By Jan Servaes*
BRUSSELS | 24 April 2025 (IDN) — The Trump administration is rapidly destroying American democracy. In previous contributions, based on the writings of Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, we have already warned about this. Recently, professors Jennifer McCoy (of Georgia State University), Rachel Beatty Riedl and Kenneth Roberts (of Cornell University) and Murat Somer (of Özyeğin University in Istanbul) also made an interesting contribution (in Good Authority) in this regard.
In a global study, they identify three common paths that have led Trump’s policy to a decline in democracy. These threats to democracy are now happening faster and on a larger scale than we have seen before.
The first route is a power grab by the executive branch, in which the bureaucratic powers of the legislative, judicial or civil services are transferred to the executive branch. As a result, the playing field is tilted in the president’s favour. This can look like a seizure—the closure of government agencies created and funded by Congress, or the appointment of prosecutors and judges who do the president’s bidding. We have seen similar actions by Kais Saied in Tunisia and Vladimir Putin in Russia, who have concentrated presidential power and limited the opposition.
The second route is legislative capture, where the ruling party’s majority control of the legislature is used to restrict rights and the rule of law, thereby approving and legitimising the executive’s agenda through subservience. Leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey all have inactive legislatures that pass legislation to implement the leader’s agenda, and fail to challenge the leader’s unconstitutional or corrupt actions.
Moreover, the Trump administration has created its own version of a third path of elite collusion: collaborating with unelected billionaires to undermine the federal government’s staff and spending, and attempting to fire or weaken the regulators and accountants who fight corruption and fraud. In Benin, for example, the concentration of political and economic power contributed to a dramatic backsliding under President Patrice Talon, favouring elite interests and limiting the voices of the opposition.
Together, these three paths of democratic backsliding upend the U.S. Constitution by destroying the separation of powers. They also threaten to transform American democracy into an unrepresentative oligarchy, or a new form of techno-reactionary authoritarianism with unbridled economic and political power in the hands of a few.
What can be done?
However, the authors argue that there are ways to protect democracy from this backsliding.
They draw six lessons from their global research, which examined 15 countries over three decades.
First, early action is crucial.
After two election cycles, it is often too late to repair the damage, as opponents find fewer opportunities to protect individual rights and the rule of law. Most setbacks are gradual, spread over several years, and provide opportunities to fight back.
However, the current phase of setbacks in the US is unfolding rapidly, on multiple fronts at the same time. Because this setback has been going on for several election cycles, the current period can be considered quite late.
Second, defending democracy requires a collective effort with a division of labour.
Different sectors of society play different roles that can avert an authoritarian threat. Defenders of democracy include business leaders who insist that government honor contracts and the rule of law, lawyers and judges who swiftly challenge unconstitutional concentrations of power and defend the Bill of Rights, elected officials who resist violations of their constitutional authority and actively protect their constituents, and universities that work together to resist attacks on academic freedom and protect their students from government interference.
Of course, ordinary people—regardless of their political differences—also play a crucial role: They can exert collective pressure in the streets through protests and send protest signals across sectors by withholding or amplifying labor and consumer purchasing power. They can also speak out at the ballot box to protect everyone’s democratic rights and individual liberties.
Third, the actual circumstances matter, as does public perception.
A booming economy and strong popular support for the leader give the leader considerable latitude to circumvent constitutional practices. However, less than a majority of the population supports the leader, and a shrinking economy limits the leader’s room to manoeuvre. In response, leaders often try to maintain control of the narrative. For example, factual reporting of economic conditions and data transparency can become major battlegrounds. Government manipulation of inflation data in Turkey and Argentina is a clear example.
In the US, government officials have proposed changing the way a fundamental measure of the economy—gross Domestic Product (GDP)—is measured. However, political polarisation can mean that even factual information fails to convince voters who believe things would be worse with the other party in power. Defenders of democracy must provide information that dispels these suspicions.
Fourth, crossing clear lines in the event of backlash creates the best chance for resistance. Presidents who seek to extend their terms in office (Venezuela, Indonesia, Senegal), and CEOs who ignore court rulings (Turkey), seize control of the judiciary (Tunisia), or incite crowded courts to controversial court decisions (Poland) are examples of such bright lines.
What do these examples tell us about specific opportunities for resistance? In the United States, potential bright lines include administration efforts to ignore court rulings, such as a judge’s order to reinstate dismissed probationers, or to release federal funds already approved by Congress for USAID missions and contracts, or to halt unauthorized deportations. So far, these cases have not generated significant resistance, but they could become catalysts for institutional measures to check the executive branch if they escalate to the Supreme Court.
Fifth, defenders of democracy face uncertainty that can paralyse and divide them.
Political parties, civil society organisations, and citizens who oppose or are uncomfortable with the backsliding may be uncertain how to interpret the sudden events, such as in Turkey and Venezuela. Some see backsliding as part of normal politics, with the minority party in parliament playing by the rules by opposing specific policies. Others see these events as extraordinary politics, requiring broad societal dissent and heavy-handed tactics to protect the Constitution and the rights of the people. Still others see backsliding as the necessary change, even if they are uncomfortable with the approach. All of these groups will disagree on the appropriate response. The US Democratic Party experienced this uncertainty in the first months of the Trump administration as a divided party.
