Steven Bartlett with Anne Applebaum
Modern democracies rarely end with tanks in the streets. Instead, they die quietly when legitimately elected leaders dismantle neutral institutions, rewrite electoral rules, and use the state to enrich themselves.
Rather than violent coups, contemporary democratic collapse occurs when leaders systematically dismantle neutral institutions like independent courts, meritocratic bureaucracies, and electoral commissions to ensure they cannot lose future elections.
High-level corruption serves as both a symptom and a tool of authoritarianism, transforming the government into a mechanism for the leader's personal wealth rather than public prosperity.
Autocrats manipulate voter demographics and electoral maps through tactics like gerrymandering and restrictive identification laws to predetermine outcomes and legally disenfranchise opposition voters.