Assessing Autocracy

How far have we gone down the path of authoritarianism?

Image: "The World war at a glance; essential facts concerning the great conflict between democracy and autocracy" (1918). Public Domain.

Recently, a friend remarked that the US seems on its way to becoming like Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary. To which my response was: well… which one? I did not mean that as a snide remark; while Hungary and Russia are both autocratic regimes, there are significant differences between them in terms of levels of social repression and state capture. Analytically and strategically, those differences really matter as we confront the task of blocking MAGA from consolidating authoritarian rule. We all need a rapid crash course on stages of autocratization and the implications of that taxonomy for our strategic defense and, ultimately, counteroffensive.

Luckily, there exists a rich scholarly literature on authoritarianism. This is the first of a two-part (update: now three-part) series in which I will draw on that literature in order to attempt a provisional taxonomy of the emergent Trump regime. In this post, I will:

• Overview a system for classifying regimes into six broad types on the basis of two axes: authoritarianism and patrimonialism.

• Use that system to argue that the regime-type Trump aspires to is one of “patronal autocracy,” understood as an informal regime midway between democracy and dictatorship.

• Explain why that matters for our analysis of the Trump 2.0 era, and draw out some key ramifications.

In part two, I will:

• Outline a framework for defending against autocratic backsliding based on two key defense mechanisms against patronal autocratization: the separation of political powers and the autonomy of civil society.

• Use this framework to assess the extent of both our progress towards and resiliency against further authoritarianism.

In part three, I will:

• Review three forms that struggles to restore democracy take, depending on the level of autocratic capture.

• Use this framework to lay out the most likely strategic pathways for us to reverse autocracy, restore democracy, and lay the seeds for deeper-seated liberatory transformation.

• Outline some implications of the above analysis for our tactics and strategy for the coming period.

Finding our feet amidst the whirlwind

For years, the MAGA right has been attempting a “slow-motion coup” to overthrow our imperfect democracy. Since the inauguration, we have hit the coup’s warp-speed phase. These first few weeks of the Trump 2.0 era have seen a veritable Blitzkrieg of executive orders, illegal firings and arrests, security breaches, threats of trade wars, threats of real wars, and myriad other actions intended to defeat institutional firewalls, demoralize the opposition, deluge the courts, disorient the public, and distract the media.

Small wonder that many of us have felt overwhelmed. Sowing fear, confusion, and paralysis is an explicit objective of this coup attempt. Their goal, as Steve Bannon put it, is to “flood the zone with shit”—throwing so much at us, so fast, that it is impossible to keep up with (much less make sense of or respond to) it all. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a livestream the other week: “It’s important for you to understand that the paralysis and shock that you may feel right now is the point.”

Two reactions I’m noticing a lot right now (in myself and others) are numbness and panic: either shutting down, tuning out, and trying to ignore what’s happening, or else freaking out so much that we become agitated and overwhelmed. Both of these are very natural responses to external stressors; when threatened, our nervous systems automatically go into hyperarousal (fight/flight) or hypoarousal (freeze response). But if we are unable to bring these reactions under conscious control, they become counterproductive. That’s why, as AOC put it, “the first order of business is to self-regulate.”

One of our most astute thinkers of the political role of fear, Corey Robin, had this to say in the pages of N+1 recently:

There are reasons to be afraid, grounded in material reality. [...]. But when we say that fear provokes a fight-or-flight response, we’re saying that there is something in between us and the object of our fear. That something is, in part, our judgment and agency. Even though we may feel intense fear, we still have quite a bit of room for maneuver[...] Perhaps more room than we even know or realize. This is important for us to remember.

The point is not to avoid or deny our feelings, but rather—recognizing there are real reasons to be alarmed—to find that “room” from where we can exercise judgment and agency. That is a skill that we can consciously cultivate. There’s a reason military forces train soldiers in breathing exercises and mindfulness: those practices increase our ability to regain calm and focus under stressful and chaotic situations. A metaphor I find helpful is a gas pedal: rather than zero or 100 miles per hour, we want to find our way back to that 30 to 60 range from where we can act effectively.

