Despite America's move toward authoritarianism under President Donald Trump, Vox writer Zach Beauchamp says that in analyzing two different researcher's approaches to the question, the "implications for the United States . . . are at once hopeful and disturbing."
Citing two studies focusing on "democratic u-turns" in which "a country starts out as a democracy, moves toward authoritarianism, and then quickly recovers," Beauchamp says "nearly 90 percent" of these "u-turns" were "short-lived mirages."
In the first study known as V-Dem, they found that these u-turns were very common, and that "over half of all countries that experience a slide toward autocracy also end up experiencing a U-turn."
The second study uses the V-Dem data to focus on post-1994 cases of these democratic u-turns and their aftermaths, and the results, Beauchamp writes, "weren't promising."
"Of the 21 cases, 19 countries experienced another decline in their democracy score within five years of the seemingly successful U-turn," he writes.
Marina Nord and Nic Cheeseman, researchers from the first and second research teams agree "that modern autocratization is different from the historical pattern," Beauchamp explains.
"Before the 1990s, democracies tended to be toppled by coups or revolutions — unmistakable uses of force that ended the current regime and replaced it with naked authoritarian rule," he writes.
Today's threats to democracies, Beauchamp says, "come in a more subtle and hidden form" known as "democratic backsliding" in which, like in Viktor Orban's Hungary and Trump's America, " a legitimately elected government changes the laws and rules of the political system to give itself increasingly unfair advantages in future elections."
"Because elected authoritarians were, well, elected, they often represent a real constituency in the country’s politics," Beauchamp explains.
"This support base is often large enough to make it 1) impossible for their opponents to defeat them permanently and 2) democratically illegitimate for said opponents to outlaw them entirely," he adds.
The parallels to Trump's America are staggering, but, according to both researchers, while "contemporary attempts to destroy democracy usually fail in the near term," they do tend to lead to future attempts down the line.
“Once you have a democracy, that doesn’t mean you automatically become a stable democracy,” Nord says, summarizing the points of agreement.
Political scientist Dan Slater coined the term "democratic careening," saying careening democracies are “struggling but not collapsing."
And that's where a picture of post-Trump America comes in, Slater says.
"A democracy may be liable to ‘capsize,’ or tip over temporarily so that democracy ceases to function for a limited time — but not to vanish from the democratic ranks entirely through a restoration and consolidation of authoritarian rule," he explains.
Beauchamp agrees, saying, "While President Donald Trump has developed an increasingly cogent plan for destroying American democracy, there are formidable obstacles in his path — including federalism, widespread public skepticism, a free press, and an independent judiciary."
The research suggests that many countries with fewer effective barriers against autocratization have resisted bids like Trump’s, which should give us some optimism that what’s happening right now isn’t the end of American democracy.
“I don’t think the US is beyond the point of no return,” Cheeseman says.
But even if America experiences a "u-turn" of its own, it's not out of the woods yet, Beauchamp says.
“There is a reason why Trump came to power, and there is a reason why he won those elections,” Nord says. “If you don’t solve the underlying reasons, then of course democracy will still be at risk.”