In 1947, Winston Churchill gave a speech before the British parliament in opposition to second chamber reform. In that speech (Parliament 1947), he argued against concentrating power in the House of Commons on the grounds that this would give the elected government too much power. The speech included the famous line that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Churchill, however, did not mean to be personally identified with the sentiment. It was, instead, something he attributed to others:
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about Parliament, about the rights of Parliament, which I shall certainly not fail to defend. But it is not Parliament that should rule; it is the people who should rule through Parliament.… What they wanted to do they could do, and what they did not want to do they could stop. All this idea of a handful of men getting hold of the State machine, having the right to make the people do what suits their party and personal interests or doctrines, is completely contrary to every conception of surviving Western democracy.… We accept in the fullest sense of the word the settled and persistent will of the people. All this idea of a group of super men and super-planners, such as we see before us, ‘playing the angel’, as the French call it, and making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, is a violation of democracy. Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.
Churchill identified himself as positively committed to democracy, specifically to the idea that the people should rule. But only the lesser evil argument, which he described but with which he did not identify, draws much interest today. For example, in the 1990s, scholars of democracy formulated what they called the “Churchill Hypothesis” (Rose and Mishler Reference Rose and Mishler1996). If people who have personally experienced the shortcomings of both democratic and undemocratic regimes prefer democracy, then the Churchill Hypothesis stands. But if they prefer the undemocratic alternatives to the imperfections of democracy, then the Churchill Hypothesis is false, and democracy falls short of the “lesser evil” threshold. An effort was made to test the Churchill Hypothesis by collecting public opinion data from people living in countries with recent experience of both democracy and authoritarianism. In Eastern Europe in the 1990s, it was found that the Churchill Hypothesis holds—lesser evil arguments played an important role in sustaining the commitment to democracy (Rose et al. Reference Rose, Mishler and Haerpfer1998). But in East Asia in the 2000s, it was found that the commitment to democracy was largely too positive for there to be much need for lesser evil arguments (Shin Reference Shin2009). East Asian citizens were committed to democracy in principle, particularly to the idea that democracy is responsive to the people. In this respect, the citizens of East Asia had more in common with the real Churchill.
Churchill did not wish to argue that democracy was the worst form of government except for all others, and in his own day it seemed to him that there were other persuasive arguments available, particularly the idea that the people should “continuously rule.” The focus on this line is indicative of a change in the historical context. The other arguments Churchill employed have lost persuasive force. For instance, two decades ago, it was argued (Schmitter and Treschel Reference Schmitter and Treschel2004) that critiques of democracy would compel democracies to democratize, to develop and conform to higher standards:
Established democracies in Western and Southern Europe will find it increasingly difficult to legitimate themselves by comparing their performance with that of some alternative mode of domination, whether real or imagined. Now that democracy has become the norm throughout Europe and autocracy persists openly only in countries with markedly different cultures and social structures, the standards for evaluating what governments do (and how they do what they do) will become increasingly ‘internal’ to the discourse of normative democratic theory, i.e. to what differing conceptions of democracy have promised over time and for which citizens have struggled so hard in the past. Therefore, there should be a tendency toward a convergence in formal institutions and informal practices within Europe that will, in turn, lead to a narrower and higher range of political standards.
But this did not happen. Instead, the liberal tradition became increasingly associated not with Churchill’s positive claim that the people should rule, but with minimalist arguments emphasizing the institutional advantages of competitive multiparty elections, the integration and circulation of elites, and the prevention of disasters grounded on grand narratives (Acemoglu and Robinson Reference Acemoglu and Robinson2012; Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016; Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1992; North et al. Reference North, Wallis and Weingast2009; Schumpeter Reference Schumpeter1942; Shklar Reference Shklar and Rosenblum1989). Warnings about authoritarian threats—democratic backsliding, competitive authoritarianism, populism—are now everywhere (Bermeo Reference Bermeo2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2019).
