El Salvador is facing democratic erosion due to its current president Nayib Bukele. Bukele at first started his presidency in 2019, winning against the two candidates of the main two historically dominant parties. Claiming that he was going to help fix El Salvador’s gang issues and corruption, but that wasn’t the case.
A sign of democratic erosion in El Salvador made by Bukele was delegitimizing the opposition and raising accusations against them. He is doing everything in his power to get those who oppose him and the government to be held accountable. In Democratic Erosion Consortium we see an example of this, “By targeting political opposition, Bukele has removed judges, bureaucrats, and opposition candidates, all in the name of solving corruption.” Here we see that Buruklee was getting rid of the opposition but in a sneaky way by him saying it is because they were corrupt. In the article Stealth Authoritarianism by Ozan Varol it says, “Rather than imprisoning political opponents without due process, they prosecute them for violations of the existing criminal laws” This is what we see Bukele do, he is trying to get his opponents to be charged of violating criminal laws like corruption or fraud.
Another example of Bukele showing signs of democratic backsliding is that he was using the military unconstitutionally. Bukele arrived at the Legislative Assembly with armed soldiers, asking for funds to strengthen his military. In an article by the New York Times it said, “On Monday, El Salvador’s Supreme Court suspended any acts resulting from the emergency session and ordered Mr. Bukele to refrain from using the military in ways that are unconstitutional and “endanger the republican, democratic and representative system of government.” Bukele was using the military to get what he wanted and using it against Congress. In the article it said,“He announced that he would give Congress a week to approve the loan. In a speech to his supporters outside, he said he would remove lawmakers from the legislature if he needed to.” This shows that Bukele was going against the constitution and using the military to threaten others to get what he wanted. According to How Democracies Die by Ziblatt and Levitsky they created four behavioral warning signs, “ 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponent, 3) tolerates or encourages violence or 4) indicates willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.” Bukele violates a few of these like denies legitimacy of the opponent and the indicating willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents. This is bad for democracy because in a democracy one must acknowledge their opponent and not restrict citizens from certain rights.
Bukele shows a lot of signs of democratic erosion and based on these few examples we can see El Salvador showing more democratic backsliding. Especially since Bukele has been president since 2019 and has been pushing this agenda since.
Varol, Ozan. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100(4): pp. 1673-1742. Parts I, II and III.
Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die.New York: Crown. Chapter 1.
The Editorial Board. “El Salvador’s President Sends a Terrifying Message to the World.” The New York Times, February 14, 2020.
Author Last Name, First Name [or Democratic Erosion Consortium]. “El Salvador’s Successful Stealth Authoritarianism.” Democratic Erosion. November 17, 2025.
I found it very interesting how you trace Bukele’s consolidation of power through “stealth authoritarianism”. The gradualism is precisely what makes democratic erosion so difficult to counter: each individual action can be justified on its own terms (anti-corruption, public security), while the cumulative effect is the hollowing out of checks and balances. also think it is worth noting that Bukele’s popular legitimacy complicates the picture, for example, his approval ratings remain high, which raises the question of how we think about democratic erosion when citizens themselves support the erosion. Given that Bukele’s authoritarian measures have coincided with a dramatic reduction in gang violence, how do you think we should evaluate democratic erosion when the population broadly supports the leader carrying it out? Does popular approval change the diagnosis?
Since Bukele’s martial law, I thought it was a great breakthrough for El Salvador’s crime rate. It actually improved public safety and people’s quality of life. So it is obvious that he has a massive, solid support base from the people. Despite the side effects of his movement and the erosion of its own democracy, I think it is necessary for the transition period for El Salvador’s democracy. For example, one of the most successful dictators in the world, Park Chung-hee, is still praised as a savior for South Korea’s economic development. Obviously, he tried to suppress the people and made constitutional amendments for his term. However, from a consequentialist approach, this dictatorship awakened the people and is seen as an evolution of South Korea’s democratic consciousness. So, there will be a moment of realization for the people of El Salvador and rewrite their democratic model. However, considering the current economic state of El Salvador, we don’t know how long it will take.
I think it’s really interesting how Bukele’s presidency started as a way to fix El Salvador’s problems but turned into democratic erosion instead. The idea of “stealth authoritarianism” feels fitting because Bukele still claims that everything he’s doing—removing judges and bureaucrats, strengthening the military, and attacking his opponents—is all in the name of bettering El Salvador. I used to work in immigration law, and many of the firm’s clients were from El Salvador, trying to claim political asylum just to escape Bukele’s “reign of terror,” as they put it. It shows how democratic erosion isn’t just about institutions collapsing, but about how it follows people into their everyday lives and uproots them completely. And it’s crazy how seven years later, Bukele’s power is still unchecked, and people are still suffering, all because he played the system using almost textbook examples of authoritarian takeovers.
It reminds me a lot of Alberto Fujimori’s time as the President of Peru. For all intents and purposes, Fujimori was a dictator and, along with his right-hand man Vladimiro Montesinos, terrorized the Peruvian people and left such deep scars on the government that we are still suffering to this day. Yet Fujimori is still lauded as one of Peru’s greatest presidents because he stopped extreme inflation in the 1990s and defeated violent rebel groups with his mano dura diplomacy. It parallels how Bukele’s approval ratings stay high despite all of the suffering. It just shows the same unfortunate pattern of leaders leaning on public fears about security and corruption to expand their own authority, at the expense of democracy and the people.