The current state of democracy in El Salvador emphasizes how pernicious polarization destroys the possibility of effective resistance to democratic backsliding, as theorized by McCoy, Rahman, and Somer in “Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy.” Bukele’s rise began with his 2019 presidential victory, riding frustration with MS-13 gang violence that had made entire neighborhoods unlivable. After a weekend of 87 gang killings starting in March 2022, he declared an extensive “state of exception”. This emergency measure suspended constitutional due process rights, such as habeas corpus, legal counsel, and trial timelines, for all individuals whom authorities suspected of gang ties. Police and military soldiers flooded slum areas, arresting not only tattooed youth and street vendors, but also disabled individuals who lived near gang territory. By early 2026, the mega-prisons like CECOT held tens of thousands without charges, while homicides plummeted and Bukele’s approval soared into the 90s.
This security measure masked serious internal democratic erosion, defined as pernicious polarization by McCoy and his colleagues. With pernicious polarization, the group identities of Bukele supporters and their opposing “gang-defending elites” become rigid, moral distinctions, which prevent any possibility of democratic negotiation. Bukele used his control of the Constitutional Chamber, human rights NGOs, and independent media to present them as threats to public safety. He tweeted that judges were “protecting terrorists” and that El Faro journalists were “in bed with MS-13.” His TikTok and Twitter feeds, reaching millions daily, showed shirtless gang members being marched into CECOT at gunpoint, intercut with clips of him praying in church or hugging crime victims’ families. The story created a divide in society, as his rural and working-class supporters considered courts to be privileged traitors, while urban professionals and students stayed away from protests for fear of being called “gang sympathizers.” Affective polarization research by Iyengar and his team warns that this hostile emotional response amongst groups erodes the mutual toleration that democratic systems depend on.
Bukele executed his crucial institutional attack in May 2021, when his New Ideas party newly obtained a Legislative Assembly supermajority. With this, he invaded the Legislative Palace, wearing army attire and subsequently voted to forcibly retire all five Constitutional Chamber judges and Attorney General Raúl Melara within 24 hours. He did this as retribution for these officials stopping him from entering the Assembly building previously, as he had already attempted to enter illegally. His loyalist replacements then declared his 2024 reelection to be constitutional, despite the clear one-term restriction in Article 152. They justified this legally through approving a 2025 constitutional amendment that removed all reelection restrictions. Svolik’s “Polarization versus Democracy” predicts exactly this sequence, as when one side views the other as an existential threat, leaders feel justified in dismantling checks, knowing their base will cheer. The crowds at Bukele’s post-purge rallies filled soccer stadiums, with supporters chanting “¡La dictadura perfecta!”, which translates to “the perfect dictatorship.” Müller’s What Is Populism? explains this, as Bukele chooses specific language to present himself as the representative of Salvadoran citizens who belong to “the sovereign people”, with everyone else cast as an unrecognized outsider.
Gehlbach’s research about Putin’s media control demonstrates that independent media outlets experienced the same type of suppression as described in his study. For example, a news outlet known as El Faro published leaked negotiations, showing Bukele officials negotiating secret Bitcoin payments with gang leaders. Due to this, El Faro faces tax raids, defamation lawsuits, as well as exile threats. As a result, the majority of critical journalists left the industry by 2025, allowing Bukele to control public discussion through his social media platform. This created what McCoy and Somer call a “polarization spiral”. With people becoming more entrenched in their beliefs through unproven claims, it then makes it impossible to restore unity between opposing groups. When 2022 prison torture scandals leaked, with images of shackled inmates denied water in 110°F cells being shown, protests erupted in San Salvador’s universities and middle-class neighborhoods. However, Bukele used the state of exception to arrest protest leaders whom he charged as “gang apologists”, while his supporters counter-protested with images of murdered children.
With that, the resistance failed due to this polarization. The article “When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown?” by Cleary and Öztürk argues that judicial uncertainty requires institutions to establish total resistance, through coordinated lawsuits, legislative boycotts, and international arbitration. The Salvadoran NGOs FESPAD filed more than 200 legal challenges against the court purge. Yet, without street pressure, Bukele was able to ignore these through his “elite whining”. Street protests during the 2020 COVID lockdowns reached their highest point when students blocked boulevards and demanded his resignation due to the administration’s poor management of the virus. Still, rural areas of Bukeles base viewed urban youth as spoiled communists, allowing no progress or change to be made. The research of Stephan and Chenoweth in “Why Civil Resistance Works” demonstrates that nonviolent campaigns achieve success when they reach 3.5% of the total population. However, El Salvador never reached this fractured threshold. Gamboa’s “Opposition at the Margins” names this issue, as eroded democracies need comprehensive solutions that combine judicial systems with public demonstrations and elite defections, but political divisions between groups stop all collaboration efforts.
Overall, the destructive power of polarization explains El Salvador’s ongoing state of civil unrest. The neighborhoods that gangs used to control now permit children to play outside, with their mothers regarding Bukele as their protector. Yet, 1% of the population lives under trial-less detention in mega-prisons, independent voices have disappeared, and constitutional checks exist only on paper. While formal elections continue, with Bukele’s allies winning a majority of the 2024 legislative elections, they simply confirm the existence of one-party governance. McCoy and Somer warn that harmful polarization does not only enable democratic backsliding, but also creates political systems which become impossible to reverse. El Salvador is a country that demonstrates this perfectly. When “the people” and “traitors” replace citizens and opponents, all democratic methods become useless to restore democracy. Political peace depends on forming cross-cutting coalitions early, before polarization spirals into something that cannot be undone.
This is an extremely persuasive application of poisonous polarization to the Salvadoran instance, and you clearly demonstrate how it not only accompanies democratic decline, but actively inhibits resistance to it. Your use of Jennifer McCoy, Tahmina Rahman, and Murat Somer’s paradigm is particularly useful in illustrating why opposition division is not an accident but is structurally caused by Bukele’s rhetoric and strategy.
One connection that stuck out was how this instance validates the ideas presented in Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die. The collapse of mutual toleration is evident in your example of identifying critics as “gang apologists,” which effectively removes them from the group of legitimate political actors. At the same time, the use of emergency powers and legal amendments to justify institutional takeovers demonstrates the breakdown of institutional forbearance. What is interesting in El Salvador, however, is that polarization appears to go even further than in Levitsky and Ziblatt’s situations, as it not only weakens elite norms but also reshapes majority beliefs in a way that legitimizes repression.
I also believe your discussion of failed resistance is consistent with Milan Svolik’s argument in Polarization vs Democracy. As you point out, when people see the opposition as an existential threat, they are willing to tolerate-even support-democratic transgressions. Bukele’s strong popularity ratings despite widespread detentions appear to precisely highlight this trade-off: voters prioritize security over democratic safeguards. This creates an important debate in the literature regarding whether democratic erosion is predominantly elite-driven or mass-enabled.
Your inclusion of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan is also quite useful, particularly in explaining why resistance did not scale. The failure to attain the 3.5% participation requirement demonstrates how polarization does more than just split beliefs; it physically inhibits collective action potential. Even widespread unhappiness cannot translate into serious pressure in the absence of cross-group coalitions.
One concern your post raises for me is if El Salvador still has any “bridge actors”-institutions, local leaders, or even international organizations-who may potentially reconcile these split identities. As Jan-Werner Müller argues in What Is Populism?, populist systems rely greatly on maintaining a tight moral line between “the people” and “the others.” If that boundary were to weaken significantly, do you believe it would reopen space for concerted resistance, or has polarization grown too entrenched to reverse in the near future?