Emotional Authoritarianism: Bukele’s El Salvador and Fear-Driven Backsliding
El Salvador’s self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” President Nayib Bukele, spent his first term systematically dismantling his country’s system of checks and balances and the rule of law. Since entering office in 2019, he has sent soldiers into Congress to force the passage of his legislation, installed loyalists in the nation’s highest court, and ran for a second presidential term despite a constitutional ban on reelection. The state of emergency he declared in March 2022 to combat the nation’s rampant gang problem has resulted in mass and often arbitrary detentions, killings, torture, and other forms of state violence.
Despite this draconian crackdown, around 90% of the country approves of his actions. He won reelection easily, capturing nearly 85% of the votes in the nation’s recent presidential race. His party won a supermajority in Congress, albeit in an electoral process marred by irregularities in the voting process. Bukele is one of the most popular politicians in the world. Depending on how you define it, he has either killed or reinvigorated Salvadoran democracy.
But what has driven Salvadorans to support his dictatorial policies? Above all, the extreme efficacy of Bukele’s brutal war against gangs has yielded him the skyrocketing popularity he now enjoys. For more than 20 years, vicious criminal groups like MS-13 and Barrio 18 wreaked havoc on the nation, running brutal extortion rackets and engaging in killing sprees that made El Salvador one of the most dangerous places in the world. Since Bukele began taking action against these groups, homicide rates have declined well below the regional average. Salvadorans can walk the streets at night and cross former gang-controlled barriers without fear. Most Salvadorans are willing to stomach the trade-off—the loss of multiple civil liberties, severe weakening of due process, indiscriminate use of torture, and a massive campaign of arbitrary arrest—because their communities suffer from less bloodshed. Activist Luis Villaherrera recounted in a recent panel with the Columbia Institute of Latin American Studies that one Salvadoran named Juan, after having been wrongfully and arbitrarily detained by the Salvadoran military for over a month, still supported Bukele’s regime. Why? Because he felt safer in his community. This tangible perception of a positive shift in security has given many Salvadorans all the reasons they need to support Bukele, even at the price of the nation’s democratic institutions.
With this election, El Salvador joins a list of nations that have reelected leaders with authoritarian inclinations. These countries, including India, Hungary, and Turkey, have seen their leaders chip away at the checks and balances that function as the bedrock of liberal democracy. A Donald Trump victory this November could place the United States among their ranks. These nations fit the description of “competitive authoritarian” regimes: Although they regularly hold elections free of massive fraud, incumbents often abuse state resources to give themselves the upper hand. Voters elect their leaders in mostly free but unfair contests, and these leaders disregard liberal democratic norms when in office. In all of these cases, voters continue to support candidates even when they explicitly flout the norms of liberal democracy and often face allegations of corruption.
In El Salvador, voters looked past Bukele’s suspension of rights like due process and habeas corpus and dismantling of separation of powers because they experienced a palpable decline in the gang violence that had plagued their nation for decades. Personal safety is a deeply emotional issue, and any politician showing real results in improving security is likely to earn the vote of those who have witnessed extreme loss or bloodshed. The authoritarian leaders of India, Turkey, and Hungary have similarly played on emotionally charged subjects to rile up the support of their respective populations. Instead of focusing on security, though, they’ve cemented their grips on power by stoking tribalist fears of the “Other.” In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has implemented a systematic policy of Hindu nationalism, pitting the nation’s Hindu majority against its Muslim and Christian minorities. The devoted following he’s gained from this posture has allowed him to suppress speech, take control of much of the nation’s media, and persecute political opponents. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has harnessed nationalist and anti-Kurd sentiment to enable his vast centralization of power. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has emphasized Hungarian nationalism as well as anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant policies while reshaping the nation’s constitution to his own will. In the US, former President Donald Trump tapped into racially charged populism that has provided him with a fervent base that went so far as insurrection when he lost in 2020 and seeks to propel him to the White House once more.
Although the conditions and issues pertaining to these leaders differ widely, a common thread emerges from their respective cases. Leaders who harness deeply emotional issues as a distraction or a pretext for their centralization of power compel citizens to give up the norms and institutions of liberal democracy more easily. In El Salvador, Bukele targeted the emotionally charged security issue to cement his grasp on power and shape the nation’s institutions to his will. His success in dealing with this issue has brought him more popularity than every other illiberal leader mentioned in this article, and more than almost any leader in the world. It might be because where issues such as nationalism and cultural division resonate emotionally on the abstract level, insecurity is a real, tangible, and terrifying experience. Voters go along with the elimination of their civil liberties and support the regime that eliminated them as long as they feel safer in their communities. This kind of appeal is not limited to fragile or less established democracies: the populace of Chile, a more entrenched democracy suffering from a recent increase in crime, gives Bukele a 78%approval rating. He also received a frenzied reception from US right-wingers at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, who praised his mano dura, or “iron fist,” policy against gangs as a model for tough-on-crime measures at home. Security is an incredibly potent electoral issue, and many potential leaders looking to exploit fears of crime for political gain look to Bukele as a blueprint.
This case and the cases of other hybrid regimes can teach us a lesson on the drivers of democratic backsliding: any politician’s exploitation of emotionally charged issues to expand their own power presents a clear warning sign of authoritarian encroachment. As democratic institutions face existential threats around the world, all of us who live in liberal democracies must be able to recognize these indicators of autocracy and resist their deceptive pull.
Jonathan Pollak (CC ’27) is a Peruvian-American columnist at the Columbia Political Review studying political science and economics with a minor in Latin American studies. His interests include institutional stability and economic development in Latin America.