Executive aggrandizement has been a persistent issue in El Salvador for years, dating back to President Bukele’s election in 2019. With legislative approval, Bukele is on his way to eroding democracy in El Salvador entirely. Over the past two months, Bukele has eroded both civil society and electoral restrictions, two important tenets of democracy. To accomplish this, Bukele has used tactics similar to both executive aggrandizement and stealth authoritarianism in recent years. With these strategies, he has co-opted both civil society and other branches of government into his growing authoritarian regime.
How Did We Get Here?
Running on a platform of fighting crime and corruption, Bukele achieved a notable victory in 2019, dethroning two candidates of historically dominant parties. Bukele then cracked down on perpetual gang violence harshly through mass arrests, committing due process violations. These arrests began a trend of backsliding and stealth authoritarianism within the country. The mass arrests can be attributed to the legitimization of the regime’s actions during a crisis, a subtype of stealth authoritarianism. Legitimizing the regime during a crisis uses a perceived emergency, such as gang violence in El Salvador, to repress under the guise of solving the crisis at hand. These actions, while undemocratic, can act like a wolf in sheep’s clothing to the public, pretending to be for the greater good and solving a crisis, while at the same time eroding democracy. These mass arrests garnered a lot of public support as people saw crime and the murder rate reduce massively, giving Bukele a large margin of victory in his re-election in 2024.
The large margin of victory gave Bukele a mandate to pursue his second goal of reducing corruption, marking a further erosion of democracy. In his anti-corruption campaign, Bukele used accusations of corruption as a pretext for targeting his opposition, a common tactic of stealth authoritarianism. In “Stealth Authoritarianism,” written by Ozan Varol, he cites that “the use of libel laws to silence dissent is less costly than overt repression.” Varol continues by alluding that the use of non-political crimes against political dissidents, such as accusations of tax evasion, fraud, and money laundering, are popular strategies for those following stealth authoritarianism. One example of Bukele’s indirect targeting of opposition is the arrest of Ruth Lopez. Lopez is a well known anti-corruption lawyer in El Salvador, but has been accused of embezzling state funds by Bukele’s attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado. Lopez has been outspoken in her criticism of Bukele, and this arrest has been called a “short-term enforced disappearance” by the human rights organization she is associated with.
As mentioned by El Faro, an independent news organization in El Salvador that defends freedom of the press and provides critical analysis of events in El Salvador, they write that Bukele’s Attorney General is not fighting corruption but instead protecting and shielding corruption within the government and being a weapon, punishing those who criticize the government. By targeting political opposition, Bukele has removed judges, bureaucrats, and opposition candidates, all in the name of solving corruption. By doing so, he has defanged judicial independence by packing it with loyalists, gutted bureaucracy, and used his majority in the legislature co-opting institution after institution into his regime. Further, his use of the rule of law rhetoric, much like events in Tanzania and Zambia, matches relevant cases of stealth authoritarianism.
Right of Kings – Indefinite Re-Election?
Varol argues in his theory that stealth authoritarianism is a gradual process pursued by the authoritarian to whittle away the effectiveness of democratic institutions. One key tenet of the theory that has matched Bukele’s recent actions is the use of electoral laws to create systematic advantages to prolong/prevent the likelihood that power alternation will occur. Varol further cites that the electoral laws are crafted by the incumbent to create said uneven electoral playing field, and that’s exactly what the incumbents in El Salvador have done. In August of 2025, the legislature in El Salvador voted to abolish term limits for the president, essentially giving Bukele the right to rule indefinitely, and knowing the public support he has due to his crackdown on crime, his continued wins seem all but guaranteed.
The move of further eroding electoral laws by the El Salvadorian government has received strong criticism, in a report done by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), El Salvador is now experiencing the fastest rate of democratic backsliding out of any country in Latin America. Further, the organization notes that recent actions in El Salvador have solidified Bukele as a dictator, with recent remarks from IDEA’s Secretary General. The General states that El Salvador has transitioned fully to a dictatorship because of the lack of press freedom, checks on presidential power, and the co-optation of all institutions within the country.
Using a sports metaphor written by Levitsky Et al.’s “How Democracy dies” Bukele has captured the referees of the game, which the authors define as replacing officials with loyalists co-opting and purging the judicial branch, purging media dissent, and other non-partisan offices. Bukele has also sidelined key players from the opposition with claims of removing corruption and getting them on false pretenses, as mentioned previously. Lastly, Bukele has rewritten the rules of the game with this recent move of changing electoral laws and combining this with institutional co-optation, his path to a full-fledged dictator, as mentioned by IDEA, through stealth authoritarianism is all but guaranteed.
References
Alek Buttermann. 2025. “El Salvador Leads Latin America’s Democratic Decline, Global Watchdog Warns.” Intellinews.com. September 16, 2025. https://www.intellinews.com/el-salvador-leads-latin-america-s-democratic-decline-global-watchdog-warns-401492/.
BBC. 2024. “El Salvador’s President Bukele Wins Re-Election by Huge Margin.” Www.bbc.com, February 5, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68196826.
El Faro Editorial Board. 2024. “Bukele’s Anti-Corruption Smokescreen.” Bukele’s Anti-Corruption Smokescreen. El Faro. April 30, 2024. https://elfaro.net/en/202404/opinion/27318/Bukele%E2%80%99s-Anti-Corruption-Smokescreen.htm.
