El Salvador has been known, historically, for its high murder rate and deep-seated gang violence. However, over the past six years the country’s gang violence has decreased by 70%. But at what cost? President Nayib Bukele has taken the country by storm, campaigning for a better and safer country free of gangs and violence. Bukele’s crackdown on crime has led to greater public approval and praise from El Salvador’s citizens. Consequently, Bukele’s “war on gangs” has given the impression of safer communities throughout the country and greater approval of his policies. Despite this, the popularity of Bukele’s war on gangs has emboldened him to quietly dismantle checks on power through specific stealth authoritarian tactics to further erode democratic systems.

Stealth Authoritarian Tactics as Indicators of Erosion

Commonly, efforts to dismantle democracy are stealthy and quiet. Bukele and his administration have utilized specific tactics to manipulate electoral law, dismantle judicial review, increase surveillance laws, and discredit rule of law rhetoric. For instance, in “How Democracies Die” scholars Levitsky & Ziblatt connect these tactics to four behavioral warning signs of incumbents who use authoritarian strategies. They often reject democratic rules of the game, deny opposition legitimacy, encourage violence, and curtail civil liberties. Through the use of these tactics, administrations dismantle democratic institutions and manipulate civilian support.

Electoral Law & Judicial Review
The removal of horizontal checks on executives works to generate systematic advantages for the incumbent. As Levitsky & Ziblatt highlighted, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used his supermajority in the legislature to rewrite the constitution. Similarly, following his first term, Bukele used his legislative majority to amend the constitution in 2021 and made it possible to run for a second term. His re-election resulted in an 84.7% majority vote and established the first two term presidency in the country. Another repeal to electoral laws followed as the administration cut legislative seats from 84 to 60, reinforcing his supermajority. In July 2025, Bukele’s administration amended the constitution once again and rid it entirely of presidential term limits. Consequently, a system with little legislative checks on executive power exists.

These constitutional amendments are possible because of Bukele’s weakening of legislative and judicial power. Ozan Varol has voiced in “Stealth Authoritarianism” that judicial institutions generate substantial changes in favor of the ruling party when the structure of the courts and appointment processes are manipulated to favor the incumbent. This is seen through strategies that reinforce anti-democratic ideals like court packing and rewriting judicial processes. For instance, throughout his first term Bukele dismantled the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ). He dismissed judges over the age of 60 along with any who had served more than 30 years, framing it as an anti-corruption measure. By removing older judges from the judiciary, the current administration has succeeded in appointing judges beneficial to Bukele’s policies.

Ultimately, Bukele’s ability to consolidate his power through judicial reforms has created unbalanced horizontal checks on executive power. The SCJ can no longer uphold laws that counters Bukele’s policies and is therefore incapable of distributing effective blocks on humanitarian rights violations. Because the judiciary is packed with loyalists, it is no longer an independent body and now directly reflects executive policies. Therefore, Bukele has manipulated the extent of his power and consolidated it through both a legislative supermajority and a judiciary of loyalist. Subsequently, he has taken steps to further erode democracy.

Rejecting Democratic Norms: Surveillance Law & Rule of Law

Oftentimes, deconstructing judicial and legislative checks reinforces the consolidation of the incumbent’s power. Ozan Varol further emphasizes, that political elites often resort to surveillance laws that are structured with the purpose of combatting organized crime and terrorism but use those laws to blackmail or discredit political opponents. Bukele has labeled a threat to democracy, gang violence, which has allowed him to critique the current institutions and manipulate surveillance of civilians by claiming that he is making institution more suitable. As a result, Bukele has jailed over 83,0000 people throughout a prolonged state of emergency. Beginning in March of 2022, any citizen found with relation to gang violence has been arrested. Many of these cases were dismissed or used to target opposition. Therefore, Bukele has retained a strong influence on the prison system through mass incarceration policies, deadly prison conditions, and attacks on opposition forces.

The opposition has been shut down through media manipulation and the removal of free assembly. For instance, over the past year some protests towards Bukele’s policies emerged. In May and September of 2025 protests voiced concerns for the prisons human rights violations. Unfortunately, the criminalization of protests ensured that multiple activists were unlawfully arrested along with opposition candidates. Despite having constitutional rights to assemble, Bukele’s state of emergency has allowed for unlawful arrests of citizens and opposition forces. Consequently, his manipulation of surveillance tactics decreases citizens ability to view his policies as anti-democratic and in turn he is able to use crime reform to block opposition.

Similarly, freedom of expression and rule of law have been slowly deteriorating in the country. Ozan Varol and other scholars have highlighted that rule of law is an indicator of stable democracy as it supports a countries’ ability to uphold political norms. These norms have been ignored under Bukele. He has incited violence in jails with unlivable conditions, made efforts to dismantle LGBTQ and indigenous people’s rights, and further removed equitable due process in court and personal autonomy for incarcerated individuals. Despite the administration demonstrating efforts to hinder personal freedoms, stealth authoritarian tactics make it difficult to identify when rule of law is abused.

As Varol further states in his work, the tactics deployed deviate between showing mechanisms in support for democracy and indirect manipulation of democratic norms. Practices that would appear repressive in an authoritarian regime often are ambiguous when the incumbent uses stealth authoritarian tactics. Because Bukele utilizes stealth authoritarian tactics in his consolidation of power, it has become difficult for both global and domestic actors to determine if policies are legitimate or abusive. Consequently, Bukele has hindered political accountability that requires transparency of credible information from the administrations and generated an ambiguous rule allowing himself to quietly dismantle checks on executive power and manipulate civilian perception.

Works Cited

Amnesty International. (2025, May 20). El Salvador: Government deepens authoritarian pattern in the face of social discontent. Retrieved from Amnesty International website: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/05/el-salvador-gobierno-profundiza-patron-autoritario-frente-al-descontento-social/

Broner, T. T. (2023, March 21). Countering El Salvador’s Democratic Backsliding. Retrieved from Human Rights Watch website: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/21/countering-el-salvadors-democratic-backsliding

DeGaugh, R. (2025, January 15). Why do voters support leaders who undermine democracy? The case of El Salvador. Retrieved from Keough School of Global Affairs website: https://keough.nd.edu/news-and-events/news/why-do-voters-support-leaders-who-undermine-democracy-the-case-of-el-salvador/

El Salvador: Baseless Charges Against Rights Defenders. (2025, September 18). Retrieved from Human Rights Watch website: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/18/el-salvador-baseless-charges-against-rights-defenders

El Salvador: Freedom in the World 2025 Country Report | Freedom House. (2024). Retrieved from Freedom House website: https://freedomhouse.org/country/el-salvador/freedom-world/2025

El Salvador’s Democracy Is Dying. (2025, September 2). Retrieved from Human Rights Watch website: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/02/el-salvadors-democracy-is-dying

Huntington, K. (2024, March 28). The Demise of Democracy in El Salvador. Retrieved from Political Science website: https://www.colorado.edu/polisci/2024/03/28/demise-democracy-el-salvador

Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. New York: Broadway Books.

Varol, O. (2015). Stealth Authoritarianism (pp. 1673–1742). Iowa Law Review.