GOP leaders' embrace of Trump's refusal to concede fits pattern of rising authoritarianism, data....
GOP leaders embrace of Trumps refusal to concede fits pattern of rising authoritarianism, data shows
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/12/republican-party-trump-authoritarian-data/
Its the latest sign of the partys lurch away from democratic ideals and practices, a shift that predates Trump but one that has accelerated precipitously since. Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, its possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.
The Republican Party in the U.S. has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years, said Anna Lührmann, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a former member of the German parliament. Its rhetoric is closer to authoritarian parties, such as AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=767
Lührmann is deputy director of the universitys V-Dem Institute, which compiled the data. For the project, researchers recruited more than 600 political scientists around the world to make annual assessments of political parties adherence to a number of key small-D democratic values.
Those assessments are combined into the main measure in the chart above, which tracks parties overall commitment to democracy. Lührmann points out that the Republican Party score started to edge downward during the Obama administration but fell off a cliff in 2016 with the ascent of Trump.
Bingo. This goes along with my views here:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016276553