How Will You Know That America Has Become a Dictatorship? After 20 Years Living in One, I Can Tell You.

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It’s hard for most Americans to imagine what it would be like to live in a society without the rule of law protecting them. I spent more than 20 years leading U.S. government–sponsored justice projects in countries with weak to nonexistent democracies, including Albania, Mongolia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Republic of Georgia, and Armenia. Those of us who have worked in nations like these don’t have to imagine what it looks like when a place’s leaders demonstrate no regard for the rule of law. What we’ve seen overseas looks a lot like what we’ve started to watch unfold in this country over the course of the past 10 months. Some of these experiences abroad, when we see them happen here, offer the biggest clues that our own democracy is beginning to slip away.

The Government Uses Law and Legal Institutions to Intimidate Critics and Silence Free Speech

Rather than passing laws to protect free speech, the government passes new laws and enforces existing ones in such a way as to discourage and punish the exercise of free speech^[2]. The state’s regulatory agencies deny media organizations licenses needed for broadcasting and publishing if those organizations criticize the government^[3]. Its security forces and tax authorities use their power and authority to frighten people into silence^[4].

This was the case in the former Soviet Union, and it continues to be the case in many post-Soviet countries today. Take, for example, the Republic of Georgia, where I worked from 2010–25. In the decade after its 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia made solid progress toward the rule of law with assistance from the U.S. and many European donors. But in recent years, the ruling coalition, the Georgian Dream party, led by a Russian oligarch, has reversed that progress and chipped away at the free speech and assembly rights^[5] guaranteed by Georgia’s Constitution.

In 2024, when criticized by an active and motivated group of local justice reform and media organizations, the Georgian Dream passed a law^[6] restricting the ability of those groups to receive funds necessary for them to function and threatened their leaders with fines and prosecution if they failed to comply. When hundreds of thousands of Georgians took to the streets to protest the legislation, government security forces and groups of thugs allied with those forces beat up protesters and arrested many more, and the courts handed out fines and jail sentences, often without evidence or meaningful due process. Most recently, the country’s prosecutor’s office froze the bank accounts^[7] of some of these civil society organizations and interrogated their leaders, sending the message that if they continue their activities, they are likely to end up in jail.

The Courts Are “Captured” by the Government and Operate First and Foremost as Tools of the Government

In countries where the rule of law is under attack, courts are still used to resolve disputes between parties, but their main function is to enforce government policy and promote the interests of the powerful. Judges are selected more for their perceived loyalty to those in power than for their legal acumen^[8]. They are kept in line by promises of reward, on or off the books, and by threats of punishment^[9] such as demotion, transfer, removal, or even prosecution. In cases involving a government interest, the government always, or almost always, wins^[10]. As a result, the public distrusts the court system and holds the judicial profession in low regard^[11].

In the Republic of Georgia, when the ruling party signals how it wants a case decided, the courts are expected to deliver its preferred result. If, for example, the ruling party sues a television station for criticizing one of its officials, the court will almost certainly rule in favor of the ruling party, no matter the strengths of its case, and the station may be forced off the air. If judges fail to rule as those in power desire, they will be harassed by their judicial leadership and may be transferred to provincial backwaters; if they continue to make independent rulings that are faithful to the law but unfavorable to the regime, they will likely be driven out of judicial service altogether.

Corruption Becomes Ordinary and Accepted

When people in power do not fear the law or the courts, they feel freer to enrich themselves at the public’s expense^[12]. They engage in influence peddling, award government contracts to friends and family, hand out government positions based solely on political loyalty, take bribes, and extort favors^[13]. Over time, these behaviors become typical features of the country’s political and economic system. Many lawyers in such a system develop expertise not in the law but in determining how much cash should go into the judge’s white envelope to ensure a preferred outcome. Inevitably, police in such systems find extralegal ways to augment their salaries—by taking bribes, exploiting public resources they control, or providing protection to legal or illegal businesses.

During the period it was moving toward the rule of law, Georgia managed to eliminate much of the corruption practiced by the police, the courts, and low-level government officials that had plagued the country during Soviet times. With the rule of law now in retreat, the old corrupt practices are making a comeback. For example, in 2023, the U.S. sanctioned four Georgian judges^[14] for “significant corruption,” and in 2025, the U.K. sanctioned two senior Georgian judges^[15] for “serious corruption” in using their positions to influence judicial appointments and decisions to favor the Georgian Dream party. In Cambodia, where I worked for five years and where the rule of law never put down significant roots, nepotism, cronyism, kickbacks, and bribe taking are standard and, one might claim, generally accepted modes of governmental operation^[16].

Law Enforcement Operates With Impunity

When police are not answerable to the law and the courts, they become a law unto themselves^[18]. They regularly violate citizens’ rights. They ignore citizens’ complaints. They use their authority to prey on the very people they should be protecting, confident that there will be no repercussions.

In Cambodia, I observed that police enjoyed near-absolute impunity. There, when a police officer pulls your car over, you understand that you are completely at his mercy. He might suggest you give him “tea money” to let you go without a ticket. He might arrest you and take you off to jail to be pressured by other officers to pay an even bigger bribe. If you try to complain to a higher authority, like a court, you are probably going to make your situation worse. In Cambodia, the courts and the police are on the same side of things, and it is not your side.

Everyone Is Afraid

In a society with a weak rule of law, everyone is a government-victim-in-waiting^[19]. People are afraid of judges. They are afraid of police. They are afraid of their neighbors who might inform on them to the police. Those in power are afraid as well, since they know that the consequence of losing power will be retribution, such as the seizing of their assets, exile, imprisonment, or even execution. In every developing country in which I have worked, fear lived just under the collective skin of the people. The depth of the fear depended on how repressive the regime and how weak the rule of law.

Less than a year ago, it was impossible to imagine that the U.S. could ever become like the Republic of Georgia or Cambodia. It is not so impossible to imagine now. Since February, our highest court has delivered a series of rulings expanding executive power to a degree previously unimaginable. Even before that, it granted the president near-complete immunity^[24] for actions taken in office. Two Supreme Court judges accepted lavish personal gifts from wealthy supporters of the president’s party without suffering meaningful consequences. The president himself has extorted payments of millions of dollars from news organizations to settle transparently meritless defamation claims. He is now demanding^[25] that the Justice Department pay him $230 million for the inconvenience he suffered by being prosecuted for serious crimes. He pardoned a number of criminals after they or their families contributed large sums of money to his campaign, as well as over 1,500 Jan. 6 plotters and rioters. He extracted commitments from major law firms to provide free services to his administration in order to avoid punitive measures that could hobble their operations. At the president’s request, Congress increased the Department of Homeland Security’s budget fivefold, and its agencies now routinely ignore court orders and violate the due process rights of immigrants and citizens alike. Accounts of citizens, some entirely innocent, being thrown into vans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have become commonplace.

Much of America is afraid. Afraid of the government. Afraid of their fellow citizens. Afraid America’s legal and judicial institutions will no longer protect them. If Americans do not wake up, organize, and fight harder to defend the rule of law, we will find ourselves living in an authoritarian system, a system more similar in nature to countries like the Republic of Georgia and Cambodia than any of us could ever have imagined.

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