Can a Democracy Reverse a Slide Toward Authoritarianism?

Prices went up during a post-pandemic recovery, and American voters elected a convicted felon and fascist who incited political violence as president. Okay, that may be a bit glib. But it’s clear that Donald Trump’s election is a giant step toward authoritarianism in the USA. He and his crew have openly talked about consolidating power in the Oval Office and targeting political foes with investigations and prosecutions. Trump aims to turn much of the federal bureaucracy into a corps of loyalists who pledge fealty to him, and he has raised the possibility of deploying the military against protesters and taking action against news outlets that expose his wrongdoing. And if he implements his plan for the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants, that will likely require police-state-like tactics. It’s a grim moment as the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Four years ago, when it appeared that Trump had a good chance of reelection, I wondered whether there were examples of other countries sliding toward authoritarianism but recovering before it was too late. There is a tremendous amount of research devoted to democracies descending into autocracies. The decline of democracy in Nazi Germany, of course, has been deeply studied. But have there been nations heading in that dark direction that put on the brakes and reversed course?

I found that two years earlier, University of Chicago professors Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq had had examined this question. In an article for the Journal of Democracy, they chronicled occasions when democracies suffered “substantial yet ‘non-fatal’ deterioration in the quality of democratic institutions and then experience[d] a rebound.” These “near misses,” they noted, “have received little or no attention in the new wave of scholarship on why democracies die (or survive).” 

Their article looked at three historical episodes not well known within the United States. The first was Finland in 1930, when the right-wing mass Lapua movement that partly modeled itself on Mussolini’s movement gained influence and was welcomed by the conservative president and the ruling party, which then banned communist newspapers. This fascistic camp—which kidnapped political opponents—fueled the election of a former prime minister. “Finland appeared to be on the cusp of the sort of democratic erosion that was to engulf Germany and Austria soon thereafter,” Ginsburg and Huq wrote. “Yet Finnish democracy prevailed.” Key military officials did not join the Lapua movement, and judges issued tough verdicts in response to its use of violence. Other political parties banded together across ideological lines to oppose the Lapua movement, and some conservative politicians kept their distance from it. Come March 1937, a center-left coalition was in secure control of the government. 

Another near-miss: In Colombia, during the 2000s, President Álvaro Uribe tried to seize greater power for himself. He pushed for government reforms that would afford him more control and influence over the legislature and the courts. His regime waged a campaign of harassment against journalists. Ultimately, a court blocked his attempt to gain a third term as president. Uribe’s hand-picked successor, his defense minister, broke with him and restored the institutional status quo.

In Sri Lanka, Ginsburg and Huq pointed out, democracy was imperiled by the rise of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won the presidency in 2005. As they put it, his “rule was marked by nepotism, corruption, and a degradation of rule-of-law institutions such as courts, prosecutors, and the police.” He appointed his three brothers to cabinet posts and developed a cult of personality. Journalists were imprisoned and murdered. He amended the constitution so he could run for a third term in 2015. “Sri Lanka seemed on the brink of seeing its democracy totally degraded,” Ginsburg and Huq observed. But a former minister of health in Rajapaksa’s government entered the presidential race to challenge him and quickly built a coalition that triumphed. Rajapaksa considered annulling the vote, but the army and police said no, as did the attorney general. Democracy was not upended.

Since then, democracy in Sri Lanka has remained in a precarious state. Rajapaksa’s brother, Gotabaya, was elected president in 2019, but he was forced to resign by anti-government protests in 2022 that demanded economic and democratic reforms. He was succeeded by Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose administration cracked down on dissent and civil liberties. In September, Wickremesinghe lost his reelection bid to Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist politician and third-party candidate who had scored only 3 percent of the vote when he ran for president in 2019.

In each of these close calls, Ginsburg and Huq wrote, elite players were instrumental in thwarting a move toward authoritarianism: “Paradoxically, the experiences of democratic near misses that we have explored underscore the role of political elites and nonelected institutions—courts, military commanders, and election administrators—in decisively repudiating authoritarian leaders bent on democratic erosion.”

In an article published in 2020, Larry Diamond, a Stanford professor who studies democracy, and Aurel Croissant, a professor at Heidelberg University, examined “democratic backsliding” in Asia. They contended that the recent wave of “democratic recessions” around the world stood out from democratic reversals of the past: Today, democratic downturns tend to “unfold gradually” and don’t “necessarily lead to full-fledged autocracy.” They often are caused not by military coups, revolutions, or foreign intervention but by “those elected to lead a democracy,” and the assault on “political rights and civil liberties is typically related to social polarization and the mobilization of identity politics.” (Sound familiar?) Croissant and Diamond noted that there had been at least 14 episodes of democratic decline in 10 Asian democracies since the early 2000s. In half of these, “democratic forces managed to contain the process before democracy broke down.” (This included Sri Lanka.)