Sixth, mass protests that express public discontent can be effective but insufficient to support democratic recovery.
Mass protests often start with a specific issue, such as a rise in transportation costs, and then escalate to demand the government’s resignation. Sustained, broad-based, peaceful protests with a specific demand can pressure governments to change course. In Israel, for example, the government responded to public protests in 2023 by abandoning a drastic overhaul of the judiciary.
Strong public opinion can also embolden political parties, courts, universities, and businesses to resist authoritarian pressures and attempts to co-opt or intimidate them.
But if street protests are not accompanied by clear demands and mechanisms to negotiate legal or policy changes, backsliding governments can use public unrest as a pretext to further polarise their base and reinforce authoritarianism. And if the backsliding of democracy has escalated into autocracy, these governments can simply resort to heavy-handed crackdowns and harsh repression, even in the face of mass peaceful protests, as has happened in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Power to the people!
Citizens can take action in a variety of ways.
A crucial first step is for citizens to inform themselves about the facts and to help inform their neighbours and friends. Autocrats seek to control the narrative and public information: they lie repeatedly. The news media can become intimidated or polarized—as does public perception. Volunteer groups that combat disinformation can add scale, authenticity, and creativity to the defence of democracy.
Citizens can organise locally to demand that elected and appointed officials follow the law and respect rights. They can support people hurt by backsliding policies, pressure their political representatives to take action, and elect pro-democracy candidates to local offices. For example, grassroots activism and mobilisation proved powerful in Turkey’s 2024 local elections. Despite the Erdogan government’s vast advantage in media control and campaign financing, the opposition party won the Turkish mayoral election overwhelmingly.
In another example, last year, grassroots organisations in Guatemala helped a little-known anti-corruption candidate to power, despite elite collusion.
Citizens can mobilise to support and defend elections. The 2024 Venezuelan elections demonstrated the ability of election observers and poll watchers to defend the right of citizens to vote and then monitor the vote count under extremely repressive conditions. These efforts showed the world that the incumbent autocrat had lost and cost Maduro his legitimacy, as he clung to power by lying about the results.
Broadly supported protests can give moral courage and legitimacy to fearful political parties, courts, and politicians. The South Korean president’s declaration of martial law in December 2024 was met with massive candlelight protests, with citizens taking to the streets to demand that both political parties stop the president. With experience gained from the 1987 democratic transition and the 2016 presidential corruption scandal, protests in defence of democracy are now a form of resistance for South Koreans. These widespread protests emboldened lawmakers and embarrassed the president’s own party, eventually leading them to impeach in 2016 and again in late 2024.
Mass protests in Poland against abortion restrictions in 2023 revived opposition parties and encouraged them to form a broad coalition capable of defeating authoritarian incumbents in the next election.
In Moldova and Malawi, grassroots activism clearly sent a message that the courts would gain public support if they challenged autocrats, asserted their independence, and upheld term limits or other constitutional limitations on executive power.
Pro-democracy organisations and intellectuals can propose new ways to make democracy more effective in meeting citizens’ needs.
Many backsliding politicians come to power—and stay in power—because previous governments or the system as a whole have languished and failed to meet citizens’ needs. In Turkey, think tanks and political parties have developed an agenda for democratic renewal that could be shared by six parties, from left to right, to unite in a coalition to contest Erdogan’s re-election campaign in 2023.
Opposition parties could acknowledge past mistakes and present a vision for the future.
Double-campaigning against an autocrat without taking these two extra steps has failed time and again, from Venezuela to Uganda. Opposition candidates and their supporters in the United States need to have something clear to offer before the 2026 midterm elections, and can draw on the ideas of civil society groups, democracy activists, and scholars.
Universities, law firms, businesses, and media organisations could all avoid having to play by the rules “in advance.”
Lessons to be learned
These institutions must coordinate and act collectively to protect each other from the expected fiscal and financial harassment, defamation lawsuits, and other forms of intimidation that we have seen perfected in Ecuador and Hungary.
The Trump administration has succeeded in using individual institutions in various sectors as “models” to push the rest of those sectors to voluntarily comply with what legal experts consider unacceptable and unlawful demands.
Today’s world offers important lessons for identifying and combating autocrats. Agreeing on what exactly is happening and recognising the devastating consequences for economic and social rights and security are the first steps to shape collective action.
This global inventory reminds us that if resistance accumulates in any sector or organisation, it can have major consequences: a little courage can be contagious.
*Jan Servaes, ph.d. Editor of: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/LEXCGC
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Recent books:
NEW: Jan Servaes & Muhammad Jameel Yushau (eds.) | SDG18 Communication for All, Volume 1 – The Missing Link between SDGs and Global Agendas | https://link.springer.com/book/9783031191411
Jan Servaes & Muhammad Jameel Yushau (eds.) | SDG18 Communication for All, Volume 2
Regional Perspectives and Special Cases: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031194580
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02673231231199884 (“All in all, this is a very informative and well-argued volume.”)
Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change: https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8 [IDN-InDepthNews]
