Domino Theory: Understanding the Escalation Pattern in Democratic Decline

The United States is currently witnessing an unprecedented challenge to its constitutional order - one that follows what we might call a "domino theory" of democratic erosion. Unlike comparable cases of democratic backsliding in countries like Hungary, Turkey, or Poland where authoritarian leaders gradually restructured courts through formal legal mechanisms over years, the current administration has taken a more direct approach by simply acting as if judicial authority doesn't exist at all. This represents a dangerous acceleration of the typical pattern, bypassing the usual incremental dismantling of checks and balances in favor of outright refusal to acknowledge their legitimacy. When an administration openly defies court orders, calls for a judge's impeachment for issuing unfavorable rulings, and explicitly states that "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," we are witnessing not merely a policy dispute but a fundamental challenge to the constitutional separation of powers itself. This approach triggers a cascade of institutional failures where each unanswered violation invites further boundary-testing, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of democratic degradation.

Understanding the Domino Effect

The current pattern of institutional degradation follows a predictable sequence, with each falling institutional safeguard accelerating the collapse of others:

  1. Initial Boundary Testing: The process begins with testing institutional responses to relatively minor violations, gauging which generate significant resistance and which do not

  2. Normalization of Violations: Once certain violations go unchallenged, they become normalized, shifting the baseline of acceptable behavior

  3. Institutional Credibility Erosion: As institutions fail to enforce their boundaries, their perceived legitimacy and authority diminish

  4. Accelerating Challenges: The weakened credibility invites increasingly bold challenges, creating a feedback loop of institutional degradation

  5. Competitive Violation: Different actors begin competing to demonstrate loyalty through increasingly extreme boundary violations

  6. Systemic Realignment: Eventually, institutional relationships fundamentally transform, with power flowing through loyalty networks rather than constitutional channels

The Polarization Accelerant

What distinguishes this pattern from ordinary institutional conflicts is how political polarization serves as an accelerant:

  1. Asymmetric Incentives: When a leader's supporters reward norm violations, traditional political costs for overreach disappear

  2. Epistemic Division: When different political groups no longer share basic factual understanding, institutional violations can be interpreted entirely differently

  3. Identity Trumping Institution: When partisan identity becomes stronger than institutional loyalty, officials defend their party rather than their institution

  4. Selective Constitutionalism: Constitutional principles become selectively invoked or ignored based on partisan advantage rather than consistent application

Particularly Vulnerable Nodes

The current pattern reveals specific institutional vulnerabilities:

  1. Courts Without Enforcement Power: The judiciary's structural dependence on other branches for enforcement creates particular vulnerability to direct defiance

  2. Bureaucratic Expertise Devaluation: The systematic devaluation of expertise undermines professional norms that traditionally constrain political actors

  3. Media Ecosystem Fragmentation: The fragmentation of the information environment prevents the development of shared understanding of institutional violations

  4. Congressional Abdication: Legislative unwillingness to check executive overreach from the same party removes a critical constitutional constraint

Historical Acceleration

What makes the current situation particularly concerning is the compressed timeframe:

  1. In Turkey, President Erdogan's consolidation of power took decades and multiple constitutional changes

  2. In Hungary, Prime Minister Orban's court-packing and judicial constraints occurred over several years through formal legal mechanisms

  3. In Poland, the Law and Justice party gradually implemented judicial reforms over a period of years

The current American pattern shows a dramatic acceleration of this timeline, with fundamental challenges to judicial authority emerging within weeks of taking office. This compression gives other institutions and civil society less time to organize effective responses.

The domino theory helps us understand that democratic erosion isn't a series of isolated incidents but an interconnected pattern where each institutional failure weakens the next line of defense. Understanding this pattern is essential for developing effective responses that address the systemic nature of the challenge rather than treating each violation as a separate problem.