Trump’s threat to US liberal democracy

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Will American democracy survive Donald Trump’s second presidency? This is not a theoretical question. It is obvious that Trump is following a playbook known to turn a liberal democracy into an illiberal one. The latter is a label for a dictatorship – a regime in which decisions are based on the will of one person largely unaccountable to anyone else.

In The Democratic SpirityStanford’s Larry Diamond argued that a liberal democracy consists of free and fair elections, protection of the civil and human rights of all citizens equally, and a rule of law that binds all citizens equally. These are therefore the “rules of the game”. But the effectiveness of these rules depends on the restrictions on those who temporarily control the state. The most important such limitations are the judiciary, political parties, bureaucracies and the media. The question is whether they will hold, first while Trump is president and then in the long term.

In a recent discussion in The New Republic, Harvard’s Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Dienote that the classic process of “collective abdication” or “institutional suicide” in the face of an authoritarian takeover has already been long gone. Trump has taken over the Republican party. His control of his electoral base convinced him to endorse the “big lie” that he won the 2020 election. The Supreme Court ruled that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for his “official acts,” a doctrine that British jurist Lord Jonathan Sumption insists on putting the president above the law, and thus in effect more like a king than a citizen. No less, we already see powerful individuals, like Mark Zuckerbergkneel before his new kingdom.

What are they afraid of? That the president will arm the state machine against them. That’s what he and the people around him intend to do. Their nominations strongly suggest that. Therefore, also make plans to replace the bureaucrats with people loyal to Trump described in the Heritage Foundation. “Project 2025”. Such loyalty would be a powerful weapon of autocracy. It could make the bureaucracy obedient to the president rather than the laws they are supposed to implement.

Yale’s Timothy Snyder, an expert on 20th-century European totalitarianism, describes the appointments to head the health, justice and defense departments, as well as the head of the intelligence services, as a “beheading strike”. This is partly because their probable incompetence and malevolence would do serious damage to the functioning of the state. It is also because the threat of politicians the federal government, including the law, against the “Enemy from within” will do serious damage to democracy.

All these, add Levitsky and Ziblatt, are classic behaviors of autocrats. It comes under the broad headings of “catch the umpires” and “players’ tips”. Between the former would be more changes in the judiciary at all levels. Among the latter would be attacks of various kinds on independent media organizations, journalists, academic institutions and publishers.

In addition to all this, remember the central project of removing undocumented immigrants. This seems likely to combine several elements of the new approach into one. The removal of several million people would require a large military operation, extensive intrusions into state and local jurisdictions, the creation of large detention camps, the suppression of protests and, not least, finding countries in which to remove the displaced people.

Could all this really happen? Maybe But the combination of such disruptions with what is also likely to be substantial economic turbulence could turn public opinion strongly against Trump, who has a margin of vote of only 1.5 percentage points and it was never very popular. While he has passionate supporters, he also has passionate opponents. Moreover, if the constitution holds, it has only this term. All in all, his hold on public opinion and his party is likely to weaken by now. Trump’s skills as a populist demagogue are exceptional: it is likely that the party will find it impossible to find a sufficiently charismatic replacement in 2028. His coalition also shows signs of collapse: Christian nationalists and nativists. they are not natural friends of “tech plutocrats”, such as Elon Musk.

It’s quite possible then that any autocratic push by Trump will overreach and create a powerful backlash, even among ordinary people. After all, the latter were not yet affected by this. It will take courage for people to mobilize. But it is to be hoped that the American people will not lightly abandon the liberal and enlightened traditions of their country in the face of the assaults of today’s authoritarian and reactionary opponents. Yet it is now a deeply divided country, in which polls show that many Americans have already abandoned belief in their democracy. If it cannot be rectified, democracy itself may fail. (See graphics.)

A crucial question now is how long the institutions of liberal democracy, especially those governing elections, will survive. Many of Trump’s henchmen, like Trump himself, fear retribution for the “retribution” they seek to inflict. This gives them a huge incentive to regulate the electoral rules of the game, with the assistance of the judiciary.

If they succeeded in subverting the US national elections, it might as well be “game over”. The global consequences of this would be devastating. Without the active commitment of a democratic US, the health of liberal democracy in the world would be in great danger.

Benjamin Franklin famous he said that the United States had “a republic if you can keep it.” We’ll find out soon enough if it can.

martin.wolf@ft.com

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