Is the United States slipping into authoritarianism by the standards of western liberal democracies?

The frank answer is that the United States remains a democracy, but one that shows measurable, accelerating erosion on the very criteria by which western liberal democracies are judged. The direction of travel matters in such assessments as much as the present location. On multiple independent indices, from all of right-leaning, left-leaning and centrist analysts, is that the United States now sits below most of her peer democracies and has recorded declines on core liberal-democratic safeguards in recent years. Whether this amounts to an authoritarian slide depends on one’s threshold, but the warning lights are flashing. 

How liberal democracies are judged

By conventional standards, a liberal democracy requires more than competitive elections. It also demands robust constraints on executive power, an independent judiciary, civilian control over security services, plural and independent media, free association and protest, and equality before the law. Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a useful diagnostic: leaders who reject the rules of the game, deny opponents’ legitimacy, tolerate political violence, or curtail civil liberties are exhibiting authoritarian traits. This is not a crude yes/no test of regime type; rather it is a checklist of danger signs that, if normalised, corrode liberal democracy from within. 

What the scorecards say

Independent monitors now place the United States below many western peers on several pillars. The Economist Intelligence Unit continues to classify the country as a “flawed democracy”, ranking 28th in its 2024 index. The World Justice Project places the United States 26th of 142 countries on rule of law, behind most advanced democracies. Reporters Without Borders ranks the United States 57th of 180 on press freedom in 2025, a position more typical of mid-tier democracies than of the leading liberal group. Freedom House still rates the United States as "Free", but its annual reports emphasise the global and domestic trend of elected leaders circumventing checks and balances. None of these evaluations proves authoritarianism; together they describe slippage relative to the standards set by western liberal democracies. 

Executive power and the rule of law

Two legal developments are central to any assessment of drift. First, the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States (2024) recognised criminal immunity for a president’s “core” official acts and presumptive immunity for other official conduct. Scholars across the spectrum have warned that, depending on how lower courts apply it, the ruling risks weakening criminal accountability for abuses of official power. Secondly, in Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, curbing judicial deference to expert agencies and thereby shifting power over statutory interpretation from the administrative state to the courts. These were lawful decisions by an independent judiciary; yet taken together they alter the practical checks on the presidency and the bureaucracy in ways that could, in the wrong hands, facilitate overreach. 

The institutional picture is not unidirectional. In 2023 the Court rejected the maximalist “independent state legislature” theory in Moore v. Harper, preserving state-level constitutional checks on how federal elections are run. That ruling shores up one crucial guardrail even as other guardrails are re-engineered. 

Politicisation of the state and civil service

A second arena is the boundary between political leadership and the permanent state. On 20 January 2025 the administration reinstated and amended the 2020 “Schedule F” executive order, designed to reclassify swathes of policy-influencing civil servants and make them easier to dismiss. Proponents describe this as “accountability”; critics warn it allows loyalty tests and enables large-scale politicisation of the professional bureaucracy. Congress’s research service has already analysed the legal stakes, and watchdogs have mapped the potential impact on impartial administration. In comparative perspective, replacing a merit-based civil service with politically dependent cadres is a classic pathway by which democracies tilt toward illiberal governance. 

Media freedom and the public sphere

A free, plural press is a defining test in western liberal democracies. The United States’ press-freedom ranking has deteriorated and now sits at 57th globally, with RSF (Reporters with Borders) flagging pressure on journalists’ safety, hostile rhetoric, and structural economic shocks to newsrooms. The index is not infallible, but the direction and relative standing against peer democracies are hard to ignore. When combined with increasingly aggressive politics around public broadcasting and the investigative press, the environment for independent scrutiny is less secure than it was a decade ago. 

Elections, districts and the right to protest

Elections remain genuinely competitive, which is decisive; alternation in power is still possible and occurs. Yet two trends trouble the baseline. First, federal courts will not police partisan gerrymandering after Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), leaving extreme map-drawing to be fought piecemeal in state courts; some states have begun to push back, but the national incentive structure persists. Secondly, state-level voting and protest legislation continues at an unusually rapid pace. The Brennan Center documents sustained waves of restrictive voting bills since 2021, and the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has tracked a multi-year surge of anti-protest measures. In isolation none of this equals authoritarianism; taken together, it raises the costs of participation unevenly and places strain on legitimacy. 

What still holds

For balance, several guardrails remain strong by comparative standards. Federalism diffuses power; state courts have, in places, constrained partisan cartography; civil society remains litigious and resilient; and national elections are administered by a decentralised system of states' rights that is difficult to capture wholesale. The Supreme Court’s Moore v. Harper decision reinforces that state constitutional checks still bind legislatures in federal election administration. These are not minor comforts: they are the reasons the United States remains a democracy rather than an electoral autocracy. 

A comparative judgement

Placed alongside western liberal peers, the fairest characterisation is that the United States is an impaired liberal democracy trending, at the margin, toward illiberal practices. That judgment rests on independent rankings, legal re-engineering of constraints on the executive, efforts to politicise the civil service, deteriorating press freedom conditions, and sustained contests over who may vote, how districts are drawn, and how dissent is policed. V-Dem’s 2025 report warns of a broader global autocratisation wave and, strikingly, flags the United States as a country where recent events raise the risk of a transition away from democracy if guardrails fail. It is not a fait accompli; it is a live risk. 

What would reverse the slide

Three classes of reform would align the United States more closely with the standards she helped define. The first is insulation of the professional civil service from partisan purges, whether by statute or litigation limiting the scope of Schedule F-type reclassifications (a first-term Trump executive order that makes many federal civil service positions easier to hire and fire, hence making them political appointments). The second is renewed protections for equal participation, including independent redistricting at state level, clearer federal standards on voter access consistent with recent Supreme Court constraints, and narrow, content-neutral rules for protest that protect campus and street assembly. The third is a thicker legal shield for independent journalism, from a federal reporter’s shield law to structural support for local news that avoids government capture. None of these reforms requires constitutional upheaval; all of them would move key indicators in the right direction on the very indices by which liberal democracies are assessed. 

An impartial analysis of the current situation

By western liberal standards, the United States is not yet authoritarian; she is, however, a democracy under measurable strain. The slide is not uniform and not inevitable, but the combination of loosened constraints on executive power, attempts to politicise the bureaucracy, worsening media conditions, and cumulative erosion of democratic participation is the signature pattern of democratic backsliding. Democracies usually erode gradually, then suddenly. The prudent conclusion is to treat the current moment as a narrow window for repair rather than a verdict foregone.