Multiple independent research institutions have recently and repeatedly sounded the alarm that democracy is in retreat worldwide. In the United States, a British academic has painstakingly recorded more than 2,300 actions by the second Trump administration that she believes “echo those of authoritarian regimes and may pose a threat to American democracy.” The reasons for these trends are complex and manifold, but several factors stand out. First, as my colleagues and I showed in a historical analysis of several countries that experienced democratic backsliding during the last century, in nearly all cases, backsliding was triggered by political elites—mainly elected politicians, but also their corporate allies and sympathetic media—violating democratic norms, such as honesty, in the quest to expand their power.