Sri Lanka in the 2010s, Colombia in the 2000s, and Finland in the 1930s might not be good examples for the United States. There’s also Poland more recently. In its 2019 parliamentary elections, a right-wing coalition led by strongman Jarosław Kaczyński won overwhelmingly. But after it tried to create a commission that could block candidates from running for office, there were massive protests. In the 2023 election, with voter turnout hitting a record 74 percent, a collection of opposition parties earned a majority of the seats in the Sejm. Turnout for younger voters increased by 50 percent, and within this bloc, support for the far-right party fell by half. The kids threw out the anti-democrats.

What does this mean for the United States, now that an autocrat wannabe has won the White House? Diamond told me several years ago, “I am cautious about reasoning by comparison because the circumstances of a long-institutionalized and wealthy democracy like the United States are very different from India, for example. The plain and sobering fact of the matter is that there has never been a democracy nearly as long-established and liberal as the United States experiencing such a deep and potentially existential crisis of democracy.”

The circumstances here are indeed quite different from other countries, and the expansion of disinformation and the fracturing of the information ecosystem have made it easier for authoritarians to wage war on democracy. But it is encouraging that other nations have reached the brink and stepped back. Doing so is not easy. Ginsburg and Huq noted, “There is no single ‘magic institution’ that can be adopted to prevent democratic backsliding or to arrest it once it has begun...Sustained antidemocratic mobilization is hard to defeat.” In some instances, a small group of officials safeguarded a democracy by openly resisting the machinations of a would-be autocrat and his henchmen. Other times, people power fueled democracy-defending defiance.

In assessing the experiences in Asia, Croissant and Diamond observed that for democratic resilience and resistance to triumph, “a sufficient number of citizens must still prefer a democratic form of government and have some degree of trust in democratic institutions.” Throughout his presidential campaigns and presidency, Trump exploited widespread dissatisfaction with establishment institutions, and during the 2024 race he banked on the calculation that his cult of personality could overpower concerns about his trashing of democratic values and practices. His assault on democracy can be repelled, but only if there are enough citizens who give a damn.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

One of the biggest lies of Donald Trump is that he’s a swamp-drainer. He has relied on lobbyists—to donate to his campaigns, to fill staff positions—as much as any other president. And here we go again. In his first staffing announcement following his election last week, he said that Susan Wiles would serve as his chief of staff when he returns to the White House. Wiles, who co-managed his 2024 campaign, is best known as a savvy GOP political operator whose previous clients include Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis. But she has also worked as a lobbyist and previously made a bundle as an influence-peddler due to her ties to Trump. While many news stories on her appointment focused on her political work, my Mother Jones colleague Dan Friedman dug into her days as a swamp rat:

Wiles has also worked as a lobbyist, and held onto a senior lobbying position with the Republican-leaning advocacy firm Mercury Public Affairs during the campaign, according to the New York Times. She was registered as a lobbyist for a tobacco company as recently as this year.

Wiles also worked from 2017 through 2019 as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, formerly a Florida-based firm that built a thriving DC practice after Trump’s 2016 election—based in part on perceived access to him.

While Wiles worked there, the firm signed up a colorful roster of clients that included a Russian billionaire, a firm run by a man linked to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and a solar company controlled by a state-owned Chinese firm. Wiles wasn’t a registered lobbyist for all of those clients. But she registered to represent a host of outfits, including General Motors and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Wiles also lobbied on behalf of Globovisión, a Venezuelan firm that was looking to expand into US markets. That plan hit a hitch in 2018, when the Justice Department indicted its founder, Raul Gorrin, on corruption charges. Ballard said it cut ties with the firm after learning of the federal probe. Last month, the Justice Department indicted Gorrin again, alleging that he helped “to launder funds corruptly obtained from Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company… in exchange for hundreds of millions in bribe payments to Venezuelan officials.”

