Liberal democracies aren’t necessarily replaced with authoritarian rule because of an armed coup d’état. In some cases, critics of President Donald Trump have been warning, authoritarians will gradually undermine a country’s system of checks and balances — which is what those critics have accused Trump of trying to do. And according to a new Swedish study, the Republican Party now resembles authoritarian parties in Turkey and Hungary.
The study was conducted by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which compared political parties in a long list of countries and found that under Trump, the Republican Party’s rhetoric now resembles authoritarian parties like AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — both of whom Trump has praised — are two disturbing examples of authoritarians who were voted into office and have been attacking the checks and balances and democratic norms in their countries.
Journalist Julian Borger, discussing the study in The Guardian, notes that that V-Dem uses an “illiberalism index” that “gauges the extent of commitment to democratic norms a party exhibits before an election” — and Borger points out that the GOP has “followed a similar trajectory to Fidesz, which under Viktor Orbán, has evolved from a liberal youth movement into an authoritarian party that has made Hungary the first non-democracy in the European Union.” Continue reading.
The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.