The United States is no longer a democracy.
At least, that’s the verdict of one nonprofit, the Center for Systemic Peace, which measures regime qualities of countries worldwide based on the competitiveness and integrity of their elections, limits to executive authority and other factors.
“The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy,” the group’s 2025 report read.
It calls Donald Trump’s second inauguration following a raft of criminal indictments and convictions, combined with the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2024 granting of sweeping presidential immunity, a “presidential coup.”
Generally, only scholars pay attention to this kind of technical index. This year, however, many people are calling out the erosion of U.S. democracy.
Political scientists like myself can see that in the guise of government “efficiency,” the Trump administration is sabotaging the rule of law to such an extent that authoritarianism is taking hold in America.
How long might this situation last?
The term “political regime” refers to either the person or people who hold power, or to a classification of government, including in a democracy.
Since the mid-1960s, when the U.S. expanded voting rights to include its Black citizens, historians and political scientists have generally classified the U.S. as having a democratic regime. That means the government holds free and fair elections, embraces universal voting rights, protects civil liberties and obeys the law.
All of these areas have significantly degraded in the U.S. over the last few decades due to partisan polarization and political extremism. Now, the rule of law is under attack, too.
Trump’s unprecedented use of nearly 100 executive orders in the first two months of his presidency aims to enact a vast policy agenda by decree. For comparison, President Joe Biden issued 162 executive orders over four years.
This is not what the founders had in mind: Congress is the constitutional route for policy-making. Skirting it threatens democracy, as do the issues Trump’s orders address. From attempting to deny citizenship through birthright to abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, Trump is attacking both the U.S. Constitution and Congress. His administration has even defied judges who order it to stop.
All of this challenges the rule of law – that is, the idea that everyone, including those in power, must follow the same laws.
When things get this bad, can a country recover?
Based on my research, the short answer is yes – eventually.
When a political party that does not honor democratic institutions or heed critical democratic norms takes power, political scientists expect the government to shift toward autocratic rule. That means restricting civil liberties, quashing dissent and undermining the rule of law.
This is happening right now in the U.S.
The Trump administration is challenging broadcasters for their election coverage and banning speech that does not conform to its gender ideology. It’s flagrantly violating the Constitution. And it’s eliminating federal funding for universities and research centers that oppose its actions.
However, as long as a country has a robust opposition and elections that offer real opportunities for alternative parties to win office, the regime shift is not necessarily permanent.
Take Brazil, for example.
Its 2022 election ousted President Jair Bolsonaro, leader of an autocratic regime that had attacked the Brazilian media, judiciary and legislature. Bolsonaro claimed his loss to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was fraudulent, and in January 2023 his supporters attacked the nation’s capital. Since then, Bolsonaro has been charged with plotting a coup and barred from seeking office until 2030.
Brazilian voters and the courts stemmed the country’s autocratic slide and returned it to a democratic regime.
Today the American public is deeply divided and dissatisfied with how U.S. democracy works. This polarization translates into presidential elections that are narrowly won.
According to the American Presidency Project at the University of California Santa Barbara, which measures presidential margins of victory by subtracting the electoral vote percentage from the popular vote percentage for each election, the average margin of victory in presidential elections between 1932 and 2000 was 25 points. Since 2000, it has been 7.8 points.
Moreover, since 1948, every time the White House changed hands after an election, it flipped parties as well, with one exception in 1988. Political scientists refer to this back-and-forth as “thermostatic shifting.” In other words, the electorate regularly sours on the status quo and aims to adjust the thermostat to another temperature – or political party.
When a party that more strongly favors democratic principles takes power, the U.S. more firmly adheres to democratic institutions and norms. This was essentially Biden’s winning pitch to voters in 2020.
Trump’s return to the White House despite two impeachments and a criminal conviction on 34 felony charges marked another pendulum swing – this time, back in the direction of authoritarianism.
The U.S. political pendulum has been singing back and forth like this since at least 2016, with Trump’s first win. I expect the oscillation to continue.
The risk, of course, is that a ruling authoritarian-leaning party abuses its power to ensure that the opposition can never again win. This has happened in recent decades in Hungary, Turkey and Venezuela, to name a few.
There are good reasons to believe that a permanent slide into autocracy is harder in the U.S. than in those countries.
The U.S. has a robust and wealthy network of civil society organizations, which are well versed in exercising their civil liberties. Its decentralized federalist structure is harder for any one person or party to seize. U.S. elections for example, are run by state and local governments, not the federal government. This makes its election systems more resilient than more centralized election systems.
At the moment, I see no reason to fear that the U.S. will fail to hold free and fair elections in 2026 or 2028.
For the time being, then, the U.S. is in what I call a “pendular equilibrium.” Parties trade majority control as voters react to extremism, shifting the regime from more autocratic to more democratic depending on who is in power.
The effect is a stable outcome of sorts – not a static stability but a dynamic stability. Despite the day-to-day chaos, there is balance over time in the predictable shift back and forth.
Until, that is, some other force comes along to disrupt the pattern.
This might be a force more toward fascism that restricts elections to the point of futility, as in Venezuela and Russia. Or the equilibrium could be thrown off by a democratic resurgence, in the model of Brazil or Poland.
Even just maintaining the pendular equilibrium to conserve some manner of democratic regime will require those who oppose authoritarianism to boldly insist on political leaders who value democratic principles: fair elections, voting rights, civil liberties and rule of law.
Dangerously, many Americans won’t notice the end of democracy as it happens. As the political scientist Tom Pepinksy writes, life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable.
For those who pay attention, the frequency and seriousness of lawless actions can nonetheless make it difficult to sustain an organized opposition.
Until and unless the U.S. nurtures and elects political movements and leaders who make lasting democratic changes, I believe the country will continue to lurch back and forth in its pendulum swing.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jennifer Victor, George Mason University
Read more: Avoiding your neighbor because of how they voted? Democracy needs you to talk to them instead Donald Trump’s nonstop news-making can be exhausting, making it harder for people to scrutinize his presidential actions I watched Hungary’s democracy dissolve into authoritarianism as a member of parliament − and I see troubling parallels in Trumpism and its appeal to workers
Jennifer Victor serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of OpenSecrets, a non-partisan, non-profit. This is an unpaid position.
