Can democracies truly resurrect after an authoritarian episode? The dominant narrative wants to believe in their intrinsic resilience: once the dictator is removed, institutions would restart, civil society would reconstitute itself, the rule of law would reclaim its rights. Recent research from the Journal of Democracy cuts sharply through this: “almost all failed to sustain their recoveries” — the vast majority of countries that returned to democracy after an authoritarian drift failed to consolidate their restoration.
This finding radically transforms how we read Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy. Published in 2020 and recently reissued, the work goes beyond merely explaining how democracies die. It reveals why they do not come back to life.
The Essentials
- Comparative analysis demonstrates that the vast majority of democracies restored after an authoritarian episode fail to consolidate durably
- Anne Applebaum documents the collapse of democratic elites in Poland, Hungary, and the United States between 2015 and 2020
- The author identifies authoritarian nostalgia as the primary driver of these political conversions
- Her central thesis: democracies die through abandonment by their own elites, not through external conquest
The Author
Anne Applebaum occupies a unique position to observe democratic erosion. A journalist at the Washington Post and historian by training with a doctorate from the London School of Economics, she witnessed the collapse of communism from Poland, where she settled in 1988. Married to Radosław Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister, she observed from within the political transformations of Central Europe. A 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner for Gulag: A History, she combines academic analysis with direct testimony of contemporary political shifts.
This personal experience directly nourishes Twilight of Democracy. Applebaum describes how her own friends — intellectuals, journalists, political leaders — shifted toward authoritarianism in Poland, Hungary, and the United States. The book is not a theoretical essay but an embodied testimony to the conversion of democratic elites.
The Central Thesis: Authoritarian Nostalgia as Political Driver
Anne Applebaum develops a provocative thesis: democracies do not die through invasion or coup d’état. They collapse through abandonment. Her former Polish friends who now support the Law and Justice party (PiS), her Hungarian acquaintances rallied to Viktor Orbán, her American colleagues converted to Trumpism all share the same psychological mainspring: nostalgia for a lost hierarchical order.
This nostalgia feeds on three precise elements. First, the rejection of modern democratic complexity. Where democracy imposes deliberation, compromise, and uncertainty, authoritarianism promises simplicity and certainties. Next, the attraction to strong leadership that decides without debate. Finally, the quest for a homogeneous national community, rid of minorities, immigration, and multiculturalism.
The author documents this shift with remarkable sociological precision. In Poland, she shows how Jarosław Kaczyński managed to capture the frustration of intellectuals disappointed by European modernization. These individuals rejected the liberal evolution of post-1989 Polish society — the emancipation of women, secularization, openness to Western Europe. They preferred a Catholic, traditional Poland, closed in on itself.
The Collapse of Democratic Safeguards
The book excels in analyzing the institutional mechanisms of erosion. Applebaum details how Viktor Orbán methodically dismantled Hungarian democracy without ever formally violating the Constitution. Control of media through successive purchases, placing the judiciary under control through legislative reforms, capturing the administration through political placement — contemporary authoritarianism proceeds through legal capture of institutions.
This strategy works because it exploits the structural flaws of liberal democracy. Modern constitutions protect individual rights but offer little protection against a majority that wants to dismantle the democratic system itself. Orbán understood this: one simply needs to win elections once, then use legal power to render any future alternation impossible.
In the United States, Applebaum observes a similar process with the Trump administration. Capture of the Republican party by loyalists, purges in the federal administration, systematic challenge to the legitimacy of elections — the methods differ but the logic remains identical. The objective is no longer to govern within the democratic framework but to transform the framework itself.
Why Democracies Do Not Resurrect
Recent research from the Journal of Democracy brutally illuminates the limitations of Twilight of Democracy. Applebaum focuses on collapse but does not sufficiently explore the near-impossibility of restoration. Yet the comparative data are damning: the vast majority of countries that regained democracy after an authoritarian episode fails to consolidate it durably.
This reality transforms how we read Applebaum’s book. If democracies almost never resurrect, it may be because their collapse reveals deeper flaws than the author suggests. The authoritarian nostalgia she describes so well could be merely a symptom of a structural mismatch between social aspirations and democratic promises.
The examples she cites illustrate this hypothesis. In Poland, support for the PiS is not limited to nostalgics of traditional order. It also encompasses the losers of the post-1989 economic transition, those who did not benefit from European integration. In Hungary, Orbán capitalizes on frustrations linked to persistent inequality and massive emigration of skilled youth.
Blind Spots: Economics and Inequality
Twilight of Democracy underestimates the economic dimension of the shifts it describes. Applebaum privileges cultural and psychological analysis — nostalgia, resentment, attraction to authority — over material determinants. This approach limits its capacity to explain why certain societies resist the temptation of authoritarianism better than others.
Economic data usefully complement her analysis. In Eastern Europe, countries that best consolidated their post-communist democracies — the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia — are also those that achieved their economic transition with the most contained inequality. Conversely, Poland and Hungary combine strong economic growth with massive regional inequality — an explosive cocktail that authoritarianism exploits effectively.
This economic gap also explains why Applebaum struggles to propose concrete solutions. If contemporary authoritarianism feeds on material frustrations as much as cultural nostalgia, the democratic response must integrate a redistributive dimension that the book does not explore. Emerging financial multipolarity, moreover, reshuffles geopolitical cards and could offer new economic room for maneuver to democracies under pressure.
What This Book Changes
Twilight of Democracy transforms the approach of democratic studies on three essential points. First, it shifts analysis from institutions to elites. Constitutions and rules protect nothing if those who apply them cease to believe in them. The contemporary democratic problem is not technical but political: how to maintain elite adhesion to the democratic project?
Next, the work reveals the decisive importance of the cohesion of ruling elites. As long as conservatives and liberals, right and left, accept the rules of the democratic game, democracy resists. As soon as part of the elites shifts toward authoritarianism — as illustrated by the evolution of university media that question established consensus — collapse accelerates.
Finally, Applebaum demonstrates that contemporary authoritarianism resembles neither the fascism of the 1930s nor Soviet communism. It borrows the codes of democracy — elections, media, civil society — to better hollow out its substance. This mutation makes democratic resistance more difficult because the front lines become blurred.
The book thus forces us to rethink the protection of democracy. Classical constitutional safeguards — separation of powers, constitutional review, freedom of the press — no longer suffice. We must also cultivate a democratic culture resistant to the temptation of authoritarianism, capable of responding to the economic and social frustrations that nourish nostalgia for strong order.
Reread in light of data on the near-systematic failure of democratic restorations, Twilight of Democracy becomes a book of particular urgency. If democracies almost never resurrect, their protection becomes vital. Anne Applebaum provides the intellectual tools to understand why they die. It remains to invent how to keep them alive.
Bibliographic Information: - Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism - Anne Applebaum - Doubleday - 2020, 224 pages