Trump Can Be Stopped
Other countries managed to fend off autocracy. By borrowing from their playbook, America can too.
Donald Trump intends to rule as an autocrat. On this, his statements and past conduct are clear. As we saw in our last installment, he will have considerable leeway to follow through on this aim.
If he and his allies approach the task astutely (admittedly a tall order in their case), they can transform the executive branch into an instrument of his will. They can then use key federal agencies, along with deputized state and local law enforcement and thuggish extremists like the Proud Boys, to try and sideline his opponents.
Any laws they break in the process are of little concern. Chief Justice John Roberts and his band of enablers saw to that last summer in Trump v. United States, when they effectively anointed (Republican) presidents elected kings.
Trump’s freedom of action is not absolute, however. His bid to become a dictator will run up against some serious obstacles, including federalism, a vibrant civil society, his own unpopularity, and others we will cover today. These obstacles serve as loci of potential resistance. If democratic Americans, including but not limited to the Democratic Party, exploit them to their full effect, they can thwart the coming lurch toward authoritarianism.
To help identify these various points of leverage, we will draw on the experiences of other countries where aspiring autocrats put democracy at risk. In places like Belarus, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, elected strongmen overpowered their opponents and forged authoritarian regimes. In others, like Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, oppositions were able to frustrate such efforts, allowing democracy to survive.
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way distinguish between two types of nondemocratic rule. The first is full authoritarianism, in which the opposition has no viable prospects for gaining power through legal channels and is instead forced underground. This scenario is doubtful in the U.S., as the constraints on Trump are too onerous to permit the outright elimination of formal political contestation.
A more viable alternative is what Levitsky and Way call competitive authoritarianism. Under this arrangement, leaders rig elections, curb civil liberties, and deny the opposition access to resources, media, and fair legal arbitration. Unlike full authoritarianism, however, there remain legal channels through which opposition parties can compete for office. They can nominate candidates, run campaigns, and place campaign ads, albeit at a distinct disadvantage to incumbents. Elections, while unfair, are nevertheless competitive enough that incumbents face a real chance of losing power.
To make competitive authoritarianism durable, Trump will have to overcome some major impediments. Many of the structural advantages held by other autocrats are either unavailable in his case or can be rendered so if his opponents act accordingly.
The question is whether Trump can entrench a state of competitive authoritarianism across multiple election cycles—or whether the initial move toward competitive authoritarianism gets pushed back and democracy maintained.
The coming years will likely witness at least some elements of competitive authoritarianism. If Trump captures the executive branch, we may well see arrests of Democratic politicians, criminal probes of activist organizations, attacks on independent media, the violent repression of protesters, and mass deportations without due process, among other authoritarian tactics.
But will he manage to stack the decks to such an extent as to forestall any prospect of a Democratic victory in 2026 and 2028? Or will elections be sufficiently competitive to leave the outcome uncertain?
The answer, we will see, depends on us.
The Obstacles to Authoritarianism
To make competitive authoritarianism durable, Trump will have to overcome some major impediments. Many of the structural advantages held by other autocrats are either unavailable in his case or can be rendered so if his opponents act accordingly. We will examine each of them in turn.
Just as Trump cannot establish authoritarianism unless he exploits the tools available to him, so must small-d democrats utilize their own advantages if they are to stop him.
Constitutional changes are not an option: In Hungary, India, Russia, and Venezuela, authoritarian leaders were able to amend or even replace their countries’ constitutions. But the means by which they did so—electoral supermajorities, relatively viable amendment procedures, or some combination thereof—are off the table for Trump.
No controllable media market: In all four of the countries above, rulers were able to rein in the press through the selective distribution of state advertising funds. Loyal outlets received advertising money while disloyal ones were left to wither on the vine.
What made this tactic possible in the first place was the media’s heavy reliance on public advertising. But ad revenue for American outlets comes overwhelmingly from private, not public, sources, thus depriving Trump of a key tool wielded by other autocrats.
No controllable business elite: Business leaders in Hungary,1 Russia, and Venezuela lacked the collective economic heft to resist state influence. They were also highly dependent on overpriced tenders, a rigged regulatory environment, and personal connections to state officials. This made them vulnerable to autocratic pressure, forcing them to act as supplicants who did the president’s bidding.
But the resources and competitiveness of the U.S. business sector lends it a degree of resilience its foreign peers lacked. America’s leading companies are also far less reliant on government access. Put simply, the state needs them more than they need the state. Good luck running a dictatorship without Microsoft’s cloud services or Intel’s chips.
That is not to mention their exquisite interdependence with the global economy. If Trump is too dumb to grasp the ramifications of an attack on NVIDIA, the market reaction will be enough to teach him.
Federalism: Because American federalism leaves so much power to the states, Trump will not be able to construct an authoritarian regime without their help. Absent the collaboration of state and local governments, his ability to intimidate election officials, limit political organizing, deport millions of people, and restrict media freedom will be severely limited.
