WASHINGTON — A survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism.
In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After President Trump's election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump's second term, that figure plummeted to 55.
"That's a precipitous drop," says John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and co-director of Bright Line Watch. "There's certainly consensus: We're moving in the wrong direction."
Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.
Not all political scientists view Trump with alarm, but many like Carey who focus on democracy and authoritarianism are deeply troubled by Trump's attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office.
"We've slid into some form of authoritarianism," says Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author of How Democracies Die. "It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy."
Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, is also deeply concerned: "We are on a very fast slide into what's called competitive authoritarianism."
When these scholars use the term "authoritarianism," they aren't talking about a system like China's, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called "competitive authoritarianism," the kind scholars say they see in countries such as Hungary and Turkey.
In a competitive authoritarian system, a leader comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments — including the prosecutor's office and judiciary — with loyalists. He or she then attacks the media, universities and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party's favor.
"The government would still have elections and would nominally be democratic," says Rory Truex, a political scientist at Princeton who focuses on China. "But those elections would no longer be free and fair."
While the vast majority of scholars surveyed say Trump is pushing the country toward autocracy, other professors strongly disagree. James Campbell, a retired political scientist at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, says Trump is using legitimate presidential powers to address long-standing problems. Campbell points to Trump's use of tariffs to try to push companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. In recent decades, economic globalization led to catastrophic layoffs of everyone from furniture makers in North Carolina to auto assembly-line workers in the Midwest as firms sent work overseas, especially to China.
"I think they've done an excellent job," Campbell says of the Trump administration.
Campbell adds that he thinks many political scientists may see Trump as autocratic because they don't like him or his politics.
"I think most of them are coming from the political left," he says. "There's a comfort in all of them getting together and saying, 'Oh, Trump's a bad guy. He's authoritarian.' "
NPR reached out to the Trump administration, which has yet to respond.
But many democracy scholars say the Trump administration is using tactics employed by autocrats, and they point to specific actions. For instance, Trump's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating all the major broadcast outlets — except for Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which owns the pro-Trump Fox News Channel.
The FCC is questioning how CBS edited an interview of Trump's 2024 rival, Kamala Harris, and whether NPR and PBS are complying with regulations on corporate underwriting spots. The FCC can revoke local broadcast licenses, which could damage the networks financially.
Princeton's Scheppele says this is reminiscent of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán took aim at the business model of Hungarian media, which heavily relied on state advertising.
"Overnight, [Orbán] cuts all the advertising to the independent and opposition media," Scheppele says. "They all have a hole blown in their budget."
In another example, Trump has withheld or threatened to withhold billions of dollars from universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, citing concerns about antisemitism. Scheppele says Orbán also targeted universities that had been critical of his government.
"In the first two years, Orbán cut the university budgets by 40%," she says.
Another way to measure authoritarianism, according to Levitsky, is whether publicly opposing the government comes with a cost. He says — under Trump — it does. For instance, Trump has issued executive orders barring lawyers with firms he doesn't like from entering government buildings and representing government contractors.
Fear of government retribution is now spreading through society. A scholar who spoke to NPR for this story later asked not to be quoted, saying he feared the Trump administration might try to punish him by slashing research grants he's working on. In a recent NPR series on free speech, many people did not want to be identified by name.
But even some scholars who say Trump has autocratic tendencies think the American system should be able to withstand them.
Kurt Weyland, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, says that so far the lower courts are checking Trump. He also says Trump does not have the overwhelming popular support that autocratic leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele enjoyed and that was crucial to their ability to change their country's political systems.
For instance, Bukele, who met with Trump at the White House last week, has seen approval ratings over 90% and won reelection last year by a landslide. By contrast, a recent poll showed Trump's approval rating falling to 43% and he was reelected with just under half the popular vote.
"These populist leaders managed to engineer new constitutions that seriously concentrated power and that were the breakpoint that put those countries on the path toward competitive authoritarian rule," says Weyland, who wrote Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat: Countering Global Alarmism. "In the United States, that is out of the question."
Bright Line Watch conducted its survey in early February. It plans to put another in the field soon. Carey, one of the co-directors, expects political scientists to downgrade America's democracy even further.
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