Source
Drezner (2025), LIT-022, “Is the United States Still a Liberal Democracy?”, a column dated 13 February 2025, read in NOTE-001. The account is Levitsky and Way’s (“The Path to American Authoritarianism”, Foreign Affairs, February 2025), which the record has not filed and knows only through Drezner’s long quotations. This THEORY rests on that relay.
What was actually shown
Nothing is shown in the post. It relays and endorses.
- The concept, as quoted. Competitive authoritarianism is a system in which parties compete in real elections but “the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition”. Competition is “real but unfair”. Liberal democracy is “full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties”.
- The mechanisms, as quoted. IRS targeting of donors; regulatory and legal pressure on businesses and media; and the depletion of societal opposition, including opposition that “might have materialized … but never did”.
- The cases, as quoted. Fujimori’s Peru, Chávez’s Venezuela, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia and Turkey.
- The forecast, as quoted. US democracy “will likely break down during the second Trump administration”. There will be no “classic dictatorship”: “There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them”.
- The indices, second-hand. Freedom House fell from 92 to 83 over 2014–2021 (quoted from Levitsky and Way); Polity fell to +5 for 2020 (quoted from Walter), was back to “full democracy” by 2024, and its front page in February 2025 said the US “lies at the cusp of autocracy”.
- Drezner’s own additions. Accommodation by elites who opposed Trump in 2017 “sure seems” driven by fear; the administration is laying down a “blueprint” for future populists, which he calls “more disturbing”.
What could have come out otherwise. The forecast could fail either way: a level field through 2028, or a breakdown that suspends elections. The post was written three weeks into the term and this reading does not check it against later events.
What this does not say
- That the US has become competitively authoritarian. It is a forecast, endorsed rather than argued (NOTE-001, C4, weak).
- That index verdicts are reliable. Drezner calls Polity’s scheme possibly “one slightly wonky coding schema”. A move across a category boundary can change a headline verdict while the coding is in doubt.
- That accommodation is driven by fear. Drezner’s impression (C5, assertion).
- That the account is Drezner’s. It is Levitsky and Way’s, and before them Levitsky and Ziblatt’s lineage; a THEORY on their own texts would replace this source.
Connections
- The post’s footnoted counterpoint, that the executive was then complying with court orders, is the subject of later primary records the record holds: the Minnesota show-cause transcript on unexecuted release orders, LIT-012, and the Rhode Island subpoena order, LIT-024. Neither is evidence for the account, which is about the field of electoral competition, but both document the compliance question it set aside.
- THEORY-533, Moynihan’s account of selective shutdowns, describes one route by which an incumbent could gain a power the legislature is meant to hold. It does not concern elections.