As of this writing, Democrats have complete or partial control of half of all statehouses. Additionally, a number of Republican governors have demonstrated a willingness to resist Trump in the past. Whether by withholding records on prospective deportees or refusing to authorize law enforcement cooperation with federal agencies, state and local officials can disregard any illegal orders from Washington. In fact, they are constitutionally bound to do so, explains Corey Brettschneider, a political scientist at Brown.
When faced with mass protests, Trump will undoubtedly respond with unchecked repression and brutal violence. This will only serve to undercut his legitimacy and mobilize opposition to his rule.
Federalism has stymied autocrats far abler than Trump. Take India, where, until recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoyed a legislative supermajority. Despite such advantages, he has been forced to send his agents from state to state, kidnapping local deputies by the hundreds, in order to bring provincial governments into line. A decade into his rule, a number of regions remain stubbornly defiant.
Trump lacks overwhelming public support: Successful autocrats such as Modi (India), Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Recep Erdoğan (Turkey), Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Belarus), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), and Vladimir Putin (Russia) all benefited from huge levels of popular support during the early stages of their rule. This proved critical to their ability to bulldoze democratic institutions. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain:
When an elected leader enjoys, say, a 70 percent approval rating, critics jump on the bandwagon, media coverage softens, judges grow more reluctant to rule against the government, and even rival politicians, worried that strident opposition will leave them isolated, tend to keep their heads down. By contrast, when the government’s approval rating is low, media and opposition grow more brazen, judges become emboldened to stand up to the president, and allies begin to dissent. [Peruvian president Alberto] Fujimori, Chávez, and Erdoğan all enjoyed massive popularity when they launched their assault on democratic institutions.2
Trump’s own popular support does not begin to approach what many of his foreign counterparts had at the start of their tenures. He will have to navigate a much more hostile terrain as a result.
Incompetence, impulsivity, and personal abrasiveness: Of the many terms that can describe such leaders as Putin, Orbán, and Modi, “hot-headed moron” is not one of them. These autocrats are known for their political skill and tactical prowess, attributes they employed to great effect in the course of eroding democracy and consolidating their rule.
Trump, needless to say, is cut from a different cloth. This is a guy who can be manipulated by strategically placed content on Fox & Friends, believes nineteenth-century civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglass is not only alive but doing “an amazing job,” is under the impression that his American-born father was in fact born in Germany or possibly Sweden, thinks the head of Lockheed Martin is actually named “Lockheed,” praised his Secretary of the Interior nominee as someone who “loves the interior,” is on record as having said, of Europeans, that “they live [in]—they’re forest cities, they’re called forest cities,” and once used the phrase “local milk people” in a call with Australia’s prime minister.
Trump lacks the shrewdness of a figure like Orbán, whose deftness allowed him to split his opponents and anticipate defections before they occurred. Nor does he have Orbán’s restraint. When faced with mass protests, Trump will undoubtedly respond with unchecked repression and brutal violence. This will only serve to undercut his legitimacy and mobilize opposition to his rule. At that point, the people he depends on for support—federal bureaucrats, elections officials, army leaders, his GOP allies, and others—might decide to play it safe rather than follow orders that are patently unlawful.
This dynamic has proved many an autocrat’s undoing. Take former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, whose stupidity and imprudence much resembled Trump’s own (by way of illustration, he once bragged to German chancellor Angela Merkel about all the money he had stolen).
When leaders break the rules with abandon, they lose their legitimacy. This opens the door for other political actors to remove them by any available means, legal or not.
Such brutish impulsivity is what sealed Yanukovych’s fate. After winning election in 2010, he packed the courts, ditched the constitution, and clamped down on the press. His disproportionate and violent attack on a Kyiv protest encampment in November 2013 turned what had been a limited series of demonstrations over his foreign policy into a nationwide revolt against his regime. By the time he fled to Russia in February 2014, a full 8.5 million Ukrainians, or 20 percent of the population, had taken part in the protests to oust him.
Reversing Trump’s bid for autocracy will require a similar effort on the part of Americans. Civil society in the U.S. has more than enough strength, independence, organization, and financing to meet the moment. The only question is whether it has the will.
A civil society too big, entrenched, and diffuse to sideline: Attacks on protesters often yield the opposite of their intended effect. This is a lesson Yanukovych learned the hard way. Rather than intimidate people into silence, repression tends to galvanize societal opposition and result in bigger, more radical protest movements.
Trump, of course, is too dense to understand that. He is also congenitally incapable of handling any problem in a measured and considered manner. When he inevitably overplays his hand, the reaction he provokes will likely far exceed his ability to control it.
Civil society is a term political scientists use to describe the various groups that represent citizens in relation to the state. They include labor unions, interest groups, religious organizations, professional associations, social movements, political parties, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Successful authoritarians, from Chávez to Orbán, were able to marginalize civil society through a mix of controlled repression and co-optation. Others, like Yanukovych, responded with disproportionate violence and ended up mobilizing civil society against them.
Trump will likely do the same—only the civil society he is up against is far more formidable than anything Yanukovych encountered. As a consequence, he may find himself in a very dangerous position.
