Authoritarian Practices in the Name of Democracy
Photo by Dzmitry Dzemidovich
Over the past few weeks, Spain has been in significant turmoil. Spanish news showed a rupturing country with a deeply divided political landscape after premier Pedro Sánchez, caretaker leader since an inconclusive election last July, reached an amnesty deal with Catalan independentist leaders which has given Sánchez enough parliamentary votes for another term in office.
Peaceful protestors have attended demonstrations against the deal, but also violent and neo-Nazi factions claiming to defend the unity of the nation. More than fifty retired military commanders from the dictatorship have signed a letter calling for the dismissal of the Prime Minister. The situation–and the circumstances under which political decisions have been made–is so complex that I will admit that I am still grappling with my own thoughts which are rife with contradictions. Others, however, view it in very clear terms (including the extremist former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who showed up to the protests with Spanish far-right party leader Santiago Abascal).
Isabel Ayuso is the leader of the conservative People’s Party of the Madrid region (PP). While the People’s Party has different ideological strands within it, she has openly advocated for governing and supporting the far-right party Vox, often displaying extremely hardline views. In the face of the current political process, she has claimed that the left “nos han colado una dictadura. Nos la han colado por la puerta de atrás y estamos al comienzo de ella”, in English: “They have imposed a dictatorship on us. They have snuck it in through the back door and we are at the beginning of it”, while reminding her audience that dictators have historically attained power through elections (in this case, by “they” she is referring to the left and the Social Democrat party).
While I strongly disagree with her politics, I have to admit that this particular observation (bar who she blames), and much of the discourse stemming from Spanish conservatives these days (many raising valid concerns), is reminiscent of statements that people in the democracy space–myself included–have made for years: democracies (even extremely flawed ones) often do not disappear through coups and sudden total takeovers, but regularly through the slow erosion at the hands of nefarious actors who achieve power through the electoral process.
Her statements, however, also embody a few modern realities: far-right authoritarian populists–like Ayuso–claim to act in defense of democracy, which is one of the key elements that distinguishes them from both current authoritarians and the fascists of yesteryear. Modern authoritarians rarely pretend to stand up for democracy or human rights and oftentimes are not populists (think of Putin’s oligarchs, Xi Jinping, etc). Fascists such as Franco and Mussolini established totalitarian states, did not allow for elections, and all power rested on them, as they claimed to embody the nation and the state (as opposed to national sovereignty).
Authoritarian populists, on the contrary, appropriate the language of democracy activists and legal scholars, particularly arguments that relate to democracy and the rule of law, to delegitimize others who oppose them and prop themselves as the defenders of democracy, playing the game of courting large swathes of the public who would never have contemplated voting for extremists and are largely pro-democracy. They need to do so because authoritarian populists hold elections, and so, they are more dependent on the manipulation of information and the need to brand themselves as democrats.
Once they win elections, authoritarian populists slowly but surely chip away at democratic institutions and fundamental rights to entrench themselves in power and pursue their nativist agenda, while trying to maintain a legal façade and continuing to celebrate elections. This is achieved through legal and constitutional reforms and autocratic practices, tactics, and ideas that are borrowed by other authoritarian populists and migrate from context to context.
Autocratization and Autocratic Practices
For years, it has been well-documented that liberal democracy is in decline globally. Common understanding is that “Democratization means that a country is making moves away from autocracy and toward democracy. Autocratization is the opposite, meaning any move away from democracy toward autocracy.”
This approach situates societies on a binary, either democracies or autocracies (sometimes with qualifiers). Yet in most of Europe and North America (as well as India and Brazil) what we are observing is some sort of hybrid, whereby authoritarian populists do not aim to achieve an autocracy but rather install what Orbán has described as an “illiberal democracy”. This model, however, can be best understood as a competitive autocratic system, one where: “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority.”
According to scholars Levitsky and Way,
“in competitive authoritarian regimes, by contrast, violations of these criteria [free and fair elections for executives and legislatures, political rights and civil liberties, etc] are both frequent enough and serious enough to create an uneven playing field between government and opposition. Although elections are regularly held and are generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results. Journalists, opposition politicians, and other government critics may be spied on, threatened, harassed, or arrested.”
Yet:
“Although incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes may routinely manipulate formal democratic rules, they are unable to eliminate them or reduce them to a mere façade. Rather than openly violating democratic rules (for example, by banning or repressing the opposition and the media), incumbents are more likely to use bribery, co-optation, and more subtle forms of persecution, such as the use of tax authorities, compliant judiciaries, and other state agencies to “legally” harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behavior from critics. Yet even if the cards are stacked in favor of autocratic incumbents, the persistence of meaningful democratic institutions creates arenas through which opposition forces may—and frequently do—pose significant challenges. As a result, even though democratic institutions may be badly flawed, both authoritarian incumbents and their opponents must take them seriously.”