Right-sizing our risk assessment

But right-sizing our reactions isn’t just a question of emotional regulation; it’s also a matter of being able to determine the extent and seriousness of the threat we’re facing, and then to calibrate our response accordingly. Here, too, I am noticing two trends: on the one hand, a tendency to minimize the danger; on the other, an exaggerated depiction of total apocalypse. (At their extremes, the two converge, as in the oft-repeated claim that “Amerikkka is already fascist”—which, in adopting the seemingly most maximalist position, simultaneously minimizes it.)

Many leftists have rightly criticized the overly tepid, business-as-usual approach that Congressional Democratic leadership initially took to this administration. But how many of our own organizations are guilty of the same thing, carrying on with whatever plans and priorities we had already made as if nothing had truly shifted? On the flip side, I recently witnessed an organizer suggest her group should end their voter registration program since “we probably won’t have elections in two years anyhow.”

To be clear, I have felt this push and pull myself. January 6th notwithstanding, most US Americans do not have much experience living through attempted coups or under overtly autocratic regimes. Small wonder that we struggle to make sense of a situation that is, in some key ways, unprecedented. But neither minimization nor exaggeration will serve us in developing an effective strategic response to the Trump 2.0 regime. Surely we should find some middle ground between “another day, another DNC fundraising email” and “apocalypse is here.”

Rather than mutually exclusive alternatives, it might be more helpful to think of “democracy” and “dictatorship” as two ends of a spectrum. What we need, right now, is precisely a more fine-tuned calculation that can delineate a range of options between these two extremes. The point is not to predict the future—none of us have crystal balls—but to develop more nuanced taxonomies of the present. To adapt my earlier metaphor, we could envision this as a sort of autocro-meter, where we label flourishing (social, political, and economic) democracy as “100,” and complete consolidation of fascist rule as ground zero. The questions then become: where do we situate ourselves on a scale between flourishing democracy and full fascist dictatorship? What tendential trajectories seem possible—and probable? And what does that mean for our strategic orientation as a left?

The Axis of Authoritarianism

In recent weeks, an article first published in Foreign Affairs titled “The Path to American Authoritarianism” has rightly gained traction for attempting to tackle just this question. (Click here for non-paywalled version.) Drawing on two decades of scholarly research, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that the authoritarian playbook Trump is attempting to apply is one that they call “competitive authoritarianism.” Here’s how they define it:

“Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.

In broad strokes, this seems to capture the dominant form that authoritarianism has taken in the so-called “third wave of autocratization” of recent years, as right-wing populists around the globe have swept to power through elections, only to gradually usurp and consolidate control, even while maintaining some formal trappings of democracy. This distinguishes these regimes from the “second wave” of autocratization of the 1960s and ‘70s, which was defined by overt military dictatorships (many of them, it is worth recalling, fostered by the United States). Rather than Pinochet’s Chile or Suharto’s Indonesia, in other words, think Erdogan’s Turkey or Modi’s India.

“Competitive authoritarianism” is just one name for this phenomenon; others have termed it “illiberal democracy,” “electoral authoritarianism,” or “‘soft’ authoritarianism.” Another theorist, János Kornai, simply calls it “autocracy,” distinguishing the latter from both democracy and dictatorship. Whatever we call it, each of these frameworks identifies a regime type that is distinguishable from both robust democracy and outright dictatorship. This is helpful both for resisting the left’s habitual pull towards binary thinking and for conceiving of autocracy, not as a fleeting “transitional” phase, but as a relatively stable political system of its own.

Kornai, J. (2016): The System Paradigm Revisited. Acta Oeconomica, 66(4): 547–96.

But if all these concepts allow us to identify such governments as a unique regime type, they do not yet allow us to differentiate among autocratic regimes. To stick with my metaphor, they might allow us to eliminate, say, the bottom quartile of overt dictatorship and the top quartile of relatively well-functioning social democracy, but there is still enormous variation in that 25-75 range. To better calibrate our risk assessment and strategic response, we need to specify our analysis of authoritarianism still more precisely.

