A survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority 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.
“That’s a precipitous drop,” says John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and co-director of Bright Line Watch. “There’s certainly consensus: We’re moving in the wrong direction.”
Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.
Not all political scientists view Trump with alarm, but many like Carey who focus on democracy and authoritarianism are deeply troubled by Trump’s attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office.
“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.”
When these scholars use the term “authoritarianism,” they aren’t talking about a system like China’s, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called “competitive authoritarianism,” the kind scholars say they see in countries such as Hungary and Turkey.
