ANTHONY BUTLER: Maintaining US democracy amid threat of strongman rule

Rise of populism will induce other presidential candidates to embrace authoritarian aims

29 August 2025

First published in Business Day

South Africans like to complain about the feebleness of their president and his seeming inability to get anything done. Yet citizens of the world’s most advanced banana republic have a far worse problem: a leader running roughshod over democratic institutions. 

It is tempting to attribute this crisis to the personality of Donald Trump, to sinister corporate interests linked to the Republican Party, or to the vagaries of the historical moment. But a new book by William Howell and Terry Moe, Trajectory of Power, shows that the underlying drivers of strongman rule in the US will not abate at the end of Trump’s presidential term. 

The US constitution envisages a separation of powers between three branches of government, and a federal system that disperses agency. For much of the 20th century Republican and Democratic presidents alike pursued greater unilateral power. They shared a common motivation to establish legacies as great leaders and to achieve significant accomplishments, which led all presidents to embrace unilateral options to circumvent the normal policy process. 

A factor enabling this expansion was the rise of the “administrative state”, which has provided presidents with vast resources, expertise and personnel to deploy. When public support for presidential activism increased, the Congress and courts delegated substantial discretion, leaving presidents opportunities for unilateral action — executive orders, memoranda and national security directives, but also discretion embedded in legal statutes and the appointment of activist agency leaders to enact change through rule making.

Leaders of both parties, meanwhile, expanded the “institutional presidency”, creating a centralised and politicised White House whose reach was extended by the Office of Management & Budget and the Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs. 

Where Republicans and Democrats have differed has been over fundamental objectives. Democrats have sought to regulate business, expand rights and mitigate inequality, poverty and discrimination, generally supporting the administrative state and viewing its agencies as partners in these “liberal” missions.

In contrast, Republican presidents have staunchly opposed much of the administrative state, seeing it as “progressive overreach”. From Ronald Reagan onward they have tried to control, retrench and generally sabotage federal agencies. This approach has been influenced by the unitary executive theory, a Republican legal framework that claims exclusive presidential authority over the entire executive branch, allowing presidents to ignore statutory constraints and aggressively reshape or cut administrative and regulatory interventions.

To maintain democracy, Howell and Moe argue, four steps need to be taken. First, the existential threat posed by the strongman presidency must no longer be denied. A demagogue with authoritarian aspirations really can use the vast unilateral powers vested in the presidency to subvert the basic features of democratic governance. The rise of populism and its support for strongman leadership is a continuing force that will induce other presidential candidates to embrace authoritarian aims. 

Second, the unitary executive theory must be countered because it makes a mockery of the separation of powers, allows presidents to ignore statutory constraints, and encourages them to interpret the constitutionality of statutes themselves. Clear legal boundaries for executive authority must be established and upheld by the courts — a consideration that applies in other countries to “revolutionary” doctrines that purportedly place parties above the state. 

Third, democracy dies when elites brazenly flout democratic norms, practices and rules. Such arrogance should never be accepted, even on the grounds that the leader is responding to crisis or making government more effective. 

Finally, the administrative state is foundational for a healthy democracy, for delivering services, and for solving any society’s problems. Attacks on the rule of law and the impersonal exercise of power by the state are direct threats to democracy.

The grinding work of rebuilding and protecting impersonal state institutions remains a fundamental tenet of benevolent national leadership. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.