By Kate Selker

Is the United States sliding into authoritarianism? Or are the bulwarks of democracy growing stronger? In their final episode of their webinar series “The Breakdown” this year, Harvard Professors Erica Chenoweth and Steven Levitsky took on the “ongoing struggle for American democracy.” We share excerpts from their conversation below. 

Signs of democratic backsliding   

Dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and a “campaign against multiracial democracy” 

Steven LevitskySteven Levitsky: I’m paying a lot of attention to the campaign against multi-racial democracy…the systematic rollback within the Defense Department, in government agencies across the country, in the Education Department, of progress this country has made toward a more diverse elite, a more balanced national history, and a multi-racial national identity—all of this is being systematically dismantled by this administration.   

Erica ChenowethErica Chenoweth: The Voting Rights Act was effectively gutted about a month ago…an elimination of the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. [Black] voters who were interviewed by journalists were saying it felt like being kicked down a flight of stairs—back to a history that they thought was effectively closed as a chapter of American history. That was an incredibly demoralizing event. It’s also potentially quite politically consequential with regards to gerrymandering. 

The Trump administration’s influence over media 

Steven Levitsky Steven Levitsky: We have seen the manipulation of government contracts, concessions, and regulatory decisions used as carrots and sticks to change the behavior of mainstream media…reports indicate that CBS News’s coverage of the state violence in Minneapolis was subject to intervention, not by the federal government, but by the media directors and producers themselves, in order to curry favor with the government. They were told to make the protesters look more violent in order to please the Trump administration… That is the way that Viktor Orbán governed in Hungary. And frankly, even though I’ve been studying this and worried about American democracy for many years, I did not think it would go this far.  

Erica ChenowethErica Chenoweth: The actual information landscape is mostly not legacy media. Legacy media has been an interesting site of at least perceived resistance to the administration—which is part of why they’ve been so directly targeted—but where so many people actually get their news, especially younger people, is on YouTube and TikTok. And those are big companies whose owners are more aligned with Trump and have also developed algorithms that enhance and promote that content.

The information ecosystem is extremely intimidating as a democracy project right now, because there are so diminishingly few truly independent sources of credible information.

The Trump administration’s claims of election fraud 

Steven LevitskySteven Levitsky: [The Trump administration] continues to develop and put forth a narrative of fraud. They’ve been doing it around the California election, and it’s not just Trump — Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, was very explicit in claiming that elections are fraudulent in California…

We’ve seen a lot of talk about seizing ballot boxes, about centralizing control over voter lists—that’s probably illegal—and also fears of intimidation at the polls. I don’t know how serious the administration is about this…but given the level of corruption and abuse in this administration, an effort to at minimum tilt the playing field in this election—if not worse—is clearly possible….

Accepting defeat in an election is the cardinal rule of democracy. So when a sitting president tries to overturn the results of an election, that’s about as bright a line as you can get in an electoral authoritarian context, short of bringing out the tanks. 

“When a sitting president tries to overturn the results of an election, that’s about as bright a line as you can get in an electoral authoritarian context, short of bringing out the tanks.”
Steven Levitsky

Moments of public complacency

Erica Chenoweth Erica Chenoweth: I’ve noticed qualitatively—not systematically at all—that people are more in “going about their lives” mode than in “I’m seized by fear and anxiety” mode. This is certainly not evenly felt across the country, but more generally there’s been almost a normalization of life under Trump 2.0 in much of the country.

There’s an interesting question as to why...the lack of fear could be a sense of normalcy or complacency, or it can be because people genuinely see a way out and feel active and engaged and understand their own agency to influence the outcome.

Steven Levitsky Steven Levitsky: Some things are being normalized—I think it is fair to say we’re becoming complacent around them. Trump’s corruption is one example. The kind of language the president uses to treat journalists and opponents—the way he spoke [to a journalist in a recent interview] was just unthinkable in any democracy or any other era in this country, and I'm still blown away by the fact that he's not really called out for that.

Signs of hope for democracy 

Protests in Minneapolis   

Steven Levitsky Steven Levitsky: What happened in Minneapolis is as close as we’ve gotten to a fascist or fascist-adjacent offensive—or maybe it was more performative fascism than real fascism, but they were beginning to deploy paramilitary forces against citizens with great violence. And Minneapolis slowed that down, at least, if not stopped it. History will tell us much more about just how important that was. But to me it feels extraordinarily important.

Erica Chenoweth Erica Chenoweth: What happened in Minneapolis—from the community’s response side of the equation—is probably the most consequential civic engagement with what’s been going on, and served as a key inflection point…U.S. citizens were defending democracy and their neighbors in Minneapolis. It was a key moment where the administration could not dominate and control the information environment. It showed a playbook to other communities based on literally neighbor-to-neighbor organizing into a resilient and powerful community response.

Public disapproval and resistance

Erica Chenoweth Erica Chenoweth: We have probably historical levels of mobilization anytime something seems to overstep the boundaries of multi-racial democracy and rights. We can feel much more encouraged by the fact of that resistance and the fact that it’s been so disciplined and persistent. 

Steven LevitskySteven Levitsky: The continued decline of Trump’s public support is a really important variable—presidents with 60–70% approval ratings do a lot more damage than presidents with 35%.

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Photographs by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Image and Martha Stewart

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