Of all the factors that might undermine his grab for power, the strength of America’s civil society is arguably the most important. The Civil Society Participation Index, compiled by the V-Dem project, measures the overall vitality and influence of civil society. The index grades each country’s civil society on a scale from zero (weakest) to one (strongest).
The table below shows the strength of civil society in a given country the year before an autocrat came to power. Although places like India and Venezuela boasted respectable numbers, the U.S. stands heads and shoulders above the rest, attaining a near perfect score of 0.98.
In recent decades, countries that successfully fended off would-be dictators typically did so on the back of widespread and sustained mobilization by civil society. Such activism was pivotal to stopping Vladimír Mečiar’s campaign to become a dictator in Slovakia during the mid-1990s. It was even more critical to Ukraine’s months-long revolt against Yanukovych in 2013-14.
Civil society also thwarted Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian gamble in Brazil. From rooftop panelaços (pot-banging protests) to activists who gained seats in local municipal chambers, civil society paved the way for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in the 2022 elections.
Similarly, when Poland’s would-be autocrat, Jarosław Kaczyński, tried to form a commission empowered to disqualify electoral candidates in June 2023, he sparked massive protests that forced him to abandon the initiative. In the election which followed that October, he and his party were trounced by the center-right Civic Platform.
Reversing Trump’s bid for autocracy will require a similar effort on the part of Americans. Civil society in the U.S. has more than enough strength, independence, organization, and financing to meet the moment. The only question is whether it has the will.
America Has the Means. Will It Use Them?
Just as Trump cannot establish authoritarianism unless he exploits the tools available to him, so must small-d democrats3 utilize their own advantages if they are to stop him.
The instruments at his disposal are formidable, as we saw in part 2. But he cannot use them to any effect unless a complacent public lets him. Without the acquiescence of state and local leaders, he cannot rig elections. Absent the collaboration of blue cities, he cannot round up and deport millions of immigrants. Unless people stay home out of fear, he cannot defeat a protest movement. If not for elections officials, district attorneys, business leaders, and universities “obeying in advance,” he cannot intimidate them into furthering his reactionary agenda.
Unfortunately, some of those in a position to spearhead the resistance are, as of now, not up to the job. The legacy media will not be able to defend the values on which its existence depends so long as it maintains its delusional conceit of providing “balance.” The Democratic Party cannot meet the Republican threat with the boldness required if it remains stuck in its self-imposed prison of performative bipartisanship and bland, kitchen-table priorities.
Democrats tend to treat Republicans like a conventional party, one which differs from their own merely on matters of policy. By doing so, however, they obscure the GOP’s mission to upend the constitutional order, thereby protecting Republicans from themselves.
Hungary’s opposition has enabled Orbán in much the same way. “Torn between considering his reign in terms of ‘bad government’ or as an illegitimate system,” Bálint Magyar observes, Orbán’s critics have come “nowhere close to a diagnosis, not to mention a cure.”4
The Ukrainians who unseated Yanukovych, on the other hand, had a very clear notion of what they were fighting against: proizvol, a Russian term denoting a combination of “arbitrariness and tyranny, the condition of being made an object of someone else’s will,” explains Marci Shore.5
Whether the Democratic Party will follow the failed approach of the Hungarian opposition or the successful one Ukrainian democrats used remains to be seen.
If, by some miracle, Trump defies his explicit vows and past record and actually adheres to the Constitution, his legitimacy will remain intact. In this case, Democrats can simply nominate an opposing candidate and contest a normal election in 2028.
Of course, Trump will not abide by the Constitution and will instead try to become an autocrat. When that happens, small-d democrats, including the Democratic Party, will face a choice. Will we allow a degenerate criminal who mocks and assaults the nation’s ideals install a personal dictatorship? Or will we uphold the tradition of our civil rights forebears and resist?
The fate of the republic lies in our hands. It is up to us to decide what to do with it.
Other entries in this series:
Gaming Out the Descent Into Autocracy, Part 1
Gaming Out the Descent Into Autocracy, Part 2
Bálint Magyar, Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary, Kindle Edition (New York and Budapest: Noran Libro with Central European University Press, 2016), loc. 1263.
How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018), p. 191.
The term “small-d democrats” refers to anyone who is committed to democracy, including but not limited to the Democratic Party. As such, it also encompasses other parts of civil society along with anyone else who opposes authoritarianism.
Magyar, Post-Communist Mafia State, loc. 1434.
The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2017) pp. 40–41.
The article put into perspective many good points, thus calming one's fears. Recognizing different civil positions and reading how each country used their personal power were good points in deciding how to combat tRump. Thank you for the insight and information.
This is a really good read. I subscribed ( free, I’m sorry) .
With the Medicaid program shut down. I don’t even know if I can go to my dr tomorrow. This whole situation has me frightened and my dad is in the hospital with pulmonary embolisms small ones. My sister and I are sick in Maine or we would drive down ( as we always do) . Our youngest sister is flying in from Texas but not until Wednesday night. She’s not very good at relaying information as she doesn’t see him as frequently. She’s the one left though with us sick