How will Americans know when we have lost our democracy?
Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.
The descent into competitive authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarms. Because governments attack their rivals through nominally legal means like defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations, citizens are often slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule. More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy.
How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.
Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.
When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.
By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.
The Trump administration has taken (or credibly threatened) punitive action against a strikingly large number of individuals and organizations that it considers its opponents. It has, for example, selectively deployed law enforcement agencies against critics. President Trump directed the Department of Justice to open investigations into Christopher Krebs (who as the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency publicly contradicted Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020) and Miles Taylor (who, when he was a Department of Homeland Security official, anonymously wrote an opinion piece criticizing the president in 2018). The administration has also opened a criminal investigation into Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump in 2022.
The administration has targeted major law firms for retribution. It effectively prohibited the federal government from hiring Perkins Coie; Paul, Weiss; and other leading law firms it perceived as friendly to the Democratic Party. It also threatened to cancel their clients’ government contracts and suspended their employees’ security clearances, preventing them from working on many cases related to the government.
Donors to the Democratic Party and other progressive causes also face political retribution. In April, Mr. Trump directed the attorney general to investigate the fund-raising practices of ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main donor platform, in an apparent effort to weaken his rivals’ fund-raising infrastructure. Major Democratic donors now fear retribution in the form of tax and other investigations. Some have hired additional legal counsel to prepare for tax audits, congressional investigations or lawsuits. Others have moved assets abroad.
Like many autocratic governments, the Trump administration has targeted the media. Mr. Trump has sued ABC News, CBS News, Meta, Simon & Schuster and The Des Moines Register. The lawsuits appear to have weak legal bases, but because media outlets like ABC and CBS are owned by conglomerates with other interests affected by federal government decisions, a prolonged legal battle against a sitting president could be costly.
At the same time, the administration has politicized the Federal Communications Commission and deployed it against independent media. It opened an investigation of fund-raising practices by PBS and NPR, potentially as a prelude to funding cuts. It also reinstated complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for anti-Trump bias while opting not to reinstate a complaint against Fox News for promoting lies about the 2020 election.
Remarkably, these attacks against opponents and the media have occurred with even greater speed and force than equivalent actions taken by elected autocrats in Hungary, India, Turkey or Venezuela during their first years in office.
Mr. Trump has also followed other autocrats in assaulting universities. The Department of Education opened investigations into at least 52 universities for their participation in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and it has placed some 60 universities under investigation for antisemitism, threatening them with severe penalties. The administration illegally suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in approved funding to leading schools such as Brown, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. It has frozen $2.2 billion in government grants to Harvard, asked the I.R.S. to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and threatened to revoke its eligibility to host foreign students. As Jonathan Friedman, the managing director of free-expression programs at PEN America, put it, “It feels like any day, any university could step out of line in some way and then have all of their funding pulled.”
Finally, Republican politicians face threats of violence if they oppose Mr. Trump. Fear of violence from his supporters reportedly dissuaded some Republican lawmakers from voting for his impeachment and conviction after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Republican senators were also threatened during confirmation hearings in early 2025. Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, reported that the F.B.I. warned him of “credible death threats” while he was considering opposing Pete Hegseth’s nomination as secretary of defense.
For many American citizens and organizations, then, the cost of opposition has risen markedly. Although these costs are not as high as in dictatorships like Russia — where critics are routinely imprisoned, exiled or killed — America has, with stunning speed, descended into a world in which opponents of the government fear criminal investigations, lawsuits, tax audits and other punitive measures and even Republican politicians are, as one former Trump administration official put it, “scared” out of their minds “about death threats.”
This is not the first time that critics of the U.S. government have been harassed, threatened or punished: Dissidents were targeted during the Red Scares of 1919 and ’20 and the McCarthy era, the F.B.I. harassed civil rights leaders and left-leaning activists for decades, and the Nixon administration attempted to use the I.R.S. and other agencies to attack his rivals. These measures were clearly undemocratic, but they were more limited in scope than those occurring today. And Mr. Nixon’s efforts to politicize the government triggered his resignation, in part, and a set of reforms that helped curtail such abuse after 1974.
The half-century after Watergate was America’s most democratic. Not only did the Trump presidency put an abrupt end to that era, but it is also the first — at least since the Adams administration’s persecution of the Jeffersonian Democrats in the 1790s — to systematically target both the mainstream partisan opposition and a broad sector of civil society.
The administration’s authoritarian offensive has had a clear impact. It has changed how Americans behave, forcing them to think twice about engaging in what should be constitutionally protected opposition. Consequently, many of the politicians and societal organizations that should serve as watchdogs and checks on the executive are silencing themselves or retreating to the sidelines.
