Stephen Levitsky: “As the coup returns to the White House and pursues unprecedented attacks on the constitutional order, many Americans are beginning to wrap their minds around what authoritarianism looks like in America. If they struggle to imagine a single party or military regime in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or something like a more modern regime like China or Russia, that’s just good reason. A full-fledged dictatorial regime that is pointless and in which opponents of the administration are trapped, exiled or killed remains very unlikely in America.”
“But that doesn’t mean that the country doesn’t experience authoritarianism in any way. Rather than fascism or single-party dictatorships, the US slips towards a more 21st century model of dictatorship: competitive authoritarianism. It is a system in which political parties compete in elections, but incumbents of power systematically leaning the playing field against the opposition parties.”
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