This is lamented and railed against by those who remain committed to more ambitious liberalisms or to the idea that the people should rule (Dukes and Streeck Reference Dukes and Streeck2022; Gagnon and Abrams et al. Reference Gagnon and Abrams2025; Michea Reference Michea2009; Moyn Reference Moyn2023). But, despite many attempts to push democracies to further democratize, democracies seem to increasingly rely on negative arguments—they are, for all their inadequacies, still to be regarded as superior to the overt forms of despotism with which they are contrasted (Gagnon and Abrams et al. Reference Gagnon and Abrams2025: 22–24). Even those who make new positive arguments tend to begin by emphasizing the degree to which liberal democracy falls hopelessly short of their visions (Fishkin Reference Fishkin2025; Guerrero Reference Guerrero2024; Landemore Reference Landemore2020; Nwanevu Reference Nwanevu2025). And so, even when positive cases are made, they rarely perform the function of defending liberal democratic institutions from immediate challenges. Works that do attempt to defend existing democratic institutions do so overwhelmingly by appeal to lesser evil arguments, emphasizing that the alternatives to democracy are very bad (Galston Reference Galston2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Albright Reference Albright2018; Stanley Reference Stanley2018). They rely heavily on the idea that citizens can be motivated to defend democracy if they fear authoritarianism is otherwise likely.
In this paper, I offer a diagnostic theory of this situation (Geuss Reference Geuss2006; Prinz Reference Prinz2016; Sluga Reference Sluga2014; Studebaker Reference Studebaker2024). Rather than make a normative argument for democracy or unearth conceptualizations of democracy from other times and places, I clarify the character of the situation that prompts us to regard democracy as being in trouble. Ongoing efforts to perpetuate democracy occur in a context in which contestation over the concept of democracy is increasingly acrimonious, polyvalent, and inconclusive. This contestation is not something I regard as natural, essential, or permanent, but as a historical phenomenon—it has causes, and political actors can attempt to intervene in its causes. But the forms of intervention that appear available are, themselves, shaped by the way in which the problem is understood. A diagnostic theory clarifies the character of the problem. By increasing the legibility of the problem, it aids political actors in thinking about what to do without attempting to dictate their form of response. Such an approach is necessitated by a context in which disagreements have proliferated to the point at which normative arguments have lost their capacity to produce a functional level of consensus. Yet, despite the intensity of disagreement, the Churchill line appears to have become important in arguments about democracy that are otherwise quite different from one another. Why has the line become important, and what are the implications of its importance for political actors who wish to make interventions? I argue the Churchill line has become prominent for specific historical reasons—the persuasive force of positive arguments has been heavily diminished by deteriorating social and political circumstances. The line’s prominence has grave consequences for the future of democratic politics, because it only works by comparing something that is conceded to be bad with something believed to be even worse. It therefore not only involves a retreat from efforts to overcome the badness of democracy, but it also requires that something even worse be constructed, so that the bad can subsist on a comparison with the even worse. Constructing the even worse can involve making what is bad even worse than it was before, so long as what is even worse remains even worse.
