Every morning, we stop by a cafe and grab an iced Americano. We pay in a hurry, walk away in a hurry, and rarely stop to think about where that coffee came from or how it was made. That’s because it’s so familiar and routine. That “familiarity” obscures the production structures and power dynamics behind it. The erosion of democracy is similar. It approaches the public wearing the mask of democracy to make itself familiar, then slowly, legally, and with the public’s consent, seeps in and dismantles democracy. Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is a current example. Backed by overwhelming public support, he has legally dismantled democracy.

To understand why El Salvador’s democracy was so fragile, we begin with coffee. In 1881 and 1882, the Salvadoran government outlawed communal land ownership.(Library of Congress, n.d.) Land that had been maintained collectively became concentrated in the hands of a small elite, while Indigenous peoples and peasants were excluded. That land became coffee plantations. In the process, a coffee oligarchy known as “the fourteen families (las catorce familias)” emerged, monopolizing both economic resources and political power.

In 1932, when coffee prices fell sharply due to the Great Depression, the oligarchy shifted the losses onto the peasants.(Whigham, 2023) The military government suppressed the peasant uprising led by Farabundo Martí by massacring up to 30,000 people, and the military dictatorship that followed further eroded the state’s capacity to resolve social conflicts institutionally.

Following the end of the civil war in 1992, El Salvador transitioned to democracy. However, economic inequality remained severe, and the state’s law enforcement capabilities were weak.(Pozzebon, 2024) As a result, gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18 came to exercise actual governance functions throughout society. High homicide rates and normalized violence eroded citizens’ trust in the democratic system. In particular, as the existing two-party system failed to resolve these issues, distrust in the traditional two-party system reached its peak.

Nayib Bukele was elected president in 2019 by channeling deep anger toward the existing system toward himself.(Pozzebon, 2024) He transformed distrust of the political elite into a political asset, framing the narrative as “the people versus the corrupt elite.” This classic populist strategy of recasting complex social problems as simple moral conflicts proved effective. From the perspective of democratic norms, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that democracy is sustained not only by written law, but by two unwritten norms. The first is mutual toleration, accepting political rivals as legitimate competitors, not enemies. The second is institutional forbearance, holding back from actions that, while technically legal, betray democratic norms. By casting the existing parties as “corrupt enemies” before he even took office, Bukele had already begun dismantling the first of these norms.

From the moment he took office, his actions were unusual. In February 2020, Bukele sent 40-armed soldiers into Congress to pressure lawmakers into approving a loan for his security plan, “Plan Control Territorial.”(France24, 2020) Bukele claimed the action was legal under Article 167 of the Constitution. However, mobilizing the military to pressure the legislature’s decision-making was a direct violation of the core democratic principle of the separation of powers. Amid public anxiety over high crime rates, this hardline approach garnered support. But legality and democratic legitimacy are not the same thing. Sending soldiers into a parliament is a textbook failure of institutional forbearance, and it also marked the beginning of what Nancy Bermeo describes as executive aggrandizement, in which elected leaders gradually weaken constraints on their power through legal means. (Bermeo, 2016) Bukele followed that path with precision.

In the 2021 general election, Bukele’s fledgling party, Nuevas Ideas, secured more than two-thirds of the seats in Congress.(Human Rights Watch, 2021) That same day, the newly constituted Congress dismissed all five Constitutional Court justices and the Attorney General, replacing them simultaneously with Bukele’s allies. A few months later, the newly appointed Constitutional Court immediately reinterpreted the constitutional clause prohibiting re-election, allowing Bukele to run for a second term. In 2024, he was successfully re-elected with 85% of the vote. In July 2025, the presidential term limit clause was completely removed from the Constitution. Approval and ratification were processed on the same day.

This is a classic case of what Huq and Ginsburg call “constitutional retrogression.”(Huq & Ginsburg, 2018) Bukele did not dismantle democratic institutions through a coup or armed conflict. He used legal procedures to secure an overwhelming majority in parliament and gradually weakened the institutions that were meant to check his power. Although these institutions still exist on the surface, their internal balance has been eroded and their ability to restrain power has declined. When oversight bodies such as the judiciary become subordinate to the executive branch, the system that is meant to control power no longer functions effectively.

So why did citizens allow this to happen? The answer lies in Bukele’s gang crackdown. He declared a state of emergency in 2022 and launched a massive detention operation. The homicide rate dropped dramatically, providing an immediate and tangible change for citizens who had long been exposed to gang violence. Bukele’s approval rating remained between 80% and 90%. As the basic need for safety was met, concerns about institutional backsliding were pushed to the back burner.