For example, fear of retribution has had a chilling effect on donations to Democrats and progressive civic organizations, forcing several of them to scale back operations and lay off employees. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s attacks on leading law firms, opponents of the administration are struggling to find legal representation, as deep-pocketed and reputable firms that once readily engaged in legal battles with the government are lying low to avoid his wrath. Columbia University ceded to the administration’s extortionary demands for greater restrictions on student expression. As Mr. Trump observed, “You see what we’re doing with the colleges, and they’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much.’”
There are troubling signs of media self-censorship. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which is seeking the Trump administration’s approval for a merger with Skydance Media, recently established additional oversight over “60 Minutes” programming. This move triggered the resignation of the program’s longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, who cited a loss of journalistic independence.
And crucially, Republican lawmakers have abdicated their role as checks on executive power. As Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, put it, “We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Americans are living under a new regime. The question now is whether we will allow it to take root.
So far, American society’s response to this authoritarian offensive has been underwhelming — alarmingly so. Civic leaders confront a difficult collective action problem. A vast majority of American politicians, chief executives, law partners, newspaper editors and university presidents prefer to live in a democracy and want to end this abuse. But as individuals confronting government threats, they have incentives to appease, rather than oppose, the Trump administration.
Civil society leaders seek to protect their organizations from government attacks: Chief executives need to protect shareholders and future business opportunities, media owners must avoid costly defamation suits and adverse regulatory rulings, and university presidents seek to avoid devastating funding cuts. For any individual leader, then, the price of defiance can often appear unbearably steep. Although they acknowledge that everyone would be better off if someone took the lead and defied Mr. Trump, few are willing to pay the price themselves. This logic has led some of America’s most influential figures, including politicians, billionaires, chief executives and university presidents, to stay on the sidelines, hoping that someone else steps forward.
Strategies of self-preservation have led too many civil society leaders to retreat into silence or acquiesce to authoritarian bullying. Small acts of acquiescence, framed as necessary defensive measures, feel like the only reasonable course. But this is the fatal logic of appeasement: the belief that quietly yielding in small, seemingly temporary ways will mitigate long-term harm.
It usually doesn’t. And acts of individual self-preservation have serious collective costs. For one, acquiescence will probably embolden the administration, encouraging it to intensify and broaden its attacks. Autocrats rarely entrench themselves in power through force alone; they are enabled by the accommodation and inaction of those who might have resisted. Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten.
Individual acquiescence also weakens America’s overall democratic defenses. Although the retreat of a single donor or law firm may not matter that much, collective retreat could leave opponents of the Trump administration without adequate funding or legal protection. The cumulative effect on public opinion of every newspaper story not published, every speech or sermon not delivered and every news conference not held can be substantial. When the opposition plays dead, the government usually wins.
The acquiescence of our most prominent civic leaders sends a profoundly demoralizing message to society. It tells Americans that democracy is not worth defending — or that resistance is futile. If America’s most privileged individuals and organizations are unwilling or unable to defend democracy, what are ordinary citizens supposed to do?
The costs of opposition are surmountable. And importantly, the descent into authoritarianism is reversible. Pro-democracy forces have successfully resisted or reversed backsliding in recent years in Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea and elsewhere.
America’s courts remain independent and will almost certainly block some of the administration’s most abusive measures. But judges — themselves targets of violent threats, government harassment and even arrest — cannot save democracy on their own. Broader societal opposition is essential.
American civil society has the financial and organizational muscle to resist Mr. Trump’s authoritarian offensive. It has several hundred billionaires; dozens of law firms that earn at least a billion dollars a year; more than 1,700 private universities and colleges; a vast infrastructure of churches, labor unions, private foundations and nonprofit organizations; and a well-organized and well-financed opposition party.
But civil society must act collectively. Chief executives, law firms, universities, media outlets and Democratic politicians, as well as more traditional Republicans, have a common interest in preserving our constitutional democracy. When organizations work together and commit to a collective defense of democratic principles, they share the costs of defiance. The government cannot attack everyone all at once. When the costs of defiance are shared, they become easier for individuals to bear.
So far, the most energetic opposition has come not from civic leaders but from everyday citizens, showing up at congressional town hall meetings or participating in Hands Off rallies across the country. Our leaders must follow their example. A collective defense of democracy is most likely to succeed when prominent, well-funded individuals and organizations — those who are best able to absorb blows from the government — get in the game.
There are signs of an awakening. Harvard has refused to acquiesce to administration demands that would undermine academic freedom, Microsoft dropped a law firm that settled with the administration and hired one that defied it, and a new law firm based in Washington, D.C., announced plans to represent those wrongfully targeted by the government. When the most influential members of civil society fight back, it provides political cover for others. It also galvanizes ordinary citizens to join the fight.
America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (@dziblatt) are professors of government at Harvard and the authors of “Tyranny of the Minority” and “How Democracies Die.” Lucan Way is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and an author, with Mr. Levitsky, of “Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism” and “Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War.”
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