The United States is facing a threat not yet seen in the world. The government of Donald Trump is blending three common pathways to democratic backsliding we identify in our new global study. The threats to democracy are now moving at a faster speed and greater scale than we have seen in contemporary times.
The first path is an executive power grab, which entails shifting legislative, judicial, or civil service bureaucratic powers into the executive office, with the effect of tilting the playing field to the president’s advantage. This can look like impoundment – shuttering government agencies created and funded by Congress – or appointing prosecutors and judges who will follow the president’s orders. We’ve seen similar actions by Kais Saied in Tunisia and Vladimir Putin in Russia, who have concentrated their presidential power and limited opposition.
The second path is legislative capture, which uses the ruling party’s majority control in the legislature to limit rights and the rule of law, condoning and legitimating the executive’s agenda through its subservience. Leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey all have quiescent legislatures that approve legislation to carry out the leader’s agenda – and fail to challenge the leader’s unconstitutional or corrupt actions.
In an innovation, the Trump administration has created its own version of a third pathway of elite collusion: the partnership with unelected billionaires gutting the federal government’s personnel and spending, and efforts to remove or weaken the regulators and auditors who work to prevent corruption and fraud. In Benin, for instance, the concentration of political and economic power contributed to dramatic backsliding under President Patrice Talon, favoring certain elite interests and limiting opposition voices.
Together, these three pathways of democratic backsliding upend the U.S. Constitution by erasing the separation of powers. They also threaten to transform American democracy into an unrepresentative oligarchy, or a new form of techno-reactionary authoritarianism with unrestrained economic power and political power in the hands of a few individuals. But our research shows there are also ways to defend democracy against backsliding.
Six lessons from our global study on how to defend democracy
In our study examining 15 countries over three decades, we identify six broad lessons on countering threats to democracy.
First, early action is crucial.
After two electoral cycles it often becomes too late to reverse the damage, as opposing voices find fewer ways to protect individual rights and the rule of law. Most backsliding is incremental over the space of several years, providing opportunity to fight back. The current phase of backsliding in the U.S. is happening at breakneck speed, along multiple fronts. And, because this backsliding has been underway for several electoral cycles, we can consider the current period as already fairly late in the game.
Second, defending democracy requires a collective effort with divisions of labor.
Different sectors of society have different roles to play that, combined, can avert an authoritarian threat. Democracy defenders include business leaders pushing for the government to honor contracts and the rule of law, lawyers and judges acting swiftly against unconstitutional power concentration and defending the Bill of Rights, elected officials across the aisle pushing back on the breach of their constitutional authority and actively protecting their constituents, and universities working together to resist attacks on academic freedom and protect their students from government incursions.
And, of course, everyday people – regardless of their partisan or policy differences – have a vital role to play: They can exert collective pressure in the street with protests and signal protest across industries by withholding or providing labor and consumer purchasing power. They can stand up at the ballot box for the protection of everyone’s democratic rights and individual liberties.
Third, real conditions matter – as well as public perceptions.
A booming economy and strong popular support for the leader give the leadership a lot of leeway to dodge constitutional practices. But less than majority popular approval and a shrinking economy constrain the leader’s room for maneuver. In response, leaders often try to control the narrative. Thus, factual reporting on economic conditions and data transparency can become a key zone of contestation. Manipulation of inflation data by governments in Turkey and Argentina offer clear examples.
In the U.S., government officials have suggested changing the way a fundamental measure of the economy – the GDP – is measured. But political polarization can keep even factual information from convincing voters who believe things would be worse with the other side in power. Democracy defenders need to frame information clearly, and in ways that dispel these suspicions.
Fourth, crossing bright lines in backsliding generates the best opportunities for resistance.
Presidents attempting to extend their term limits (Venezuela, Indonesia, Senegal), and chief executives ignoring court rulings (Turkey), seizing control of the judiciary (Tunisia) or instigating packed courts to make controversial court rulings (Poland) are examples of such bright lines.
What do these examples tell us about specific opportunities to push back? In the United States, potential bright lines include the administration’s attempts to ignore court rulings, such as a judge’s order to reinstate fired probationary workers or release federal funds already approved by Congress for USAID missions and contracts, or halt unauthorized deportations. Thus far, these cases have not generated significant pushback – but may become catalysts for institutional guardrails to check the executive if they escalate to the Supreme Court.
Fifth, democracy defenders face uncertainty that may paralyze and divide them.
Political parties, civil society groups, and citizens who oppose or are uncomfortable with the backsliding actions may be uncertain about how to interpret the rapid-fire events, as happened in Turkey and Venezuela. Some may see backsliding events as part of normal politics, where the minority party in the legislature follows the rules in expressing its opposition to specific policies. Others see these events as extraordinary politics, requiring widespread civic dissent and hardball tactics to protect the constitution and peoples’ rights. Still others may see backsliding actions as introducing needed change, even if they are uncomfortable with the approach. All of these groups will disagree on the appropriate response. The Democratic party in the U.S. experienced this uncertainty in the first months of the Trump administration.
