Despite Biden’s Victory, Authoritarian Populism Continues to Threaten U.S. Democracy

The number of democratic governments has doubled since the 1970’s, demonstrating the success of recent efforts to implement this model throughout the world. However, many systems currently face threats to their survival, as an increasing number of authoritarian-leaning leaders has risen to power while political parties have simultaneously begun to weaken the norms which serve as democracy’s guardrails. The United States faced these challenges during the Trump presidency, and despite Biden’s recent victory, the nation will most likely have to face them again. 

Since the 1990’s the number of world leaders who are considered to be populist has rapidly increased, impacting countries with relatively new democracies as well as those with the oldest systems, including the United States. Although there is no exclusive definition of who qualifies as a populist, these leaders all claim that a conflict exists between the “people” and the “outsiders.” They promise to be the people’s authentic representative, and thus the only leader who can restore their will in politics. 

Not all populists are antidemocratic, although a recent study shows that this type of leadership negatively affects democracies more frequently than others. After arriving to power through legitimate electoral means, authoritarian populists tend to erode democracy through actions which weaken institutions, restrict electoral processes, and reduce civic space. The impacts of these efforts vary, but some democratic systems have been almost entirely dismantled, as was the case in Turkey. 

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A branch of populists who tend to be authoritarian-leaning are the cultural populists. These leaders take advantage of a nationalist sentiment to come to power, emphasizing that those who are not a part of the true and traditional culture threaten the state’s existence. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte are two examples, claiming they can restore public order threatened by their jurisdictions’ so-called “criminals.” Viktor Orban of Hungary also falls within the category of cultural, authoritarian-leaning populists, as he labels marginalized groups such as immigrants as those who threaten the true Hungarian people. From this branch of populism also arose the antidemocratic leader, Donald Trump, who promised to represent white Americans at the expense of the historically oppressed, such as the Black and immigrant communities. 

Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election could appear to be a sign that the United States has definitively rejected cultural, authoritarian-leaning populism. However, this ideology’s influence in U.S. politics could return quicker than it left given that the factors which led to its rise in 2016 – among them, the white community’s commitment to (or complicity in) upholding the systems which cause racial and economic inequality – are more present than ever. For example, the pandemic has been able to exacerbate economic and racial inequities, as historically marginalized communities have disproportionately faced barriers to accessing quality healthcare and employment. 

The fact that almost 47% of those who cast their ballots in the 2020 presidential election voted for Trump shows that his platform still represents a large faction of collective U.S. thought, especially that of white Americans. If Biden’s centrist policy positions fail to mitigate the inequality and polarization which gave rise to cultural populism in the first place, an antidemocratic populist can easily return to power. And if this happens, the country will once again face efforts to erode its system of governance similar to those it faced during the Trump presidency. However, attempts to dismantle a democracy are not always effective, although in the case of the U.S., future efforts to degrade its political system would most likely be successful. 

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As the authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt established, a democratic state can remain intact when faced with authoritarian attacks if its political parties respect the informal norms that protect it. Two such norms are critical for the survival of the U.S. system: the first is forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives as efforts to maximize partisan advantage could weaken democracy, and the second is mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals. Unfortunately, as Levitsky and Ziblatt have highlighted, the Republican Party began to disregard these norms during the 1980’s, a trend which accelerated during the Trump presidency and which left the United States vulnerable to democratic backsliding. 

With respect to the norm of forbearance, Republicans have demonstrated that they will do whatever possible to achieve their partisan goals regardless of the potential impacts on institutions. They not only have created their own norms to achieve their objectives, but they have also violated these same rules when doing so would be to their partisan benefit. For example, after establishing the “rule” in 2016 that the Senate should refrain from approving a candidate to fill an empty Supreme Court seat during a presidential election year, this same party rushed the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Court only days before the end of voting for the 2020 presidential election. This placed the impartiality of the judicial branch and the credibility of the legislative branch at risk. 

The Republican Party also no longer treats Democrats as legitimate political rivals, a trend that has culminated in a large number of Republican politicians abstaining from recognizing Biden as the President-elect despite his clear electoral victory. Because of this, 75% of Republicans in the United States believe that Biden won the election through fraudulent means, demonstrating a lack of public confidence in the U.S. electoral system. 

The Republican Party violates norms which protect democracy more frequently than 85% of other political parties leading democracies around the world. Their lack of commitment to these norms shows that the U.S. political system could be weakened even further if another antidemocratic leader comes to power. Despite Biden’s victory, the United States, like many other nations, continues to be vulnerable to authoritarian populism and the leaders which claim it as their own, who in turn could lead U.S. democracy to its death.