Since democracy means different things in different places today (Frankenberger and Buhr Reference Frankenberger and Buhr2020; Gagnon Reference Gagnon2021; Stenling et al. Reference Stenling, Fahlén, Strittmatter and Skille2023; Ulbricht Reference Ulbricht2018; Zagrebrina Reference Zagrebrina2019), the scope will have to be narrowed. Those who took up the Churchill Hypothesis 30 years ago focused on democracies with a recent experience of authoritarianism. But Churchill himself came from precisely the opposite kind of context—a very old, embedded democracy, in which there is no direct experience of authoritarianism in living memory. Indeed, in embedded democracies, it is difficult for citizens to imagine attractive alternatives to the liberal democratic nation-state—they have a restricted political imaginarium (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2024: 4–7). So, even when they become deeply dissatisfied with the liberal democratic nation-state, it is not obvious that this dissatisfaction can immediately issue in demands for another form of regime. Instead of demanding an alternative regime, citizens look for ways to renew or revitalize democracy on the national level by altering its procedural form (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2023b). Yet, proposed reforms to the procedures can, even if they are intended to defend democracy, appear authoritarian to those who do not agree with the reforms (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2024: 59–69). So, in an embedded democracy, dissatisfaction with democracy tends to produce intractable disagreements about democracy’s meaning and content. The accusation of authoritarianism is used to limit what democracy can become (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2024: 69–70), preventing it from developing into something that blatantly transgresses against its concept. But, because embedded democracies have been around for a long time, they lack a shared domestic image of authoritarianism and are therefore also prone to disagree about what constitutes authoritarianism. To prevent disagreements about democracy from being replicated with regard to authoritarianism, democracies import coherent images of authoritarianism from abroad. Strong candidates for embeddedness have had competitive multiparty elections for at least a century. Today, this might plausibly include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Footnote 1
In these places, authoritarianism is a specter—something that occurs somewhere else, in a place like France, Germany, or Russia. Yet this specter poses a threat. It begins somewhere foreign, but it is potentially coming soon to a theatre near you. Since it has not yet arrived, the even worseness of authoritarianism must be communicated through symbolism and narrative, not lived experience. Indeed, in the run-up to World War II, the point was often made through films (Cole Reference Cole2001; Ross Reference Ross, Zuckerman and Schoenberg2007). The authoritarian specter is associated with living, breathing geopolitical enemies, not with one’s own recent past. This allows domestic dissidents who sympathize with the structures of the specter regime to appear not only as antidemocratic but also as unpatriotic. The dissidents not only appear to be potentially treasonous; they appear to be traitors.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, there is no longer a regime that is an obvious candidate for the spectral role. In the absence of a specter, the search for an authoritarian point of contrast turns inward. Domestic images of authoritarianism are constructed, and dissidents come to appear to many to pose a very grave threat (Applebaum Reference Applebaum2020). But without an external authoritarian regime to provide clarity about what constitutes an authoritarian threat, it remains impossible to produce a functional consensus in wider society concerning who is authoritarian or even what authoritarianism now involves. Attempts to curate the meaning of democracy and authoritarianism increasingly fall short, forcing democracy’s defenders to look abroad once more for countries that can play the old role. Forcing states like China, Russia, or Iran into the Soviet Union’s shoes involves countenancing a return to dangerous forms of interstate competition that, with the fall of the wall, many hoped to consign to the dustbin of history. Yet the alternative—a reopening of the imaginarium, to formulate new kinds of political systems that are capable of keeping the promises historically associated with democracy—has yet to materialize within political parties or executive branches.
Why positive arguments fail to convince
The Churchill line sticks out to those of us who live in very old democracies because it is the last argument available to us. And this is because it has become increasingly difficult to make positive arguments for older embedded democracies. Embedded democracies are “liberal” democracies, in the sense that they hold competitive multiparty elections, but it is not clear that they live up to the concept of democracy understood as a normative value. This difficulty stems in part from the fact that embedded democratic institutions are antique—they fall short of various contemporary normative standards (Garland and Palese Reference Garland and Palese2019; Milligan and Ross Reference Milligan and Ross2023; Rana Reference Rana2024). But there is also a question about whether even liberal democracies with more contemporary institutional configurations remain able to keep the promises that Jörke and Studebaker (Reference Jörke and Studebaker2025) associate with “modern” democracy. These include “the promise of being able to collectively and equally shape the fate of the respective political community” and the promise “to achieve an improvement of social circumstances, such as more social equality (not necessarily only in the material sense).” In recent decades, economic inequality within the embedded democracies has increased enormously (Elsässer and Schäfer Reference Elsässer and Schäfer2023; Piketty Reference Piketty2020). There seems to be a clear connection between economic inequality and political inequality, so much so that it is frequently argued that these democracies have quietly become oligarchies or technocracies, depending on whether one wishes to emphasize the political power of wealthy individuals or the political power of impersonal bureaucracies (Formisano Reference Formisano2017; Gilens Reference Gilens2014; Habermas Reference Habermas2015; Stie Reference Stie2013; Winters Reference Winters2011).
