NPR's "Word of the Week" on May 13 was "competitive authoritarianism," a term Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way coined in 2002 to describe Serbia, Kenya, and Peru — countries that hold elections but where the ruling party uses state power to tilt the field. Levitsky says he never imagined applying it to the United States; his February 2025 Foreign Affairs essay said he is applying it now.

1. Yes, We're Already In It (Levitsky, Way, V-Dem, 500-scholar survey)

The diagnostic criteria for competitive authoritarianism are now met in the United States, and the academic consensus on this is one-sided enough to be the news itself.

The scholars who built the category say the category now applies. Levitsky and Way's February 2025 Foreign Affairs essay, "The Path to American Authoritarianism," argued the administration's early moves could herald an "irreversible transformation of the U.S. political system." Their specific predictions: IRS targeting of Democratic donors; tax and regulatory scrutiny of businesses funding civil rights groups; costly defamation suits against critical media; retaliatory regulatory action against critical outlets' parent companies. The follow-up essay was blunter: "the United States followed a similar path under Trump in 2025, and its authoritarian turn was faster and far-reaching than those that occurred in the first year of other such regimes" — Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, India.

The political-science profession largely agrees. A spring 2025 survey of more than 500 political scientists found the rating of US democracy dropped from 67 to 55 in the first weeks of Trump's second term — and the "vast majority" thought the country was moving "swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism." The V-Dem Institute's 2026 report puts the US back at 1965 democracy levels, "unprecedented in modern times" for speed of decline.

2. Not Yet, The Checks Are Still Working (institutionalists, moderate scholars)

Competitive authoritarianism requires opposition press, courts, and politicians to be substantially impaired — in the US, they are all still functioning, even if degraded.

The cleanest empirical test of the label is whether the opposition can still operate, and the opposition is still operating. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration; state governments have sued and won; major newspapers publish critical coverage daily; opposition politicians win and hold office; opposition donors fund campaigns without immediate consequence. NPR's piece itself flagged the institutionalist counterpoint: despite repeated Trump calls for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired, Kimmel remains on the air. That, in this view, is the marker that separates degraded democracy from hybrid regime.

Degraded democracy is not the same thing as a hybrid regime, and the distinction does real diagnostic work. The Toda Peace Institute's Report 227, "Democratic Resilience in the United States," lays out the case: US courts, state governments, congressional Republicans on specific issues, the free press, and civil society have repeatedly pushed back on administration actions. A system in which those checks still function is, in this analysis, not yet competitive authoritarian, even if it is sliding. The "competitive" half of the term implies a tilt; the institutionalist response is that the field is uneven, but the game has not stopped.

The category may also be premature. Levitsky's prediction list is forward-looking — IRS targeting, defamation suits, regulatory retaliation — and the "not yet" camp distinguishes between an administration trying to tilt the field and an administration that has tilted it. The line between those is where the diagnosis lives, and which side of the line the US is on depends on what the next two years actually deliver.

3. The Label Itself Is The Argument (conservatives, American Affairs)

The academic consensus is also a political consensus, and "competitive authoritarianism" is doing partisan work that the term's clinical sound is meant to obscure.

Political science is not a neutral observer in this case. American Affairs Journal published "Authoritarianism, Reform, or Capture?: Democracy in Trump's America" in August 2025, arguing the academic consensus reflects substantive policy disagreement repackaged as constitutional crisis. The 500-scholar survey, in this framing, captures the political distribution of the political-science profession at least as much as it captures the state of US democracy.

The substantive critique is about what counts as authoritarian. Many of the actions Levitsky cites — executive orders, regulatory actions, prosecutions, sweeping use of federal authority — are within the constitutional powers of the executive branch and have been used by administrations of both parties. Calling lawful executive action "competitive authoritarianism," in this view, inflates the term, and the inflation is the point: it lets opponents brand normal political conflict as a regime-level emergency.

This camp is not arguing nothing is happening. It is arguing the framing matters. "Authoritarianism, reform, or capture" — the American Affairs title — is a real question: are we watching a constitutional system being broken, a deliberate restructuring of administrative power, or a partisan capture of agencies that was already politicized? The conservative critique is that Levitsky's framework picks the most alarming answer in advance and lets the diagnostic do the political work.

Where This Lands

The scholars who invented the category are now applying it to the United States, the broader political-science profession is overwhelmingly with them, and V-Dem's quantitative measures back up the diagnosis. On the other hand, the institutions a competitive authoritarian regime is supposed to have neutralized — federal courts, the opposition press, opposition politicians, opposition donors — are still functioning, however degraded, and a label that captures Venezuela and Hungary may not yet fit a country where the most prominent critic of the president still hosts a late-night show. Whether we are already there, sliding fast, or simply in a louder-than-usual political fight probably depends less on which set of scholars you trust than on which test you apply.

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