Another Trump term?

Based on experiences of autocratic political movements that regain power, it would be worse than the first

COMMENT | TOM GINDBURG & AZIZ HUQ | Would a second Donald Trump presidency really imperil American democracy? Influential commentators suggest that the former president is too “weak,” too desperate to be popular, or simply not “smart” enough to be a dictator. But American history lacks any real precedent, and other countries’ recent experiences suggest that a political movement with autocratic tendencies will become more ruthless and effective a second time around – especially after an electoral defeat.

Here’s how it tends to play out: A first-time leader or a new party gains national power, only to suffer a bitter electoral defeat after a single term. This experience has a radicalising effect, and the party or leader becomes determined never to lose again. When the party does win a second time, it quickly moves to destroy the institutions and rules that could threaten its hold on power.

Exhibit A is Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz party has governed Hungary twice. The first time, between 1998 and 2002, Orbán generally operated as a conventional economic conservative. Though he bridled a bit at democratic norms, he never drifted outside the European mainstream. But after losing in 2002, Fidesz spent eight years in opposition. When Orbán returned to power in 2010, he was determined never to be defeated again. By gerrymandering the legislature, changing voter-eligibility rules, and capturing the election commission, courts, and state media, he made it practically impossible for the opposition to win.

A similar story played out in Poland under its Law and Justice (PiS) government. Founded by twin brothers Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński, PiS first held power between 2005 and 2007, when it was part of a coalition and focused on economic inequality and traditional Catholic values. But after the party’s ouster from government in 2007, and Lech’s death in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, Jarosław began railing against real and imagined foes. When PiS won an outright parliamentary majority in 2015, it shifted its focus to dismantling Poland’s democratic institutions.

Among other things, the PiS government packed the Constitutional Tribunal, redrew the electoral map, and seized control of the media commission and judicial appointments. State media became a PiS tool, and opposition parties lost their traditional committee roles in parliament, robbing them of their platform for criticizing the government. But unlike Fidesz, PiS’s efforts to tilt the electoral playing field weren’t enough. It lost power in October 2023 to a coalition of pro-European, pro-democracy parties.

Finally, consider India’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although it tasted power briefly as a small part of a broader coalition government in 1989, its first solo stint in office came between 1999 and 2004. Its leader at the time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, focused on economic liberalization and improving relations with Pakistan and China, and any effort to “saffronize” the country remained limited.

Like Fidesz and PiS, the BJP eventually lost power in a fair election. But in 2014, Narendra Modi led the party to a landslide victory. As chief minister of Gujarat, he previously had presided over rapid economic growth and anti-Muslim riots that left up to 2,000 people dead. When he became prime minister, he doubled down on economic liberalization but also undermined press independence, assailed critics of the BJP, and turned a blind eye to violence by Hindu social movements against Muslims and their other perceived foes.

Then, in 2019, Modi revoked the contested Muslim-majority Kashmir region’s special constitutional status and imposed direct military rule, as well as pushing through a new citizenship law that disenfranchised some Muslims – making the BJP harder to defeat. Even though the BJP fell dramatically short of its ambitions in the general election earlier this year, international watchdogs now classify Modi’s India as an electoral autocracy, not a full democracy.

The common element in these three cases is a charismatic leader who comes to reject the idea that his opponents can ever be trusted with power. Defeat is the midwife of anti-democratic ire. When an autocratic movement gains control of the state’s machinery a second time, inexperience no longer impedes it from attacking institutions directly.

The parallels between these cases and Trump’s MAGA movement should be obvious. Like the transformed BJP, PiS, and Fidesz, today’s Republican Party represents a sharp break from its own recent past. As American parties have often done, it underwent a profound metamorphosis. It is now distinct from its Reagan-era incarnation.

To be sure, there are continuities between Trump’s race-baiting rhetoric and the Republican Southern Strategy of the 1970s and 1980s. But Trump was a political outsider in 2016 who broke from – and then simply broke – the party establishment. The 2024 Republican National Convention showcased a personalist party fundamentally different from the GOP of 2008 or 201

As with Fidesz, PiS, and the BJP, MAGA was a novice movement in 2016. It plainly didn’t know how to operate the levers of government effectively, and faced pushback on all fronts as a consequence. If given another chance, though, it would have the benefit of experience. Beyond Trump, allied institutions, such as the Heritage Foundation with its Project 2025 blueprint, are far more prepared than they were in January 2017.

Moreover, like Fidesz, PiS, and the BJP, electoral defeat has not mellowed the Republican temperament. The Republican rank-and-file continue to reward down-ballot candidates who share Trump’s anti-democratic beliefs, and who will join him in refusing to recognize defeat in a fair election. The movement’s admiration for Orbán is emblematic of this trend. Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, right-wing luminaries like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, and the Conservative Political Action Conference (which convened in Budapest in 2022) all hail Orbán as the vanguard for an insurgent global illiberalism. The Republican Party has already advanced a long way down the path taken in Hungary, Poland, and India. Whatever Trump’s personal limitations, he now leads a movement with ample talent and experience. Having learned from that experience, and from similar movements elsewhere, another Trump administration would be far more effective at wielding – and maintaining – power.