Redressing these difficulties is not easy. For instance, economic inequality has rarely been substantially reduced without large-scale political violence or serious disasters. Indeed, Walter Scheidel (Reference Scheidel2017: 393) goes so far as to argue that high inequality is “a default condition of human civilization,” that periods of leveling are driven not by democracy, but by wars, revolutions, pandemics, and freak events that precipitate state collapse. Democratic strategies that would reduce inequality in theory lack political feasibility, and democratic strategies that are clearly politically feasible would have little effect (Scheidel Reference Scheidel2017: 433–435). Others have argued that while, in the past, democracies were able to appear credibly committed to the amelioration of social inequality, the process of modernization has accelerated past the point at which it is compatible with this credible commitment (Crouch Reference Crouch2004; Greven Reference Greven2009; Jörke and Studebaker Reference Jörke and Studebaker2025; Rosa Reference Rosa2013).Footnote 2 As wealth and labor grow more mobile, territorial nation-states are pushed to compete for access to these flows or to control or limit their exposure to rapid changes in them. The spatial and temporal limits of the nation-state deprive democracies of a meaningful intervention mechanism, forcing democracies to rely on supranational structures that are distant from democratic publics (Agrawal et al. Reference Agrawal, Brueckner and Brülhart2024; Boadway and Shah Reference Boadway and Shah2009). These supranational structures give rise to new kinds of authority that modern, individualized subjects struggle to trust, and nation-states are increasingly forced into a mediating role (Christensen Reference Christensen2020; Dahl Reference Dahl, Shapiro and Hacker-Cordón1999). Instead of facilitating the rule of the people, these democracies explain the decisions of the supranational structures to the people, attempting to legitimate the rule of these structures. Withdrawal from supranational structures is cost prohibitive, because nation-states now lack the capacity to manage their economies independently. At the same time, technological growth, environmental degradation, and individualized consumerism both fragment society and change social conditions faster than can be processed through a deliberative mode (Rosa Reference Rosa2013). A confusing barrage of rapid changes can hardly be processed effectively by increasingly atomized subjects. It generates epistemic confusion, reducing the capacity of the people to come to a shared understanding of their situation. Taken together, these changes have deprived the demos of the capacity to take decisions, to manage the process of modernization and its effects.
Regardless of whether we understand the problem in a transhistorical (Scheidel Reference Scheidel2017) or historical way (Crouch Reference Crouch2004; Greven Reference Greven2009; Jörke and Studebaker Reference Jörke and Studebaker2025), it seems that “the way is shut” (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2023a), that in embedded democracies the people will not be ruling unless an event comes to pass that would itself endanger the continuation of democracy. In the absence of such an event, these democracies operate under a “shadow of unfairness” that limits the degree to which their citizens are positively committed to them (Green Reference Green2016). Continuous efforts to appease oligarchs and transnational corporations lead to endless rounds of austerity, undermining public services and creating a powerful sense that “nothing works anymore” (Calafati et al. Reference Calafati, Froud, Wiliams, Johal and Haslam2023). As the global economy further integrates and the competition to generate returns for shareholders intensifies, private companies not only seem disinterested in the public good, they appear to abuse their customers, enshittifying their services (Doctorow Reference Doctorow2026). With little to believe in on either side of the public/private fence, intense feelings of resentment and despair pervade both public and private life, while democratic nation-states seem incapable of offering any meaningful response. Instead of being both liberal and modern, embedded democracies remain liberal but have lost their credible commitment to fulfilling the promises of modernity. They are liberal rather than modern. It is in this sense that embedded democracies have been debilitated; they have lost the capacity to perform the functions that were central to their appeal, or even to credibly promise to perform or to develop the capacity to perform those functions in the future (Crouch Reference Crouch2004; Greven Reference Greven2009; Jörke and Studebaker Reference Jörke and Studebaker2025). Rather than empower the people to rule, to collectively and equally shape the fate of the respective political community, and to achieve an improvement of social circumstances, embedded democracies increasingly seem to be subject to processes of social fracturing and political disempowerment that they lack the capacity to steer. As awareness of this incapacity spreads, modern arguments for democracy lose their capacity to convince. As this loss occurs, widespread feelings of despair take root in society (Blanchflower and Bryson Reference Blanchflower and Bryson2026; Case and Deaton Reference Case and Deaton2020; George et al. Reference George, Studebaker, Sterling, Wright and Cain2023; Mair Reference Mair2013; Proctor Reference Proctor2024; Studebaker Reference Studebaker2024).
