Carnegie Report Warns of Rapid Democratic Erosion Under Donald Trump
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports that Donald Trump is aggressively consolidating presidential power more rapidly than similar autocratic leaders in other nations.
Scholars from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report that Donald Trump is aggressively dismantling limits on presidential power to consolidate control. The analysis concludes that the administration is moving more rapidly and creatively than international peers in countries such as Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil, with the Trump team acting with uncommon early momentum to consolidate power.
The report identifies three primary tactics used to achieve these ends: dominating the executive branch by firing non-aligned personnel, overriding congressional appropriations and court rulings, and curbing the independence of civil society by threatening federal funding for law firms and universities. Scholars note that the administration has relied predominantly on states of emergency, executive orders, and rhetorical tactics rather than legislative pathways.
While the authors state that the United States is not yet a dictatorship and that core democratic institutions remain intact, they describe the current state of the country as competitive authoritarianism. This shift is characterized by a rapid erosion of democratic norms that exceeds the pace seen in other typical cases of democratic backsliding.
