US Elections
fromThe Nation
1 week agoTrump Is Rooting Around in the Public Trough
Authoritarian leaders prioritize personal wealth over public well-being, often using corruption to consolidate power and protect fortunes.
“Elected authoritarians, when they come to power, try to convert the state, which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter, into both a weapon and a shield,” said Levitsky, who co-authored the book How Democracies Die. “It's a weapon to be deployed against political rivals, and it is a shield to protect themselves and to protect their allies who engage in authoritarian or illegal behavior.”
Almost a quarter of the world experienced democratic backsliding, or a shift towards autocratization, in 2025, and six of the 10 newly regressive countries identified in the research are located in Europe and North America, including G-7 powers such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In fact, since 1997 the Center for Systemic Peace has maintained a 21-point scale that takes into account various political variables elections, the role of the military, economic inequality, political violence and so on in order to describe where countries stand on the scale between democracy and autocracy. On the autocracy end, at -10, are the countries that you would expect: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, obvious autocracies all. At +10 are the apparent democracies: Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada and, until recently, the United States.