After a jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a politically damaging relationship, he responded by warning viewers of his post-verdict news conference: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”
That statement simultaneously invokes the ideal of an independent judiciary and attempts to delegitimize it.
Six weeks after the U.S. election, President Donald Trump had still not accepted defeat. This behavior is not typical in mature democracies. And it’s reminiscent of countries with what political scientists call “hybrid regimes” – nations that have elements of democracy but in practice are not democracies.
For us – politics scholars studying Latin America and the former Soviet Union – Trump’s resistance to election results underscores the fragility of democratic institutions when confronted with authoritarian practices. These include delegitimizing election results, interfering with judicial independence, and attacking independent media and opposition.