Instead of situating our understanding in the autocracy/democracy, autocrat/democrat binaries, to better understand what is going on, we can then think of autocratization as a series of practices. As such, we can identify autocratic practices when they are used in authoritarian states but also when they are used in democracies and competitive authoritarian systems. This approach also allows us to think of the process of autocratization as one that can be a matter of degree, rather than a switch between one system or another.
Scholar Marlies Glasius defines autocratic practices as “patterns of action that sabotage accountability to people over whom a political actor exerts control, or their representative, by means of secrecy, disinformation, and disabling voice.” We can think of Orbán’s or Putin’s control of the judiciary as autocratic practices, but also mass surveillance campaigns in the United States, even though they happen in very different political systems. Overuse of terrorism laws or the state of exception to persecute peaceful demonstrators would also be examples of autocratic practices.
Authoritarian populists make sure that even their autocratic practices seem legal and constitutional, thus allowing voters to believe that they continue to be democrats and develop an appearance that allows for plausible deniability and whitewashing from the mainstream.
In that sense, autocratic practices would include or be complemented by autocratic legalism, a concept popularized by Princeton academic Kim Lane Scheppele (for a great podcast on this see here), that refers to when electoral mandates plus constitutional and legal changes are used in the service of an illiberal agenda. In Lane Scheppele’s words: “constitutional democracies are being deliberately hijacked by a set of legally clever autocrats, who use constitutionalism and democracy to destroy both.” As professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat adds in her book Strongmen, “all strongmen construct systems of rule meant to minimize the possibility of an undoing of their personal power.”
We have seen this process consolidate in Hungary. Poland pursued similar attempts that have severely eroded democracy, and seemingly authoritarian populists in Italy and the United States intend to follow suit.
The Orbán model in Hungary and Poland
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s party has won five parliamentary elections, but between his first and second mandate, he spent years in opposition. His party, Fidesz, was formed in 1988 as the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége), a center-left and liberal activist movement with Orbán as its leader. Over the years, Fidesz embraced a more conservative agenda and first came to govern in 1998 until 2002. The party subsequently declined in popularity following corruption scandals.
Orbán came back to power in 2010. Fidesz won 53 percent of the vote which was enough to give it a two-thirds majority in parliament and enabled the party to radically revise Hungary’s constitution. According to Human Rights Watch, the new constitution “curbed the independence of the judiciary and the administration of justice, forced nearly 300 judges into early retirement, and imposed limitations on the Constitutional Court’s ability to review laws and complaints.” It also “permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, the Fidesz government has achieved a remarkable constitutional feat: giving themselves maximum room for maneuver while simultaneously entrenching their power, their policies and their people for the foreseeable future.” Fidesz has continued to amend the constitution, passing the 10th amendment in 2022 after which Orbán to proclaimed the state of emergency, which “allows the government to adopt decrees suspending the application of some laws.”
Shortly after the new constitution came into effect in 2012, Orbán and allies passed a blitz of legislation severely impacting media freedom, religious groups, LGBTQ+ rights, and others, while also using “political payback to inflict economic pain on opponents while bestowing financial benefits on loyalists.” [Kim Lane Scheppele wrote this excellent piece on “How Viktor Orbán Wins”].
Over the past eight years, the Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) has pursued similar reforms. Shortly after coming into power in 2015, the PiS implemented initiatives mirroring those previously enacted by Fidesz in Hungary, such as an attempt to capture the Polish Constitutional court and an attempt in July 2017 to dismiss all of the Polish Supreme Court judges.
Fortunately, PiS’s autocratic reforms haven’t been sufficient to completely preempt an opposition victory. In October 2023, opposition parties obtained sufficient votes to form a broad coalition government led by former European Union president Donald Tusk. Coalition partners (neither party has obtained sufficient votes to form a government on its own) arrived at an agreement and are expected to form a government in coming weeks (for an analysis on how pro-democracy movements organized, see “Poland just showed the world how democracy wins” and for more of PiS’ actions and what needs to be done moving forward, listen to writer Anne Applebaum here).
Notably, the agreement brings together three different parties of center-right to left-wing ideology, who decided to join forces to combat the governing authoritarian populist PiS despite holding significant differences. Per the text of the agreement, the coalition will work to restore rule of law, address the climate crisis, and improve Poland’s track record on women’s rights, according to the agreement as well as focus on education, health care, and combating hate speech.
After years of the PiS curtailing women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, we are already starting to see how the new Polish political landscape may change the trajectory of the country. Shortly after the elections, Poland’s new coalition introduced a bill aimed at legalizing abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Italian Antics
In 2020, research from More in Common found that Italians identified the word “corrupt” as the most adept phrase to describe Italy. If there is another adjective that characterizes Italian politics, that would likely be “unstable”. In the 76 years since the fall of fascism, Italy has had 68 governments, averaging a new cabinet every 13 months.
Allegedly in an effort to bring about stability, Italy’s far-right government, lead by Prime Minister Giogia Meloni, has proposed a constitutional reform, which she’s calling “the mother of all reforms,” and which has been met with significant criticism.
