-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I contacted Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, the two NYU political scientists who, several years before that, co-authored a book entitled "The Dictator's Handbook," which outlines a novel theory of how political leaders — whether they are democratically elected politicians, unelected autocrats, or somewhere in between — acquire and hold onto power. I wanted to explore the question of what a Trump presidency might mean for the future of American democracy, which seems even more urgent eight years later. My interview with Smith and de Mesquita , published in early 2017 by Salon, was surprisingly hopeful in tone.
De Mesquita expressed the view that the United States is a “mature democracy,” and “mature democracies don’t become authoritarian.” Even though Trump had clear authoritarian and even fascist tendencies, the authors reassured me that our democratic institutions would survive — and in large part, they were right. Despite Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 election and the Jan.
6 insurrection, Joe Biden took his seat in the Oval Office and reversed some of Trump’s anti-democratic policies, such as the “ Schedule F ” executive order aimed at turning the entire executive branch into a political instrument. While countries like ours may “oscillate a bit and become more or less democratic,” de Mesquita said, there has “never” in hi.