The GOP's authoritarian turn - more graphics from V-Dem

I wanted to follow up on a previous post about the authoritarian turn that the GOP has taken this century. Both of the following graphics I obtained from a working paper (no longer online, regrettably) by V-Dem in 2020. I seriously doubt the trends have changed. The Guardian had a good summary of the findings. For our purposes I am using the term authoritarianism and illiberalism as synonyms. 

This first figure shows two dimensions: economic left/right and illiberalism (authoritarianism). Both dimensions start at 0 and end at 1. A party espousing economic conservatism would appear closer to 1 on the economic dimension. A party espousing authoritarian approach to governing will be closer to 1 on the Illiberalism dimension. Notice that Venezuela's ruling party actually scores a perfect 1 on illiberalism. The GOP appears in orange print and the Democratic Party appears in blue print. Other governing political parties appear in gray, and we get a baseline idea of where autocracies tend to rank (somewhere in the center economically but very authoritarian otherwise) and democracies tend to rank (pretty darned close to 0 in terms of illiberalism, but in the middle economically). 

Notice where the Democratic Party and the GOP were in 2000. Economically, the Democratic Party was pretty close to Germany's SPD, which makes sense. Both parties are center-left parties with broad coalitions, and probably are a bit to the right economically compared to other labor, liberal, and democratic socialist parties. The GOP in 2000 was to the right economically of many of the parties listed in this first figure and a noticeably more authoritarian than comparable conservative EU parties like the CDU (Germany) and the People's Party (Spain) as well as the UK's Tories (Conservative Party). 

Now let's take a look at how the two American parties evolve along these two dimensions. The Democratic Party of 2018 is really barely different than it was in 2018. Economically the Democratic Party would have been practically identical in 2018 to its 2000 economic policies. There's no noticeable movement toward or away from authoritarianism, and to be fair, there really isn't much farther away from authoritarianism for the Democratic Party to go. The GOP is another matter. There is a bit of a wobble between 2000, 2002, and 2004, although the party is generally similar in terms of its illiberalism score for each year. Basically, a person voting in any of those years would recognize the GOP of the time to be espousing a relatively unregulated market economy and generally supported the democratic process. Anyone who was denouncing the presidency of George W. Bush as fascist should probably reflect on that for a bit and reconsider. The party makes a slight turn towards illiberalism starting in 2006 although again there is a bit of a wobble between 2006 and 2010. At that point, we could say that the GOP was almost identical to the UK's Tories. After that, we start to see in the GOP a consistent move away from democratic values. The shift is subtle in 2012 and 2014. The Tea Party movement simply gave the US a conservative party that was a bit edgier than the UK's Tories. Once Donald Trump enters the chat, the GOP rapidly moves toward the illiberalism of India's BJP and Hungary's Fidesz. We notice that in 2016 and then another minor illiberal shift in 2018. I wish the data did not stop there. I would not be surprised if the GOP had measurably moved further away from democracy and more toward illiberalism/authoritarianism, especially as the old-school Reagan Republicans and neoconservatives found themselves pushed out of the party.

The next figure compares the Democratic Party and GOP on a variety of dimensions using the years 2000 and 2018 as anchor points. We can see that for many of these dimensions that the Democratic Party does not change at all during that 18 year period. The Democratic Party became a little more populist during that period, which I suspect was in part due to the influence of Bernie Sanders and like-minded politicians within the Democratic coalition. Some of the turn toward populism may have been a reaction to the GOP's wild swing toward's populism. Note that the Democratic Party and the GOP were practically identical on that dimension in 2000. That shift is noticeable. So too, is the GOP shift toward favoring violating minority rights between 2000 and 2018 (which has most likely worsened since 2018), disrespecting political opponents (in contrast to the Democratic Party) and encouraging political violence (again in contrast to the Democratic Party, which remains unchanged throughout the years). Trump's rhetoric caught on in the GOP and harming political opponents who are regularly demonized have become standard GOP talking points. The GOP of 2000 was nothing like that. You can see some of the shifts on some other social issues among the two parties, but again the main takeaway is that the Democratic Party of 2018 was still very recognizable when compared to the Democratic Party of 2000. The GOP on the other hand had become a different party when it comes to matters of democracy and individual rights and liberties by 2018 when compared to 2000. One other thing to note is that the GOP of 2018, for all the populist talk was economically every bit as conservative as it was in 2000. So, those folks who thought they were voting for a workers party when they voted for GOP candidates might have been disappointed if they bothered to notice the economic policies that were actually pushed. A failed effort quash the Affordable Care Act and a massive tax cut for the wealthy and for corporations strike me as the sorts of economic policies that are in character for the GOP. Those are not policies that help anyone identifying as working class. So the populist rhetoric will be disconnected considerably from economic policy when it comes to the GOP. If anything, there has been a small but noticeable shift to the right in terms of economic policy by the GOP.

My hope is that you have a better understanding of what I am talking about when I say that the GOP has had a dramatic shift away from democratic values and toward a much more authoritarian approach to campaigning and governing. That does not bode well for those of us in the US when one of our two major parties has turned its back on the process and values of democracy. There is no obvious political party for American economic conservatives who still value the democratic principles that many of us have taken for granted for years. That is not a sustainable situation. The danger, of course, is that the GOP as an authoritarian party manages to capture all branches of the US government and then effectively ends the republic as we know it. I'd consider that a high risk currently and likely for the foreseeable future. In the interim, I don't see how the Democratic Party maintains its current economic policies as it absorbs more and more conservative-leaning independents and former GOP leaders and members. A rightward shift, even if subtle, strikes me as plausible. I am less concerned about a shift in economic policies and can agree to disagree when necessary and accept needed compromises in order to govern effectively. The stark shift toward illiberalism by the GOP should be very worrying to us all. Every time I've heard a pundit state that the fever will break in the GOP and that it will return to what it was in 2000, I've ended up looking back and noticed that those pundits' comments did not age well at all. The fever has shown no signs of breaking, and it appears that the shift towards authoritarianism in the GOP is largely complete. I won't predict the future, but I would expect the next several election cycles, and the moments in between, to be quite turbulent in the US.