Ahead of Poland’s 2023 parliamentary election, the future of the country’s democracy was in doubt.
Well before the contest, the governing party, Law and Justice, had launched a sweeping campaign to put the opposition at a disadvantage. The party had stacked the judiciary with allies. State media outlets cast the opposition leader, Donald Tusk, as a foreign agent. Security services investigated domestic critics. Fearing state retaliation, business executives grew reluctant to donate to the opposition; many opted instead to support Law and Justice.
Mr. Tusk and his broad coalition fought back. Undeterred, they highlighted the corruption, high inflation and strict anti-abortion policies that many voters associated with Law and Justice. At rallies, Mr. Tusk championed a view of Polish patriotism grounded in democracy and European integration, which contrasted sharply with Law and Justice’s anti-immigrant, anti-European message of a Poland under siege. When the election came, a remarkable 74 percent of the electorate turned out, and Mr. Tusk’s coalition won. Polish democracy, which had appeared on the brink of collapse, had survived.
The defeat of Law and Justice in 2023 was an example of an overlooked phenomenon: Autocrats, whether aspiring or entrenched, can lose elections.
Defeating them can be an uphill battle. Authoritarian regimes that hold elections usually manipulate the process to their advantage. They prosecute opposition members, target the independent news media and use state-aligned outlets to spread disinformation. They co-opt the judiciary and generate fear about the consequences of supporting the opposition. In extreme cases, they declare states of emergency, deploy the military and even fabricate vote counts.
This playbook has worked in places like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. But in other countries, the democratic opposition has overcome authoritarian rule and prevailed at the ballot box. These cases, while they have distinct national contexts, can also help provide a road map for democratic movements today.
As a base line, the opposition must unify. American history offers an example: In the Jim Crow South, the conservative Democratic Party engaged in rampant voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and other authoritarian tactics to manipulate elections throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In response, fractured opposition groups in some Southern states — most prominently, Republicans and Populists in North Carolina — formed “fusion” coalitions to increase their chances of victory. In North Carolina’s 1894 and 1896 elections, the fusion slates bridged racial and party divides and achieved remarkable gains, although these victories were later undone through a combination of violence and the large-scale disenfranchisement of Black voters.
When campaigning in unfair conditions, opposition leaders must inspire voters to remain hopeful and to participate in elections. Just before the 1988 plebiscite in Chile on whether to extend Augusto Pinochet’s 15-year dictatorship, the opposition was allowed to advertise on television for 15 minutes a night. Whereas Pinochet’s campaign warned of chaos and instability if he lost, the opposition offered viewers a positive economic agenda alongside uplifting campaign slogans such as “Chile, joy is coming!” This optimistic vision — combined with youth mobilization, opposition unity and rigorous voter registration and poll watching — contributed to Pinochet’s defeat and paved the way for Chile’s democratic transition.
Young voters are often at the heart of successful opposition movements. In Serbia’s 2000 election, President Slobodan Milosevic faced steep resistance from Otpor, a vibrant, student-led movement. Otpor members rallied voters, scrawled anti-Milosevic graffiti across the country and distributed campaign materials with the simple slogan, “He’s finished.” Milosevic’s regime arrested hundreds of Otpor members, which only further motivated citizens to vote him out of office.
Skilled opposition movements leverage authoritarian misbehavior to mobilize voters. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India oversaw the declaration of a state of emergency, which her government used to suspend civil liberties, censor the press and arrest critics. This power grab helped to unify the opposition and shape its message during the 1977 election, which Gandhi lost decisively before staging a comeback in 1980.
When authoritarian leaders escalate efforts to remain in power, successful opposition movements anticipate and thwart this escalation, including through peaceful protests. In Ukraine’s 2004 election, Viktor Yushchenko, the charismatic opposition leader, appeared to anticipate that the ruling regime would doctor the results. Indeed, as voting unfolded, election monitors and the independent press reported widespread irregularities. Mr. Yushchenko filed an appeal with the Supreme Court and rallied his supporters. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested peacefully in Kyiv. Citing fraud, the Supreme Court invalidated the runoff and ordered a second vote in which the opposition triumphed.
But judges can help protect elections only if they are willing to uphold the law. After Brazil’s 2022 election, when it was announced that Jair Bolsonaro’s rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had won, supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro set up roadblocks across the country in protest. Brazil’s supreme court swiftly ordered these roadblocks dismantled, and the country’s electoral court certified the result even as Mr. Bolsonaro refused to concede.
Successful democratic movements depend, above all, on courage. In the Philippines in 1986, when the longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos called a snap election, the opposition leader Corazon Aquino rallied the nation, vote tabulators risked their livelihoods to expose rampant fraud and key Philippine military, diplomatic and religious officials broke with Marcos. More than a million citizens protested peacefully, including Catholic nuns who knelt in front of army tanks. In 1989, when Poland held its first semi-free elections in over four decades, millions of citizens living under Communist rule accepted the risks of attending opposition rallies, distributing pamphlets, and casting ballots in favor of the Solidarity movement. In both instances, the opposition ultimately prevailed.
Every citizen has a role to play in helping democratic movements succeed. Opposition figures need courage to unify and lead. Judges, business executives, lawyers and journalists need courage to withstand intimidation. Voters need courage to participate in elections, protest peacefully and act with agency rather than adapt to authoritarian rule. History can offer both guidance and hope: Authoritarians have lost elections before, and they will again.
David Shimer served on the National Security Council from 2021 until 2025, including as director for Eastern Europe and Ukraine and as director for Russian affairs. He is an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is the author of “Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post This Is What Autocrats Dread appeared first on New York Times.
