Cartoon by Marian Kamensky

Why American democracy will survive

By Eva Bellin

The Washington Post: In the middle of the night after the election, one of our students dashed off an email, panicking about the future of American democracy. We quickly responded, reassuring her that although things did not look good, the United States was unlikely to follow the path of Turkey, Hungary, Tunisia or Venezuela. The following day, a good number of other students expressed the same concern, as did a fair number of our colleagues.

It became clear to us that it was important to stanch this alarm. While the stunning result of Donald Trump being elected president again has legitimately raised concerns about what a domineering populist with autocratic leanings might do, our research on populism and de-democratization in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and Asia suggests that catastrophizing is not in order here.

Populist leaders cannot strangle democracy at will; certain institutional vulnerabilities are a necessary precondition. Such weaknesses were exploited by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Kais Saied in Tunisia. But the institutional framework of the United States is firm and resilient. It is capable of containing the ambitions of a power-hungry president and serving as a stalwart hedge against de-democratization.

One crucial safeguard lies in the character of our Constitution. In some of the countries cited above, as well as Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, constitutions were easily transformed to enable the concentration of power in the executive and the weakening of checks and balances. For example, Orban was able to use his supermajority in parliament to authorize a constitutional path to autocracy — reorganizing the judiciary to his liking and rewriting electoral rules to guarantee his party’s continued predominance. In contrast, the U.S. Constitution is extraordinarily difficult to amend, requiring approval by a supermajority in Congress as well as three-quarters of state legislatures.

Another U.S. safeguard is its federal system of government. The United States has a vast framework of independent state and local governments whose authority and resources enable them to push back against undemocratic directives from the chief executive, or at least limit their impact. In particular, a U.S. president cannot unilaterally manipulate the nation’s complex and regionally administered electoral system — a tactic that several populist leaders elsewhere have used to engineer their rise to power.

America’s independent court system is another bulwark. Populists such as Orban and Erdogan proved adept at capturing the judiciary and limiting its power. This is unlikely to happen in the United States. Although it is true that the Supreme Court has a right-leaning supermajority, much of the federal court system has evaded capture. Indeed, the Biden administration has successfully appointed 219 federal judges (and counting), roughly comparable to the 234 appointed by Trump in his first term. There is considerable space for strong civil-society organizations such as the ACLU to bring cases to protect the freedoms of speech and assembly and to contest any politically motivated prosecution of political opponents that Trump might attempt. The U.S. military also provides protection for democracy. In countries such as Peru and Tunisia, populist presidents simply decreed the revision of the national constitution, the closure of the legislature and the arrest of their political opponents, and in each case, the military stood by the autocrats. In the United States, by contrast, members of the military swear fealty to the Constitution, not to the president alone. Their institutional culture is one of respect for democratic institutions and norms. In addition, the United States is not facing the kind of catastrophic economic conditions or existentially threatening unrest that encouraged the military to support autocracy in other countries. The military resisted Trump’s call to arms to suppress violent protests during his first term, and no doubt will do so again.

Finally, crucial protections lie in the character of the media as well as that of civil society. In Turkey and Hungary, Erdogan and Orban managed to kneecap independent news outlets financially by imposing fines and withholding advertising, among other measures; then their business cronies bought up the flailing enterprises. (By 2018, Erdogan’s allies controlled 90 percent of the country’s media.) Similarly, these leaders decreed restrictions on nongovernmental organizations, trade unions and professional groups. The United States, by contrast, is endowed with robust, varied, independent and sometimes fractious news sources that remain highly resistant to capture by a single autocrat. Their right to free speech is protected by the First Amendment. And attempts to stifle civil society would elicit fierce and powerful popular opposition, with the courts standing ready to protect liberal freedoms.

Of course, no one can guarantee the future. The president-elect is casting about for ways to remake government agencies, replace generals and prosecute his enemies. With all three branches of government on his side, he is in a position to create a great deal of political havoc. But as former congressman Matt Gaetz’s forced withdrawal of his candidacy for attorney general shows, the mobilization of safeguards such as the media and the Constitution can work to check Trump’s ambitions.

The key takeaway from our comparative research is this: There are indeed choppy waters ahead for American democracy. But we are confident that the United States is a strong ship that even an unhinged captain cannot run aground. Its infrastructure makes possible the mobilization of speech, protest, litigation and countervailing power, all of which can limit the de-democratizing ambitions of any president. It falls to us to make use of those tools.

Eva Bellin is the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics at Brandeis University. Kurt Weyland is the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.