If this constitutional reform were to pass “the prime minister would be elected for five years at the same time as the parliamentary elections. The coalition that secures most votes will also be guaranteed 55 percent of the seats in parliament. […] In case of resignation or a no-confidence vote, the elected premier could be replaced only once, by a lawmaker from the same majority who would implement the same policy objectives. If that nominee fails to secure a majority, the parliament is dissolved, and new elections are held.” This proposal, however, still requires approval from both houses of parliament and if it doesn’t pass then could lead to a referendum.
Ultimately, this constitutional reform would concentrate far more power in the hands of the prime minister, while reducing the parliament’s power and challenging the separation of powers (sound familiar?).
At the same time, the Italian far-right government has also had several clashes with the judiciary, prompting the release of a statement by Italy’s Supreme Judicial Council charging the government with undermining the independence and autonomy of the judiciary).
Extremist American Conservatives Coalescing for a Joint Vision
There are many reasons to fear a second Trump term. Chief amongst them is the prospect of an institutional reform that would significantly expand executive power. This is not hypothesizing nor unique to Trump as a candidate, but potentially an agenda that a range of the Republican candidates would adopt.
Project 2025, for those unfamiliar with it, is “a broad coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025” led by the Heritage Foundation. Not coincidentally, the president of the Heritage Foundation is an open admirer of Viktor Orbán.
As reported in this comprehensive article on the Project’s plans to increase presidential power, reforms would include measures such as bringing “independent agencies—like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses—under direct presidential control,” and “to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda.” [for more on the “Schedule-F reform of the civil service, see here].
Trump or any Trump-like president would not do away with elections or dismantle all American institutions, but they could definitely reform the system in a way that greatly advantages the far right, damaging democracy far more than what gerrymandering or other practices we have seen before allow us to imagine.
Transnational models
Autocracies fall and so do democracies. Scholars have long argued about regime types, sometimes presenting four options: closed and electoral autocracies; electoral and liberal democracies. While having neat categories is appealing, reality tends to be more muddled. And so it happens that sometimes democrats who usually respect the rule of law sometimes engage in autocratic practices. And some authoritarian populists never fully convert to autocrats and build their projects in the name of “true democracy.”
There’s nothing new under the sun they say – and while that may not be true – we’d do well by keeping an eye on what different far-right movements are doing across countries, as they keep mimicking and copying one another, sharing strategies and tactics. Legal reforms and policies deployed by authoritarian populists (similarly to narratives) are shared, constituting a transnational phenomenon that is translated to fit local contexts.
In other news…
Radical and anarchocapitalist Javier Milei has won the general election in Argentina, “the Mick Jagger impersonating TV celebrity-turned politician, who is often compared to Donald Trump, had secured 55.69%.” Milei has “pledged to slash spending and taxes, close Argentina’s central bank and replace the nation’s currency with the U.S. dollar. He has also proposed banning abortion, loosening regulations on guns and considering only countries that want to ‘fight against socialis’ as Argentina’s allies, often naming the United States and Israel as examples.” It remains to be seen how Argentina will fare under a far-right leader, but if anything, Argentina also exposes the limitations of a political analysis based on a left-right lens. Milei’s victory should be framed against the backdrop of the surge of authoritarian populist leaders, which is definitively tragic. But the rejection of his persona and politics should not lead to reducing the other candidate, Sergio Massa “to center-left”, as I am seeing many English-speaking outlets do, failing to recall the disaster of years of Kirchnerism and the levels of inflation and poverty that afflict the country (see this twitter thread for preliminary analysis).
Portugal’s socialist prime minister resigned from office following allegations of corruption and malfeasance among public officials. This leads to a new general election in Portugal in March 2023.
The UK’s Supreme Court has voted unanimously against the British government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. This hasn’t prevented the government from continuing to keep insisting that they will go ahead with the plan by introducing emergency legislation.
The Romanian far-right party is surging in the polls, now at 20%, up from 9% in 2020 elections.
And for the Soul…
Basquiat’s notes from NYC’s Underground Art Scene
Drag queen Pattie Gonia, Indigenous musician Quinn Christopherson, and world-renowned cellist Yo-yo Ma have teamed up to create ‘Won’t Give Up’ - a song and music video about perseverance, connection and hope. The three artists met in Alaska (Christopherson’s native land) to create the music video of this anthem that speaks to our interconnection with nature.
And Cher has a new Christmas album. It’s fun!
Connecting the Dots: Musings on Bridging and Belonging is a monthly column by Míriam Juan-Torres. In it, Míriam reflects on current events, connecting the trends and considering the specificities across countries, applying a bridging and belonging lens and translating concepts from academia for a wider audience. In Connecting the Dots, Míriam carefully curates readings and resources to further expand our understanding and shed light on the complexities of our time. Join our mailing list to stay up to date on the latest of the Democracy & Belonging Forum's curated analysis from Miriam and more.
Editor's note: The ideas expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the authors.