A Field Manual of Stages of Democratic Decline and Authoritarian Takeover

Part One

Modern democracies rarely collapse overnight. They erode in stages. Elected leaders with authoritarian ambitions exploit democracy’s openness to dismantle it from within, often legally. They chip away at institutional safeguards, spread distrust, and create a personal regime. Through understanding history, we see a playbook of stages emerge. Each stage details what ordinary citizens would see around them and the likelihood of reversing the situation.

From relentless assaults on the free press to normative contempt for institutional checks, Americans across the spectrum are asking whether we’ve already passed the tipping point. In part one of this two-part series, we’ll dissect several stages of a budding authoritarian regime.