Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism
A survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority (78%) think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism.
In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After President Trump’s election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump's second term, that figure plummeted to 55.“We've slid into some form of authoritarianism,” says Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author of How Democracies Die. “It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, is also deeply concerned: “We are on a very fast slide into what’s called competitive authoritarianism.”In a competitive authoritarian system, a leader comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments — including the prosecutor's office and judiciary — with loyalists. He or she then attacks the media, universities and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party’s favor. (Does that sound quite familiar? It does to me)
Two points:
- How the hell can Harvard Poobah Levitsky, whom I actually respect (my review of his book is here), know if the MAGA authoritarianism we have slid into is “certainly reversible”? He can’t. No one can know with certainty how bad our political situation really is. Levitsky got this point wrong. The depth of MAGA’s grip on the minds of the true believers continues to strengthen according to polls. Those people are not going to stop supporting djt no matter what. MAGA is not “certainly” reversible. It is maybe reversible, maybe probably, but not certainly.
- The NPR article is based on an analysis by Bright Line Watch (BLW), where a score of 0 means complete dictatorship, and a score of 100 means ideal democracy. The BLW score of 55, puts the US political system well into anocracy (score range 50-69), hybrid dictatorship-democracy but closer to dictatorship than democracy. A different political system scoring system, Polity Watch, rates scores like this: Autocracy (dictatorship) scores at -10 to -6, anocracy is -5 to +5, while democracy scores are from +6 to +10). After the July 2024 USSC decision that granted a president immunity from crimes committed in office, the Polity score dropped to 0, meaning the United States now falls squarely within the anocracy range (-5 to +5). The 2025 Polity score of 0 puts the US close to countries like Afghanistan (-1) and Uganda (-1). In other words, by both the BLW and Polity watch analyses, analysis the US is an anocracy, not a democracy. The basis of BLW analysis is compared to the Polity Watch system:
Tracking America's descent into
kleptocratic djt/MAGA dictatorship
Q: Since these two assessments were generated by experts[1] and their assessments constitute evidence that America is in a period of accelerating moral and political degeneration of its elites, should this kind of analysis be rejected as lies, false or socialist propaganda simply because they are experts conveying facts, truths and reasoning that are extremely inconvenient to djt, MAGA elites and their corrupt authoritarian wealth and power agenda?
Footnote:
1. Since about 2016, an important goal of MAGA’s pro-authoritarian, pro-corruption dark free speech, e.g., demagoguery, lies and slanders, has been to discredit experts, especially those who assert facts, truths and reasoning that are inconvenient to MAGA elites, essentially all of whom support corruption and authoritarianism. That is fact, not opinion. In his 2017 book, The Death of Expertise, expert Tom Nichols said distrust in experts and inconvenient knowledge has led America into a death spiral that “presents an immediate danger of decay either into rule by the mob or toward elitist technocracy . . . . and both threaten the United States today. . . . . the most disturbing aspect of the American march toward ignorance is not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge.”