Sixth, mass protests expressing public discontent can be effective but not sufficient to sustain democratic recovery.
Mass protests often start with a specific issue like a rise in transport costs and then escalate to demand the removal of the government. Sustained broad-based peaceful protests with a specific demand can pressure governments to change course. In Israel in 2023, for example, the government responded to public protests and backed away from a drastic judicial overhaul.
Strongly expressed public opinion can also give courage to political parties, courts, universities, and corporations to stand up to authoritarian pressures and resist efforts to co-opt or intimidate them. But if protests in the streets are not linked to clear demands and mechanisms to negotiate legal or policy changes, backsliding governments can use public unrest as a pretext to further polarize their base and deepen authoritarianism. And if democratic backsliding has progressed to autocracy, these governments may simply resort to crackdowns and harsh repression even in the face of massive peaceful protests, as happened in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
What can democracy defenders learn from successes and failures in other backsliding cases?
Citizens can take action in several ways.
A critical first step is for citizens to become informed about the facts and help inform neighbors and friends. Autocrats try to control the narrative and public information: They often lie repeatedly to try to make falsehoods appear true. The news media can be intimidated – or so polarized that different media outlets present diametrically opposed versions of events. Volunteer groups countering disinformation, such as the Lithuanian Elves countering Russian propaganda, to name one example, can bring scale, authenticity, and creativity to democracy’s defense.
Citizens can organize locally to make demands on elected and appointed officials to follow the law and respect rights. They can support people who are hurt by backsliding policies, pressure their political representatives to take action, and elect pro-democracy candidates to local offices. Civic activism and mobilization proved powerful in Turkey’s 2024 local elections, for example. The opposition party won the vast majority of Turkey’s mayoral races, despite the Erdoğan government’s huge advantage in media control and campaign financing. In another example, grassroots organizing in Guatemala helped propel a little-known anti-corruption candidate into the presidency last year, despite elite collusion.
Citizens can mobilize to support and defend elections. Venezuela’s 2024 election showed the capacity of citizen election-monitors and poll watchers to defend the right of citizens to vote, and then to monitor the vote counting 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.
Protests with broad support can provide moral courage and legitimacy to fearful political parties, courts, and legislators. The South Korean president’s declaration of martial law in December 2024 was met with mass “candlelight” protests as citizens poured into the streets to demand that both political parties stop the president. With experience honed in the 1987 transition to democracy and the 2016 presidential corruption scandal, protests to defend democracy are now practiced resistance for South Koreans. These widespread protests gave courage to legislators, and shamed the president’s own party to eventually join the impeachment process in 2016 and again in late 2024. Massive protests in Poland against curtailing abortion rights in 2023 breathed life into opposition political parties, encouraging them to form a broad coalition capable of defeating authoritarian incumbents in the next elections. In Moldova and Malawi, civic activism gave a clear message that the courts would have public support if they stood up to autocrats, asserted their independence, and upheld term limits or other constitutional constraints on executive authority.
Pro-democracy organizations and intellectuals can devise new proposals to make democracy more effective at addressing citizens’ needs.
Many backsliders come into power – and stay in power – because previous governments or the system as a whole has atrophied and failed to meet the needs of citizens. In Turkey, think tanks and political parties developed an agenda to renovate democracy that could be shared by six parties, from left to right, who joined in coalition to contest Erdoğan’s 2023 reelection bid.
Opposition political parties could acknowledge past mistakes and present a vision for the future.
Simply campaigning against an autocrat without taking these two additional steps has been shown time and again to fail – from Venezuela to Uganda. Opposition candidates and their supporters in the United States must have something clear to offer before the 2026 midterm elections, and can draw on the ideas proposed by community organizations, democracy activists, and scholars.
Universities, law firms, corporations, and media organizations all could avoid “complying in advance.”
All of these institutions will need to coordinate and act collectively to defend each other from the expected tax and financial harassment, libel lawsuits, and other forms of intimidation we have seen perfected in Ecuador and Hungary. The Trump administration has been successful in targeting individual institutions across industries as an “example” to induce the rest of those sectors to voluntarily comply with what legal scholars see as unacceptable and unlawful demands.
The world today provides important lessons for how to identify and resist autocrats. Agreement on exactly what is happening and recognizing the devastating consequences for economic and social rights and security are the first steps necessary for collective action to take form. This global stocktaking reminds us that resistance starting from any sector, from any organization, can be consequential when cumulative: A little courage can be contagious.
Jennifer McCoy is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and co-editor and author (with Murat Somer) of Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy (Sage Publications, 2019).
Rachel Beatty Riedl is the Peggy J. Koenig ‘78 Director of the Center on Global Democracy and a professor of Government and the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, and author of Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Kenneth Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University, director of the Latin American Studies Program, and author of Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Murat Somer is professor of politics at Özyeğin University, senior democracy and development fellow at Central European University, and author of Return to Point Zero: The Turkish-Kurdish Question and How Politics and Ideas (Re)Make Empires, Nations, and States (SUNY Press, 2022).
