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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

system. This form of digital totalitarianism would allow
the state to gather information on Chinese citizens
from a variety of sources and use it to maintain scores
or rankings based on an individual’s perceived trust-
worthiness, including on political matters. Chinese
officials have claimed that by 2020, the system will
“allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under
heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take
a single step.”¹ A citizen could receive bad marks for
petitioning the government, participating in protests,
or circulating banned ideas on social media.

As for Russia, the Kremlin complemented its covert in-
terference overseas with open and ugly acts of repres-
sion at home. In one brief period in early 2017, Russian
opposition politician Aleksey Navalny was blocked from
competing in the 2018 presidential contest through
a trumped-up criminal conviction, dissident journalist
Vladimir Kara-Murza nearly died from his second sus-
pected poisoning, and the Russian parliament passed
a law to decriminalize domestic violence that results in
“minor harm” such as small lacerations and bruising.²
Proponents of the domestic abuse law hailed it as a
win for traditional family values.

The confluence of authoritarian gains and setbacks
for democracy suggest a number of conclusions:

1. Modern authoritarianism is a permanent and
increasingly powerful rival to liberal democracy
as the dominant governing system of the 21st
century. Variations on the systems that have
proved effective in suppressing political dissent
and pluralism in Russia and China are less likely
to collapse than traditional authoritarian states,
given their relative flexibility and pragmatism.

2. The most serious threat to authoritarian systems
lies in economic breakdown. However, Russia,
China, and other major autocracies have shown
themselves capable of surviving economic set-
backs that, while affecting the standard of living,
did not push citizens to the limits of endurance.
The catastrophic case of Venezuela is a notable
exception. Of the main countries examined in
this study, only in Venezuela did the political lead-
ership attempt to impose a socialist economic
system and wage war on the private sector.

3. Illiberalism in democratic environments is more
than a temporary problem that can be fixed
through an inevitable rotation of power. In Hun-
gary, the Fidesz government has instituted poli-

cies that make it difficult for opposition parties
to raise funds or present their political message,
creating a structurally uneven political playing
field. Other elected leaders with authoritarian
mindsets will take notice and follow suit.

4. Authoritarian states are likely to intensify efforts
to influence the political choices and govern-
ment polices of democracies. The pressure will
vary from country to country, but it will become
increasingly difficult to control due to global
economic integration, new developments in
the delivery of propaganda, and sympathetic
leaders and political movements within the de-
mocracies. Putin and his cohorts have learned
well how to use democratic openness against
democracy itself.

5. Authoritarian leaders can count on an increas-
ingly vocal group of admirers in democratic
states. For several years now, European parties
of the nationalistic right and anticapitalist left
have forged ties with Moscow and aligned their
goals with Putin’s. The 2016 U.S. presidential
election revealed a new constituency, albeit
small, that harbors respect for Putin despite
his hostility to American interests and his in-
terference in the country’s democratic process.
A disturbing number of advisers to the Trump
campaign, including Trump himself, expressed
admiration for Putin and his system. In addition,
various political figures and commentators have
praised or come to the defense of despotic
rulers including Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Bashar
al-Assad.

6. Modern authoritarians can be expected to dou-
ble down on their drive to neuter civil society
as an incubator of reformist ideas and political
initiatives. Civil society can serve as a vibrant
alternative to mainstream democratic parties
as those parties fall prey to corruption, elitism,
and ossification. After the Kremlin effectively
defanged the collection of human rights organi-
zations, conservation projects, election monitors,
and anticorruption committees in Russia, other
autocrats and illiberal leaders began to act in
similar fashion. Both Viktor Orbán in Hungary and
the leaders of the Law and Justice party in Poland
have spoken of “bringing order” to the nongov-
ernmental sector, though serious restrictions on
freedom of association have yet to be adopted by
an EU state. That could change in 2017.

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