Perry 🇺🇸

On August 11, 2026, Trump suggested in an interview that he might use a national-security emergency declaration to overcome congressional resistance to election legislation. I was reminded of a CIA handbook on insurgencies and the conditions that give rise to them. One of the more alarming observations from the broader political-science literature is that insurgencies and civil conflict are disproportionately associated with anocracies. An anocracy is a form of government that occupies the space between consolidated democracy and outright autocracy. It may retain many of the outward trappings of democracy, including elections and basic civil rights, while political competition becomes increasingly manipulated, institutions weaken, and authoritarian practices coexist with democratic ones. Hungary under Orbán is one contemporary example, but perhaps the more pernicious historical example is Yugoslavia, which eventually descended into civil war and genocide. Conditions associated with the emergence of anocracy and heightened political instability can include: 1. Incomplete political transitions from autocracy to democracy, or from democracy toward autocracy. 2. Weak or fragmented state institutions. 3. Elite factionalism, in which powerful political blocs compete without effective institutional restraint. 4. Partial political participation, where elections exist but participation is restricted, manipulated, or uneven. 5. Rapid social mobilization, where urbanization, education, and communications technologies increase political mobilization faster than institutions can adapt. 6. Severe economic shocks. 7. Religious, ethnic, or class cleavages that become organized into mutually antagonistic political blocs. 8. Governments that are not regarded as legitimate by a sizeable portion of the population because confidence in elections, institutions, and the democratic process has broken down. Countries possessing several of these characteristics are more vulnerable to anocratic government, and anocracies have historically faced a substantially higher risk of insurgency, civil conflict, and organized political violence than consolidated democracies. What is alarming is that the United States is now displaying several of these characteristics. Some of the institutional conditions associated with democratic deterioration and increased political violence are becoming more visible. Confidence in elections has deteriorated among a substantial portion of the population. Political elites increasingly dispute the legitimacy of opposing governments and institutions. Partisan identities are becoming aligned with religious, geographic, cultural, and class divisions. Political mobilization is extraordinarily rapid. Institutional constraints are increasingly treated as obstacles to be circumvented rather than rules binding both sides. The dangerous point is reached when political actors cease to believe that elections, courts, legislatures, and constitutional institutions provide a legitimate means of resolving disputes. The fundamental purpose of democratic elections is not merely to determine who governs. They provide a peaceful mechanism for removing governments when the population loses confidence in them, while giving those who lose an election a credible expectation that they can compete again and regain power later. If people cease to believe that peaceful political competition can change who governs, political conflict begins looking for other channels through which to express itself. A democratic system depends not merely on holding elections, but on maintaining broad confidence that those elections are fair, competitive, and capable of producing a peaceful transfer of power. That is why confidence in our electoral system needs to be restored. Irresponsible claims of widespread election fraud unsupported by credible evidence need to stop. Attempts to manipulate electoral outcomes through unnecessarily restrictive voting rules need to end. States should also make a serious effort to restore genuine electoral competitiveness. Declaring an emergency to circumvent Congress and impose election rules based on false or misleading claims about widespread fraud, particularly where those changes would advantage the party already holding executive power, is an extraordinarily dangerous step.