Ideas | Are we sleeping in autocracy?

Since the victory of Donald Trump in the election, he has witnessed a dramatic landing of his narrow victory and his power, the so-called “pre-approval”.

Are we sleeping in autocracy? We hope not, and will be happy if the threat does not materialize. But as close observers of the people and places under pressure from democracy and climate change, we see autocracy creeping in as a distinct and unspoken pattern. We are well aware of other countries, including Hungary and Poland, where leaders have pursued policies that lead to the decline of democracy. We see eerie parallels between what happened in these countries and what Mr. Trump and his transition team have done and promised to do.

Fortunately, we also have examples of countries that pushed back threats to democracy, and we can learn from them.

The Trump transition has featured the rapid appointment of cabinet officials who are both unqualified and potentially dangerous to the security and well-being of the American people. The transition also included actual smear campaigns and intimidation of critics, followed by media and government officials giving up.

Business leaders with economic interests dependent on the federal government have also done well with the president-elect, who has threatened to use his powers of oversight to choose who he wants.

In a second term, Mr Trump’s actions could be more dangerous as he follows the playbook created by Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, who dismissed his democratic country as an “illiberal state”. after his defeat and regaining his position. “, as he said. This is one of the most powerful collapses of democracy on record.

As we have seen in other democracies, autocracy was not created by the will of the ruler but only became fixed when it was justified by legalism – taking advantage of legal means to achieve autocratic goals. After Mr. Orbán’s third visit of 2024 to Mar-a-Lago in early December, and after announcing that he was involved in lobbying for a second term in office Mr. Trump the people of Mr. Orbán, should not be the alliance of Mr. Trump in Orbán’s playbook. amazing.

Mr. Orbán used the law as a weapon against Hungarian democracy. When he came to power in 2010, he enacted a series of laws aimed at targeting the judiciary and intimidating the media and political opponents. Consolidating power in the ever-growing Office of the Prime Minister, he left his cabinet and gave direct command to the office, which he established by changing civil service laws to fire those outside his team and promote his allies as the key. location. Orbán’s rise to power was accompanied by the use of violent protests to drain the resources of critics and cool the aspirations of new fighters. The court is full of loyal people.

Mr. Trump is promising to do the same, including embracing the idea of ​​Project 2025 and its supporters, many of whom fill his administration. Project 2025 lays out a 180-day playbook for a quick government seizure, using legal tools.

The plan envisages the White House office and the Executive Office of the President of the United States agreeing to the single executive theory that “it is the president’s agenda. this should be important to the departments and agencies working under their constitutional authority.” The 2025 project then relies on revising Mr. Trump’s 2020 executive order creating Schedule F, which would allow for the reclassification of civil service positions as part-time jobs. voluntary to allow the president to remove offices that are not part of his team.

Even before Mr. Trump’s appointees entered office, however, Mr. Trump and his supporters were already sending defamation suits and threats of criminal investigations to intimidate journalists and political opponents. -politics, as Mr. Orbán did. ABC News has settled one such case for $15 million, not risking the cost and Trump’s anger at protecting journalists. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his desire to soften the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which creates a high bar for proving defamation of public officials. (In 2014, Mr. Orbán’s government changed the country’s defamation laws to make it easier for civil servants to win defamation cases after a constitutional amendment abolished the decision of the Hungarian Constitutional Court.)

When he entered office with a raft of bills and policy proposals in 2010, Mr Orbán divided the opposition. Those who cared about the freedom of the media took one measure; those who were concerned about judicial independence began differently; others focused on prisoners and immigrants. More importantly, the opposition is rarely united when faced with a multi-pronged attack.

Mr. Trump is already using this tactic to pollute the region in legal challenges designed to divide and defeat his opponents. His political opponents may come next. Strongly united during the presidential campaign, we must be careful not to separate. Some prioritize the fight against mass deportations; others are doubling down on trans rights; lawyers are focused on protecting the Justice Department from falsely prosecuting Mr. Trump’s political opponents (and responding if that happens); Former judges focus on judicial decisions and appointments where the rule of law is under attack.

But the goals and collective forces that have dominated presidential campaigns must be maintained, making political opponents vulnerable to a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Lessons from other attempts at autocratic takeovers provide further guidance for democratic self-defense.

In Poland, where the Law and Justice government has also consolidated its power through legislation using Orbán’s playbook, the Polish people have taken to the streets demanding judicial protection. As the next election approaches, opposition parties put aside their differences to launch a campaign that focuses on threats to constitutional democracy. They won, albeit narrowly, in 2023.

But the Poles’ victory in the election also shows how difficult it is to overthrow a regime that has become entrenched in the law. With the blocking of the new law through his veto and the Constitutional Court packed with the President associated with Law and Truth, the government that worked on the platform for restoring democracy and has failed in the elections because it seems to be ineffective.

The lesson Poland teaches us is that potential autocrats can be put off if the opposition is united, but a country has a better chance of recovery if it stops autocracy before it enters the legal system. As in Poland, Mr. Trump was able to secure a clear majority on the Supreme Court during his first term, and his ruling helped delay any federal court count on his behavior.

In Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro, like Mr. Trump, has ruled with sincerity and vengeance, the 2022 election narrowly ousted him, after he cast doubt on the process.

But because Mr. Bolsonaro, like Mr. Trump, did not fully establish himself in the law in his first term, the still independent Federal Supreme Court was able to overturn Mr. Bolsonaro will not run for office for eight years, and the federal government is still independent. Prosecutors are now examining overwhelming evidence that he planned a coup. Here, however, democratic recovery depends on key institutions remaining independent and not filled with loyalists during an attempted autocratic takeover.

Defenders of democracy must be united, focused on ensuring the absence of checks and balances and the absence of vital democratic oversight institutions. If not, America will find itself slumbering in autocracy.

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has lived and worked in Hungary for many years as a researcher at the Hungarian Constitutional Court and at the the University of Central Europe. Norman Eisen is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former ambassador to the Czech Republic. Mr. Eisen is the publisher, and Ms. Scheppele is a contributor to The Contrarian.

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