Countering authoritarianism: A blueprint for a more resilient democracy

Democracy is the most compelling vision we have for self government. It can, and should, be a force for good in people’s lives, with history showing that democracies are more peaceful, more prosperous and more likely to protect the most vulnerable in their midst. Despite these benefits, global democracy has been in decline for almost 20 years, with authoritarian leaders—or leaders with authoritarian tendencies—coming to power in every corner of the globe.

The United States is not immune from this global phenomenon. Although Donald Trump’s refusal to concede after an election that he knew he lost and his incitement of a violent insurrection to disrupt the transfer of presidential power epitomized this decline and crystalised our country’s existential democratic crisis, American democratic decline did not begin in 2020. The preconditions that allowed the attack on the U.S. Capitol to happen have been simmering for years.

This report, Countering authoritarianism: A blueprint for a more resilient democracy, presents a comprehensive vision of the prophylactic measures we need to take today to ensure we do not slip into authoritarianism. Each chapter outlines legislation, executive actions, reforms for the judiciary and more that would tackle corruption, protect peaceful transitions of power, prevent foreign influence on our government and much more, in order to protect against the further erosion of democratic norms and build an open, accessible, stable democracy.

In presenting these recommendations, we draw on expert findings that the conditions for democratic deterioration are rooted in profound public distrust in government, exacerbated by protracted political crises including the 2008-2009 financial crisis, long-term wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the COVID-19 pandemic, the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms and numerous unjustified police killings. The increasing prominence of money in politics worsens the crisis—as does the increasing prominence of state and federal leaders being charged, both criminally and in the public square, with political corruption on a regular basis.

Bad actors have seized on this distrust. Candidates across the country have refused to commit to accepting legitimate electoral defeat, claiming—without evidence—that electoral results are inherently suspect and cannot be trusted. Unfortunately, in many states and in the halls of Congress, these conspiracy theories and election denialism have been invoked by officials tasked with overseeing and certifying local, state and federal elections. Others have baselessly argued that criminal prosecutions of elected officials are politically motivated, even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, extremist groups armed with weapons and distrustful of government have edged towards the political mainstream. These groups—many of whom organized the January 6th insurrection and include in their ranks former military members—have emerged as “the most persistent and lethal threat[]” to America. With their rise political violence has become more common, exemplified by plots to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and assassinate former President Trump.

At the same time that public trust in government has declined, American states have taken strikingly divergent paths in their commitment to democratic processes, exacerbating growing political polarization in our country. Many states have made it harder for voters—and particularly voters of color—to register to vote and access the voting booth through tactics such as eliminating polling locations, exorbitant polling place wait times and implementing restrictive voter identification laws. This attack on democratic processes is occurring at the same time that faith in the courts—the branch charged with adjudicating the constitutionality of these measures—is close to an all-time low thanks both to repeated ethical scandals and the overt politicization of judicial nominations. 

This confluence of factors led several reputable indices, including The Economist’s Democracy Index, to conclude that American democracy is in decline. Beginning in 2016 the Democracy Index started excluding the United States from its rankings of the world’s “full democracies” (such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany), but instead including it on its list of “flawed democracies,” putting it in the company of countries like Greece, Israel, Poland and Brazil.

But hope is not lost. Since 2020 there have been promising signs for American democracy. Not only did the 2022 elections occur without incident and with many election deniers losing their races, but federal, state, and local law enforcement have worked tirelessly to investigate and, where appropriate, charge those who participated in efforts to undermine the 2020 election and storm the Capitol on January 6th. These prosecutions are crucial, but alone they are woefully insufficient. We need transformative legislation.

In 2020 and 2022 Congress squandered the opportunity to pass comprehensive democracy reform legislation like the Protecting Our Democracy Act and Freedom to Vote Act—legislation which is needed to start reversing America’s democratic decline. Four years later—without significant meaningful action from Congress—the threat has grown. We still desperately need comprehensive democracy reform. But we also need to take immediate steps to prevent the rise of authoritarianism here at home. 

The reforms we propose in this report are crucial first steps to protecting our democracy. We have grouped them into eight chapters, with each chapter addressing a different crisis in our democracy:

• We begin in chapter one with The search for January 6th accountability. The January 6th insurrection was the culmination of an attempted coup d’etat, broadcast for the entire world to see. Accountability—including both civil remedies and criminal prosecution—for those who participated, led and incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol and attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election is not only necessary, but is an essential first step before our country can begin to confront the authoritarian threat, which is why it begins this report.

• In the second chapter, we discuss Building a pro-democracy government. Rather than playing defense and reforming all of the weaknesses exposed over the past several years, this chapter suggests proactive measures we can take to cement democracy including ways to strengthen the civil service, protect NGOs and allow pro-democracy leaders and movements to innovate and learn from one another.

• In the third chapter, we move on to Presidential accountability and ending the imperial presidency. Although originally designed by our founders to be weaker than the legislative branch of government, the presidency has grown more powerful and less accountable than ever. Structural reforms are urgently needed to ensure that a nefarious leader cannot avoid accountability for criminal misdeeds and sideline the checks and balances built into our system.

• The fourth chapter, Preventing the manipulation of courts, explores how courts can be manipulated to serve anti-democratic purposes and outlines reforms to prevent that from happening including preventing judge and forum manipulation, injecting more transparency into the judicial process including through the elimination of the shadow docket and protecting the safety and security of judicial personnel. This chapter draws on the experiences of other countries, including Hungary, Poland, Venezuela, Turkey and others, where the courts have become agents of authoritarianism rather than bulwarks against it.

• The fifth chapter, Blocking the abuse of law enforcement and emergency powers, suggests reforms to ensure that law enforcement is not a source of extremism. On January 6th, we saw just how lethal the threat is to our democracy when members of our law enforcement are also members of extremist groups calling for political violence. This chapter outlines ways to root out extremism within law enforcement, reform emergency powers like the Insurrection Act and National Emergencies Act and create accountability systems so police cannot hide behind the mask of qualified immunity when they misuse their position of power.
• In the sixth and seventh chapters, we focus on money in politics—looking first at Preventing political corruption and then at Countering foreign authoritarian influence. The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC opened up our system to untraceable, unlimited and anonymous money. We pay the costs of this decision every day. The reforms in these chapters are tailored to address the rise in political corruption and the increasing efforts by foreign governments to hide behind Citizens United as they attempt to influence—and in some cases manipulate—our democracy.

• In the final chapter, chapter eight, Ensuring the right to vote and the peaceful transition of power, we end our report by focusing on the crux of democracy: the right to vote. In this chapter we prioritize the need for transformative voting rights legislation to ensure that all qualified voters can access the ballot box without fear or intimidation. Recognizing that the right to vote isn’t worth anything if votes aren’t fairly counted and certified, the chapter proposes reforms to ensure that elections officials can perform their jobs and that our democratic institutions champion a peaceful transition of power.

Democracy requires constant care. The reforms we propose are simultaneously ambitious while only scratching the surface of the work we need to do to repair our democracy and resist the rise in authoritarianism. 

Crucially, they require the involvement of every organ and level of government—state legislatures, elections administrators, prosecutors, judges, governors, the executive branch and Congress. Even one of these bodies’ inaction could signal doom for our democracy. Politicians, pundits and the public ignored many of the structural deficiencies facing our democracy before Donald Trump was elected president, and even after he incited a violent insurrection against our nation’s seat of power.

For the last four years, Congress has abdicated its responsibility even after an attack directly targeting them on January 6th. Our democracy may not survive if they—or anyone else—looks away again.