In that regard, another article published in Foreign Affairs just one day earlier had important insights to offer. Like Way and Levitsky, Bálint Malovics and Bálint Magyar are scholars of authoritarianism, in their case focused primarily on the post-Soviet world. Their article “America Won’t Become Hungary” is worth reading on its own merits, and also worth putting in dialogue with Way and Levitsky’s analysis in order to get a sense of the range of assessments of the Trump 2.0 administration coming from contemporary scholars of authoritarianism. (Two other examples are Rebecca Solnit’s recent conversation with political scientist Erica Chenoweth, and Paul Krugman’s with Kim Lane Scheppele, the latter also focused on comparisons with Hungary.)

But more valuable than Magyar and Malovics’ short Foreign Policy piece is the robust conceptual framework they have developed over many years to assess the nature and extent of autocratization. While developed specifically to analyze post-Communist nations, their framework provides multiple tools that I have found useful for sharpening our analysis of democratic backsliding in the United States. The authors have done our movements the service of making all of their research freely available on their website, including their 800-page opus and a condensed “field guide” version. In the next sections, I will try to briefly summarize some key elements of their conceptual framework before applying their criteria to the Trump 2.0 era.

The Axis of Patrimonialism

Magyar and Malovics adopt a version of the three-fold division between democracy, autocracy, and dictatorship briefly outlined above. But an extremely helpful addition that they make is to add to this a second axis of assessment. In addition to measuring the extent to which a regime is more or less democratic or authoritarian, they suggest, we should also measure the extent to which it is more or less “patronal” or “patrimonial.”

These terms, which come from the same root as “patron” and “patronage,” refer broadly to systems through which more powerful people receive support and loyalty from less powerful subordinates by promising rewards and threatening punishment. Unlike patriarchal family structures, the “bonds” uniting patron and client are not based on family or kinship, and unlike, say, the feudal bond between a medieval European vassal and his liege lord, allegiance is informal (compliance is expected, but rights and obligations are not formal or codified). Many Mediterranean and Latin American peasant societies have been characterized by these kinds of patronal relationships. A more familiar example might be the mafia, in which members of crime “families” are defined by their shared loyalty to a “boss.”

It might be easiest to define patronalism by what it is not: adherence to formal institutions, rules and regulations, or impartial, impersonal systems. The sociologist Max Weber called the latter “rational-legal authority,” and saw it as the basis for the development of complex organizations in modern society. For instance, in a rational-legal organization, staffing decisions like hiring or promotion are based on qualifications and performance; in a patronal organization, on personal connections and loyalty. In a rationalized military, soldiers pledge to defend the constitution; in a patronal army, they pledge fealty to the ruler. In a rational-legal system, even powerful leaders must follow the rules—”no one is above the law.” In a patronal system, the rules are whatever the leader says they are—la loi, c’est moi.

Image: Magyar and Malovics, A Concise Field Guide to Post Communist Regimes: Actors, Institutions and Dynamics, (Budapest: CEU Press, 2022) p. 20

To some ears, “patrimonialism” might just sound like a fancy word for “corruption.” And, from a rational-legal perspective, that’s what it is. From a patrimonial perspective, however, this is just the way the world works. To call it “corruption” presupposes a shared understanding of the nature and source of legitimate authority, in other words, when that is precisely the most fundamental conflict between these two worldviews. One understands legitimacy to derive from a system of rules; for the other, legitimacy derives from the personal power of individuals and flows through their supporters, who function as an extension of their will. In simple terms, we could call this the authority of rules versus the authority of rulers. It’s the difference between “because them’s the rules” and “because he’s the boss.”

It’s easy to conflate authoritarianism and patrimonialism, but the two are analytically distinct. It is quite possible to have an authoritarian regime that is bureaucratized and rationalized, with decision-making authority tied to formal roles in a clear chain of command. Conversely, it is possible to have a procedural democracy dominated by the informal patronage networks of rival oligarchs—indeed, Magyar and Malovics argue that a number of post-Soviet states should be categorized as just such forms of “patronal democracy.” Adding an axis of “patronalism” to the tripartite axis of democracy-autocracy-authoritarianism thus allows them to double the number of conceptual “regime types” from three to six, providing a more robust conceptual vocabulary through which to discuss, assess, and classify actual existing regimes.

