Although Donald Trump, former president of the U.S., is not known for his fondness of Emerging Markets, calling Haiti, El Salvador and some unspecified African countries “shitholes” and labeling his country’s neighbours south of the Rio Grande drug dealers, criminals and rapists, he apparently had the desire for the U.S. to become a banana republic when, on January 6th, he inspired his supporters to siege the Capitol. Fortunately, when his fan base wandered into the U.S. Senate they were more interested in taking selfies than in bringing about a coup d’état, which of course is the ultimate defining moment of a banana republic.
The 47th president of the United States…?
(Military) coups still happen, witness Egypt and Thailand in recent years, but a more ordinary route to dictatorship is to weaken democracy from within. A good example is Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Initially, Chávez chose the banana republic route and actually staged a coup in 1992 to unseat the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez but was unsuccessful and landed in prison. After being pardoned in 1994, he established a new party and won the presidential elections in 1998 by railing against the governing elite. Chávez promised to use the country’s oil wealth to fund social reforms. Spending he did, incurring large budget deficits. At first, this seemed to work and his popularity rose. He won elections for a new constituent assembly in 1999 and the next year presidential elections were held, which he won as well. In the following years, El Comandante, as he likened to call himself, put his cronies in government jobs, suppressed the media (Chávez got his own Sunday morning radio show, “Aló Presidente”), locked up political enemies, weakened the judiciary by packing the courts with allies and scrapped presidential term limits, whilst at the same time the economy soured and corruption took hold. Elections were held but over time became less and less fair and free. As it is always useful to have a common enemy to divert attention from disastrous policies, Chávez blamed the Yanquis for everything bad that happened. Chávez’ job was finished by his successor Nicolás Maduro. In 2017, a Chávismo-controlled constituent assembly usurped Congress, thereby killing the last (weakened) bastion of democracy in Venezuela.
Venezuela may be a somewhat extreme example, but look what happens in Hungary. The country’s media are under attack, the judiciary is packed with cronies, electoral laws are rigged (for example, constituency boundaries were redrawn to favour the ruling Fidesz party), school curriculums are strongly influenced by the government, politicians’ access to offices of public buildings is restricted, etc. Hungary’s enemies are George Soros, asylum seekers and “Brussels” (despite receiving a mountain of money each year from the EU). Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, aptly named Hungary’s governance as an “illiberal democracy”. Poland is following in the footsteps of Hungary.
In their book “How Democracies Die”, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two Harvard professors, state that democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box: get elected and then grab power from within. They list 4 common indicators for democratic backsliding: weak commitment to democratic rules; discrediting the legitimacy of political opponents; toleration of violence, where useful; and curtailing of liberties of any opponents, including the media. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s strongman, was democratically elected in 2003 and since then has followed the script admirably. Most people now will agree that Mr. Erdogan’s leadership is of an authoritarian nature, especially after a coup attempt in 2016 which led to a fierce crackdown on his perceived opponents (the so-called Gülenists). He prosecuted journalists, closed media outlets and declared war on the Kurds for political gain (and jailed Selahattin Demirtaş, just in case). What many illiberal democracies, to use Orbán’s etiquette, have in common is that there still is the pretence that people have a say in who will govern them. In Putin’s Russia, elections are held and a parliament convenes but the chances that Mr. Putin will be removed from office are slim.
Back to Mr. Trump. Possibly inspired by his friends, Messrs. Erdogan and Putin, he did a lot of things right to kill democracy. He packed the courts with ultraconservative allies; he effectively used “his” media (Twitter, Fox News) to woo his voter base and convinced them that other news agencies (CNN, NYT) were fabricating fake news; he continuously discredited his country’s institutions (FBI, CDC, FED, etc.) and the electoral system (claiming vote theft without providing any evidence); he demonized Democrats as lunatic communists (and chanted to lock up Hillary); he used his powerful position to extract personal gains (asking Ukraine’s president to prosecute the son of his main political opponent, Joe Biden, and threatening to withhold funds if his ask would not be fulfilled). Basically, to sum it up, Donald did a awesome job, a fantastic job, the greatest job ever (to finish his term with a coup attempt was a bad idea, though). Fortunately, U.S. institutions coped with Trump’s challenge, but trampling democratic rights apparently is no longer the preserve of Emerging Markets regimes. It is worrisome to see that many people still do not realize what was happening…