Trump has always been an anti-swamp phony. His appointment of Wiles is the latest sign of his brazen hypocrisy. More to come.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Documentaries about musicians often leave out or downplay an essential matter: the creative process that yields the songs. They might focus more on the personal tales than how the artist produces his or her art. One brilliant exception was Get Back: The Beatles, which culled about 60 hours of video that was shot while the Beatles were in the studio composing and recording the Let It Be album and showed how John, Paul, George, and Ringo concocted what would be their last studio release. Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Band, directed by Thom Zimny, who has long worked with the Boss on movie and video projects, doesn’t take us into the world of Springsteen’s songwriting. Instead, it reveals another side of his art: how he constructs his legendary live shows.

Ever since he hit the scene in the 1970s, Springsteen has been one of the best performers in the business. His concerts used to be marathons of energy and grit that routinely topped four hours, sometimes reaching close to five. He was acrobatic, sliding across the stage, climbing scaffolding, leaping on and off equipment. And often he sprinkled surprise songs into his set. In recent years—he’s now 75—he has shortened his performances to nearly three hours, eschewed the physical feats, and tightened up the set list to convey themes and tunes that highlight the decades-long bond between him and his diehard fans as they grow old together, while still delivering a high-octane outing.

Road Diary chronicles Springsteen working all this out and rehearsing with his powerhouse band to get in shape for his ongoing tour that began in early 2023 and is continuing through next summer. The documentary is chock-full of well-shot video from his shows, but the treat is watching the band rehearse, especially after a hiatus of many years. The longtime members of the band are in their 70s, and it’s not easy to come together and match the excellence of the past. They need, as Springsteen says, to “shake off the cobwebs.” But he has faith in them, so much so that one day he calls an early end to a rehearsal session and heads out. Steven Van Zandt—a.k.a. Little Steven—Springsteen’s childhood pal and a veteran E Streeter, tells the rest of the band to stick around so they can continue to work on the numbers. They know they still need to scrape the rust off.

In the film, Springsteen notes, “Since I was 16, playing live has been a deep and lasting part of who I am and how I justify my existence on Earth.” The film does not explain one big Springsteen mystery: how he became such a showman. Van Zandt recalls that Springsteen, as a kid, was “the most introverted guy you’ve evert met.” Yet on the stage, he’s something different. He and his pals have been at it for about half a century; not many bands last that long. Road Diary doesn’t tell us how Springsteen crafts his songs—why Mary’s dress sways—but it takes us offstage to show how Springsteen and the E Streeters have managed to keep on running for so many years.

Slow Horses, season 4. In its third season, Slow Horses galloped off the track, as Apple TV+’s le Carré-ish spy series incorporated too many action-flick clichés, including highly improbable gun battles. But in its most recent outing, Slow Horses is back to exploring the nuances and moral complexities of the intelligence world. Much of the series has been about blowback—the unforeseen consequences of clandestine skullduggery, which may not become apparent for years or decades. Such is the case for season 4.

The series begins with a blast and a sad note. First, a terrorist blows up a London shopping center with a car bomb. Then we see that retired senior MI5 official David Cartwright, played exquisitely by Jonathan Pryce, has developed Alzheimer’s disease. (This raises an interesting question: What does a spy service do when its keepers of secrets age and experience cognitive declines that might cause them to spill old but still relevant sensitive information?) When a man arrives at Cartwright’s countryside home and says he’s River, Cartwright’s grandson (Jack Lowden), who works at Slough House, the MI5 unit for cast-off agents who have screwed up in one way or another, the befuddled Cartwright senses something is amiss, kills him with a shotgun blast, and flees.

Slight spoiler alert: This deed sends River, who (obviously) was not the fellow blown away, on a rogue mission to France to find out why someone tried to kill his grandfather. Of course, this will somehow end up with a connection to the suicide bomber. Otherwise, why bother to start the season with it? River’s journey, he soon discovers, entails excavating both Cartwright family secrets and MI5 secrets.

While’s he off on this trek, Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the disgustingly unkempt head of Slough House, is busy chewing up the scenery, as he pieces together a portion of the picture from his disastrously messy office in London, which involves investigating both a private security firm connected to the head of MI5 and a onetime CIA officer turned mercenary. The rest of the Slow Horses misfits—a wonderfully constructed cast of side characters—assist (while withstanding Lamb’s constant string of insults), with Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), a top MI5 officer who’s in a fierce bureaucratic battle with the agency’s director, yet again being aggravated by their efforts. By now, it’s clear that Lamb and his fellow exiles will once more outwit the big boys and girls at MI5 and force a reckoning with another dark corner of the agency’s past. That’s the successful formula of the show, and there’s little doubt Lamb and River will pull off what will likely be another bittersweet victory. In this world, there are no clean wins.