Magyar and Malovics’ classification system is not without flaws. In particular, we should critically interrogate the binary distinction they draw between the irrational, concrete, and personal social relations of “patronalism” and the rational, abstract and impersonal social relations they simply call “non-patronalism.” What the latter actually describes is capitalist social relations, and the fact that they cannot find this (or any) name for it reveals the extent to which they assume it as an unquestioned norm. Associating concrete, personal relations with domination, they ignore the possibility of non-coercive and voluntary ways of being-together (cooperatives, gift economies). Associating abstract, impersonal relationships with fairness and freedom, they ignore the intrinsic alienation, coercion, and unfreedom of the nominally “free” market—itself the very foundation of Marx’s critique of political economy.

As socialists, we ultimately seek to transcend both the irrational, personal domination of patrimonial social relations and the rationalized, impersonal domination of capitalist market relations towards a social system that is at once rational, interpersonal, and emancipatory. Magyar and Malovics’ typology literally cannot conceive this possibility. This does not negate the utility of their framework; it merely points to its limitations. In unmodified form, their sixfold schema of regime types cannot help us map a path towards democratic socialism. But it is extremely helpful for tracking regression from (imperfect) capitalist democracy towards even more economically coercive and politically repressive forms of rule. And this, of course, is exactly the metric that we need right now.

Trump: a patronal autocrat aspiring to a mafia state

With the conceptual framework outlined above, we now have the tools we need to more precisely delineate the kind of regime that Trump (and Trumpism) aspire to. As Jonathan Rauch recently noted in The Atlantic, Trump’s orientation towards governance is patrimonial: based on informal loyalty and connections, rather than formal systems. Simultaneously, the authoritarian regime he and his supporters are attempting to establish should be thought of as an autocratic one, distinguishable from both democracy and dictatorship. Combining these two components gives us “patronal autocracy”—precisely one of the six regime types identified by Magyar and Malovics. Based on their criteria, let’s sketch a brief description of this “ideal” regime type. (The below description is “ideal” in two senses. First, it is a general description of an abstract type. Second, this is what Trumpism aspires to, not what it has actually managed to achieve… yet.)

A patronal autocracy is an informal regime run by and in the interests of an “adopted political family,” a patronal network dominated by a chief patron who exercises unconstrained informal power over political, economic, and social spheres.​ The chief patron uses personal loyalty and discretional rewards and punishments to maintain control, often holding a formal title like president or prime minister. The de jure ruling party does not de facto govern, but rather rubber-stamps decisions made by the patron's “court,” an informal body of close decision-makers. The bureaucracy is filled with patronal servants who act on the chief patron's orders. The judiciary is neutralized, providing impunity for the adopted political family, and corruption is centralized and monopolized by the regime.

As with all autocracies, a democratic facade is formally maintained, including semi-competitive elections, nominal (if weak) civil liberties, a legal political opposition, and the absence of widespread, overt state repression. However, democratic regime change is effectively precluded by the regime’s domination of all branches of government, the weakness of formal checks and balances, and selective intimidation of opponents (threats of legal action or investigation, etc). In addition, a patronal autocracy restricts—but does not formally forbid—public deliberation and the independent role of civic society through the extent of its patronal influence over ostensibly non-government entities such as universities, media, and NGOs.

Patronal autocracies differ in several significant ways from non-patronal ones—what Magyar and Lamovics call “conservative autocracies.” One distinction they make is around ideology. Conservative autocracies are ideologically-driven regimes where the ruling party exists to advance a coherent political program and vision for society. In a patronal autocracy, in contrast, the dominant political commitment of the ruling clique is to advance the interests of the patronal network itself. On the surface, the ideological commitments of conservative and patronal autocracies might be identical. However, in the one case, the ruling party is organized to advance the ideological project; in the other, the ideology is mobilized to advance the interests of the ruling (patronal) elite.

In this sense the regime operates in a structurally similar way to the mafia, not necessarily in terms of illicit or criminal activities, but in terms of creating an artificial kinship structure, which they call “an adopted political family,” defined above all by its commitment to absolute in-group loyalty. That is why Magyar and Malovics argue that another term for “patronal autocracy” is mafia state. As they put it: “In essence, the mafia state is the business venture of the adopted political family managed through the instruments of public authority: the privatized form of a parasite state.”

