Defiance

• The reason has less to do with Trump and his ambitions than with how power dynamics have shifted within the Republican Party.
• And typical parties tend to select leaders who rise up the ranks of the party, having worked with other party elites along the way.
• There are three reasons personalist parties are harmful to democracy, all of which have clear parallels to experiences with Trump and the Republican Party.

1. Loyalty to the person, not the party

• A classic indicator of party personalization is the ouster of politically experienced people in the party elite, who are often highly qualified and more independent of the leader – and their replacement with less experienced people who are personally loyal to the leader.
• These people are more likely to view their political success as being intertwined with that of the leader rather than the party.

2. Official endorsement of leader’s actions

• In personalist parties, elites endorse the leader’s actions, cueing voters to do the same.
• Ordinary citizens who support personalist parties often go along with leaders’ efforts to dismantle democracy, even if they care about democracy, because they are highly receptive to signals provided by the party elite.

3. Polarizing society with controversy

• While many kinds of leaders demonize their political opponents, we have found that personalist party leaders’ anti-democratic behaviors – such as attempting to overturn an election they’ve lost – split society into polarized factions: those who support them and everyone else.
• Former President Hugo Chavez’s power grabs splintered Venezuelan society, dividing citizens over what the rules of the game should be and who should have access to power.
• Chavez’s actions, which faced no resistance from those in his party, polarized society, ultimately pushing the country toward dictatorship.

The GOP is a personalist party

• Since 2016, Trump has increasingly sidelined the traditional party establishment to remake the party into an instrument to further his own personal, political and financial interests.
• Traditional parties, including the pre-Trump Republican Party, offer voters a bundle of policy positions hashed out among multiple elite factions of the party.
• Trump’s supersized control over the Republican Party has transformed other leading party figures into sycophants, always seeking Trump’s favor.

No resistance to a Trump power grab

• All signs indicate that Trump, if reelected, is likely to pursue an authoritarian power grab by, for example, purging professional bureaucrats, expanding the Supreme Court or using the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against protesters.
• Party members may even support him in that power grab.
• Most elected leaders are ambitious and, like Trump, seek to gain and hold onto power for as long as they can.
• In those circumstances, there is little that stands in the way of a grab for power.

• My organization, CNAS receives funding from multiple sources, including funding that supported this research from a foundation called Luminate.
• Joseph Wright received funding from the Luminate Foundation; Charles Koch Foundation; McCourtney Institute for Democracy; and the Minerva Research Initiative.