Gies, Heather. 2019. “Nayib Bukele Declares Victory in El Salvador’s Elections.” Www.aljazeera.com. February 4, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/2/4/nayib-bukele-declares-victory-in-el-salvadors-elections.
Josua, Maria. 2021. “The Legitimation of Repression in Autocracies.” Oxfordre. August 31, 2021. https://oxfordre.com/politics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1988?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780190228637.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780190228637-e-1988&p=emailAMDfeZzjnt4YM.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. London: Penguin
Peralta, Eyder. 2025. “El Salvador Arrests Prominent Human Rights Lawyer.” NPR. May 19, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403891/el-salvador-arrest-prominent-human-rights-lawyer.
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Staff, bnl editorial. 2025. “El Salvador Removes Presidential Term Limits as Bukele Tightens Grip on Power.” Intellinews.com. August 1, 2025. https://www.intellinews.com/el-salvador-removes-presidential-term-limits-as-bukele-tightens-grip-on-power-394140/.
Studies, the Africa Center for Strategic. 2019. “Subverting Democracy in Tanzania and Zambia – Africa Center.” Africa Center for Strategic Studies. September 17, 2019. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/subverting-democracy-in-tanzania-and-zambia/.
Varol, Ozan O. 2015. Stealth Authoritarianism. Iowa Law Review. https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-4/stealth-authoritarianism.
Your post offers a compelling look at how Nayib Bukele’s government strategically deploys the language of security and modernization to disguise what Levitsky & Way would call “incumbent advantage” and democratic norm erosion. One point your analysis raises, implicitly but importantly, is how deeply the sequencing of Bukele’s actions contributes to his success. Rather than consolidating power all at once, his administration has pursued a layered strategy: first sidelining opposition parties, then reshaping the judiciary, and only afterward massively expanding the security state with the Territorial Control Plan. This slow, iterative pace aligns closely with the concept of stealth authoritarianism, where each individual move appears “technical” or “necessary,” but the cumulative impact is regime transformation.
Your discussion of the megaprison also invites a broader regional comparison. Leaders like Duterte in the Philippines and Ortega in Nicaragua have also used crime control as a pretext for weakening institutions, suggesting that high public demand for security can override concerns about civil liberties. I wonder how much Bukele’s popular mandate alters the traditional framework for democratic erosion. If a supermajority continues to support rights-violating policies because they perceive them as effective, at what point does the line shift between democratic backsliding and democratic redefinition?
Another angle worth exploring is the future of party competition in El Salvador. By hollowing out ARENA and the FMLN while elevating Nuevas Ideas, Bukele may be setting the stage for hegemonic-party rule even if formal elections persist. How durable will opposition capacity be once the emergency regime eventually ends?
While there is no doubt democracy is being broken down in El Salvador, I would question whether or not Bukele’s actions can be classified as stealth authoritarianism. While Varol outlines how authoritarian leaders can use legal action to silence the opposition, he generally focuses on civil litigation targeting the media. While I do agree with your argument that the arrest of the lawyer is in line with Varol’s framework, if the embezzlement charge is unfounded or made up, this would cross the line into transparent authoritarian mechanisms. In such a case, Bukele is no longer leveraging the rule of law but entirely abusing it and taking action beyond legal enforcement. He would no longer be operating in a legal grey area, it would simply be breaking the law in prosecuting someone for crimes not committed.
Similarly, your assessment of his abolition of term limits also crosses the line into transparent authoritarian mechanisms outlined by Varol. Stealth authoritarianism refers to consolidating power and silencing opposing voices within the confines of the law and real executive power, not changing the law entirely. Prolonging his rule is a clear sign that Bukele is acting as an overt authoritarian leader signaling that El Salvador is far beyond the point of needing stealth authoritarian mechanisms.
It seems to be more that Bukele gained power through populist ideology and has now used that power to completely dismantle democratic institutions. Hiding authoritarian actions behind anti-corruption campaigns and crime-fighting is an indicator of a populist leader. Both actions were employed by Mao Zedong in his rise to power and Bukele seemed to achieve a similar effect in destroying his competition and smashing through all barriers limiting his power. Yes, democracy has eroded in El Salvador but I do not believe it was done through stealth authoritarianism.
You bring up an interesting point on legitimizing the regime during a perceived emergency and how that can garner public support while undermining democracy as a tactic of stealth authoritarianism. This exact style, painting an opposition group, whether violent or not, as violent is something that we have seen in many states facing democratic backsliding. In Turkey, President Erdogan and the AKP have painted student groups as such and used libel laws to persecute media personnel who publicly oppose their ideology, and in the United States, the Trump Administration has empowered ICE to target Latino-Americans for detention camps and deportation, with little to no knowledge or proof of their status as a resident or citizen under the “justification” that they are violent gang members. It is interesting how all three of these examples sit separately from themselves, yet follow a similar, if not the same, playbook that Varol and Levisky et al. identify in their works.
Clearly, we know how democracies can slide into authoritarianism, and this “stealthy” approach of creating a villain to unite their supporters against is becoming a more obvious marker of democratic erosion. But in societies where there already exist demographic divides and guardrails have been broken off, the question then remains on how we can prevent authoritarian leaders from rising in broad daylight.