Implications for our analysis of the Trump regime

I believe the framework of “patronal autocracy” is useful for clarifying several otherwise puzzling aspects of the Trump regime. Here are a few implications:

• Trump’s ideological incoherence is a feature, not a bug. Many of us are struggling to discern the underlying ideological motivations of the Trump regime. That’s because, to put it provocatively, there aren’t any. As a patronal autocrat, Trump’s main driving force is his immediate direct perceived interest. Of course, all elites are (to a certain extent) self-interested, but most of them articulate their interests in relation to a relatively stable, coherent political and ideological project. Not so Trump. The coherence of his project is not found in its ideological content, but in the service of that content to the growth and consolidation of a patronal network that he controls. In other words, it is a coherent structure of governance, with amorphousness as to its program and contents.

• Most political objectives are means to an end. Make no mistake, the political objectives of the Trump regime—from repressive anti-trans policies to mass deportation of immigrants—are deadly serious. But for Trump, they are means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. As such, his commitment to these and other objectives is “flexible”—mobilized when they advance patronal and autocratic capture, demobilized when he calculates that changing course will better advance his interests. This approach is more instinct than strategy, but Trump’s instincts are often (though not always) uncannily attuned to changes in the balance of power and the mood of the masses. Thus, not only can we expect Trump’s lines of attack to fluctuate, we should attempt to interpret such fluctuations almost like a “seismograph,” and look for what they may signal about underlying shifts in objective and subjective conditions.

• But the assault on the federal government is an end to itself. Impartial, administrative bureaucracy—with its rules, regulations and procedures—is the very antithesis of patrimonialism. Likewise, the longstanding tradition of relative autonomy for federal regulatory and independent executive agencies is antithetical to consolidation of autocratic power beneath an all-powerful executive. The dismantling of the federal bureaucracy is thus a, if not the core component of Trump’s patronal autocratic project. If there is one political objective to which he will remain staunchly committed, this is it.

• Trump is a mobster, but many in MAGA are militants. Patronal autocracies are cynical, amoral regimes. But many of MAGA’s most fervent supporters are ideologically driven crusaders. We should distinguish MAGA mobsters, whose deepest loyalty is to the MAGA mafia itself, from MAGA militants, whose deepest loyalty is to a political project for which they see Trump as the (witting or unwitting) instrument. Further, we need to distinguish among militants. Indeed, there are at least three distinct sets of “crusaders” in the Trump court: Christian nationalists like Russell Vought, nativist populists like Steve Bannon, and libertarian plutocrats like Elon Musk. All three are deeply committed to Trump’s attacks on the administrative state, but their motives for this are different: for Vought, it is in order to install Christian theocracy; for Musk, to return all power to a tiny economic elite; for Bannon, to redistribute power from the elite to “traditional” American families. To be ready to exploit (or foster) divisions, it will be helpful to understand these distinctions.

• When it comes to Putin, boss recognizes boss. Many have speculated about Trump’s spectacular pivots on US foreign policy, and notably on Russia. Does this represent a strategic attempt to split Russia from China? Ideological indoctrination by Russian agents? It’s something much more basic. Putin sees the world like Trump does—through the eyes of a (mob) boss. Trump does not understand the language or logic of legal-rational regimes, whether they be Western European liberal democracies or China’s “people’s democratic dictatorship.” He does not exactly seek an alliance with Putin—the very term belongs to the rules-based order that he fundamentally rejects. Instead, Trump sees the world as a lawless jungle, and seeks an informal agreement to divide up that jungle among various “bosses,” just like the Five Families once divided New York. Trump envisions himself as the capo dei capi—the boss of the bosses—in a lawless, multipolar world.

Finally, one of the most important takeaways is that we can learn lessons from other (existing or attempted) patronal autocracies, both about how the Trump regime is likely to try to consolidate authoritarianism, and what we can do to counteract this. In the second half of this series, I will again draw on Magyar and Malovics to outline a framework for defeating autocracy and restoring democracy. See here for part two.

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Bennett Carpenter (they/them) is a queer Southern organizer, trainer and movement strategist. They are a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.