This is where the uncomfortable questions begin. Can authoritarian measures be justified when there is widespread public support? In Bukele’s case, 90% of the population supports him.(Pozzebon, 2024) Children are playing on streets where gangs have vanished. Yet at the same time, approximately 2% of the population was detained during the gang crackdown, and human rights organizations have documented cases of arbitrary arrests of innocent citizens and deaths in custody.(Human Rights Watch, 2025) There is also evidence that the Bukele administration engaged in secret negotiations with gangs.(The Guardian, 2021) The Constitutional Court has been co-opted, the press has been muzzled, and term limits have been abolished.

Of course, there are those who argue against this view. They contend that in a society where the state cannot even guarantee basic safety, governance that prioritizes security may be a rational choice. In a country that fails to protect its citizens from gang violence, the procedural norms of liberal democracy may amount to nothing more than abstract concepts that ordinary citizens find difficult to bear. However, this argument has a critical flaw: it assumes that such a trade-off is temporary and reversible. Bukele’s abolition of term limits and his takeover of the judiciary demonstrate that this is not the case. Once the institutional mechanisms designed to correct course are dismantled, citizens lose not only their current freedoms but also the future possibility of regaining them. This is because democracy is not merely a system designed to maximize citizens’ current satisfaction, but an institutional mechanism intended to prevent power from becoming entrenched in a single entity.

We consume coffee every day, yet we are unaware of its production structure and historical context. The citizens of Bukele’s El Salvador were no different. Streets free of gangs, neighborhoods safe for the first time. But when we fail to ask what institutional costs those changes were built upon, authoritarianism gradually comes to be accepted as “the norm.”

This pattern is not unique to El Salvador. In Hungary, following his landslide victory in the 2010 elections, Orbán pushed through constitutional reforms while sidelining the opposition and seized control of the judiciary by overnight lowering the mandatory retirement age for judges, forcing 274 out of their posts. (Norberg, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2013) In Turkey, Erdoğan likewise used two rounds of constitutional amendments in 2010 and 2017 to expand government control over judicial appointments and concentrate power in the executive. (The Guardian, 2010; The Guardian, 2017) In all three cases, leaders secured a majority through elections, utilized legal procedures to dismantle checks and balances, and framed the process as the defense of democracy.

The retreat of democracy does not happen suddenly and terrifyingly one day. It creeps in, exploiting gaps. Sometimes, it even comes disguised as a sense of relief. El Salvador’s system has been built up over generations and remains in operation as of 2025. Term limits have been abolished, and Bukele’s reign is not yet over. And 90% of citizens still support him. Are we not going to ask the same question, just like we never question the coffee we drink every day?

References

Associated Press. (2021, December 8). El Salvador: US charges gang leaders with truce with Bukele government. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/08/el-salvador-us-gang-leaders-truce

Bermeo, N. (2016). On democratic backsliding. Journal of Democracy, 27(1).
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/607612/pdf

CNN Wire Staff. (2010, September 12). Turkey’s Erdogan hails constitutional referendum win. CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/12/turkey.referendum/index.html

Erdogan gets backing to strengthen his autocratic grip on Turkey. (2017, April 16). The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/16/erdogan-gets-backing-to-strengthen-his-autocratic-grip-on-turkey

France24. (2020, February 10). Backed by soldiers, El Salvador president Bukele briefly occupies Congress. France24.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200210-backed-by-soldiers-el-salvador-president-bukele-briefly-occupies-congress

Goebertus Estrada, J. (2025, September 2). El Salvador’s democracy is dying. Human Rights Watch.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/02/el-salvadors-democracy-is-dying

Human Rights Watch. (2013, May 16). Wrong direction on rights: Assessing the impact of Hungary’s new constitution and laws.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/05/16/wrong-direction-rights/assessing-impact-hungarys-new-constitution-and-laws

Human Rights Watch. (2021, November 1). El Salvador: Legislature deepens democratic backsliding.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/01/el-salvador-legislature-deepens-democratic-backsliding

Huq, A., & Ginsburg, T. (2018). How to lose a constitutional democracy. UCLA Law Review, 65, 78–169.
https://www.democratic-erosion.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Huq-and-Ginsberg-2018.pdf

Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown Publishing.

Library of Congress. (n.d.). El Salvador: The coffee republic. Country Studies.
https://countrystudies.us/el-salvador/6.htm

Norberg, J. (2026, March 31). How Viktor Orbán’s Hungary eroded the rule of law and free markets (Policy Analysis No. 1015). Cato Institute.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-viktor-orbans-hungary-eroded-rule-law-free-markets

Pozzebon, S. (2024, February 3). In El Salvador, self-styled ‘world’s coolest dictator’ Nayib Bukele heads for re-election amid human rights concerns. CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/03/americas/el-salvador-nayib-bukele-election-preview-intl/index.html

Whigham, T. L. (2023). El Salvador’s military massacres civilians. In EBSCO Research Starters. EBSCO.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/el-salvadors-military-massacres-civilians