What we know about Authoritarian rule
When democratic institutions ossify and citizens feel that their concerns are ignored, a powerful leader can seize power through populist appeals to directly solve problems. Typically, such dictators quickly erode democracy, replacing it with authoritarian forms of governance. “We are interested in what helps autocracies survive, especially when they have institutions that mimic democratic ones,” Jackson School professor and expert on authoritarian regimes Jennifer Gandhi tells NPR. She explains that dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin rely on tactics such as manipulating electoral rules to extend their terms and attacking media and universities, among other things. These types of attacks create a climate where dissent is discouraged and the public believes that if they speak out, their government will punish them. For example, scholars told NPR that they feared for their jobs and research funding if they spoke out against the Trump administration.
Scholars have analyzed authoritarian regimes around the world and discovered that they follow similar patterns, which they call the Authoritarian Playbook. These tactics include politicizing independent institutions to undermine their independence; spreading disinformation with abandon and ruthless efficiency; seeking to scapegoat vulnerable communities and foment division; and using legal or pseudo-legal rationales to gut institutions, quash dissent, and declare national emergencies to grab new powers.
During the global upheavals of World War II and the Cold War, democratic countries helped usher authoritarian leaders out of power. But today, there’s no single bright line that a country crosses to become an authoritarian state. Instead, experts say that democracy often dies a slow death as democratic institutions and laws are eroded one by one. These salami tactics—slicing away democracy a sliver at a time—have been used by current or former leaders in a variety of countries, from Turkey to Hungary to Russia.