it will be that some future Dem will decide to break things further and ignore the Court and dare them to enforce the rules with their nonexistent enforcement powers.
The dangerous nature of the game that is being played is that at some point, the concentration of power in the executive does create the authoritarianism that I am predicting, and clawing it back will not be easy.