Yet, while embedded democracies are debilitated, they remain liberal, at least in the minimal sense, in that they have the civil-social features necessary to reliably hold competitive multiparty elections (Przeworski Reference Przeworski, Shapiro and Hacker-Cordón1999). They therefore remain committed to the concept of democracy. This commitment compels them to defend more limited iterations of the concept. Unable to overcome the senses in which democracy has been debilitated, defenders of liberal democracy instead deny the significance of debilitation for the meaningfulness of the concept. They claim that liberal democracies can enable the people to rule, even if liberal democracies cannot do anything to change the conditions that drive the people to despair. For instance, it is sometimes argued that, for the people to rule, they need only enjoy social equality, in the narrow sense that there is no formal hierarchy and no one possesses an arbitrary power to influence the elections or otherwise dominate the democratic process (Ingham Reference Ingham2022; Kolodny Reference Kolodny2014). These arguments involve resorting to negative, limited conceptualizations of equality, along the lines of no-hierarchy and no-arbitrary power. They therefore seem to require a familiarity with the evils of hierarchical regimes in which elites do in fact exercise arbitrary power. These even worse regimes become the points of comparison that sustain embedded democracies’ claims to sufficiently satisfy these criteria.
The same kind of dynamic arises if we choose other starting points. For Tom O’Shea (Reference O’Shea2019), freedom is understood as non-domination, and non-domination is conceptualized in a highly demanding way, such that for him, “most workers” in liberal democracies are “dependent on the arbitrary power of employers as a condition of securing their civic capabilities.” On this basis, he calls for abolishing this dominating power, attacking the embedded democracies for failing to protect workers from domination. Cécile Laborde (Reference Laborde2024) argues that when members of marginalized groups feel unfree, this is in itself often sufficient reason to regard them as unfree, because of certain epistemic advantages which these members possess. If embedded democracies were not debilitated and were able to implement effective reforms on the basis of these critiques, then these critiques could be used to revitalize democracy. But because embedded democracies are debilitated, these arguments only further highlight this debilitation, provoking feelings of despair. To defend the embedded democracies, it is necessary to conceptualize freedom in a more limited way. To convince others that a limited form of freedom is still meaningful freedom, this freedom must be clearly distinguished from authoritarianism. Indeed, if it can be argued that attempts to pursue ambitious conceptualizations of freedom will result in authoritarianism, the standpoints from which the embedded democracies might be critiqued instead become sites from which they might be defended.
Consider, for instance, Isaiah Berlin. Berlin (Reference Berlin1969) argued that positive accounts of liberty, in which people realize their potential, conflict with negative accounts of liberty focused around preventing interference in private decision-making. Through this argument, he not only articulated a more limited conceptualization of freedom but also argued that a more demanding conceptualization would ultimately produce its opposite. And during the Cold War, it was easy for Berlin to point to a live example of what that opposite consisted of in practice—the USSR. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, neo-republican theorists like O’Shea have worked to articulate conceptualizations of freedom that are still nominally negative but possess a more critical bite. In a context in which the Soviet Union is gone, it is harder to argue convincingly that radical neo-republican theories have authoritarian implications. But it is also hard to argue that these theories can be used to defend the embedded democracies, because these democracies are debilitated and cannot operate in a radical manner. Attempts to introduce radical republican structures have, by the admission of republican theorists, tended to remain at the level of theory (Selk Reference Selk2025; Selk and Klüh Reference Selk and Klüh2025). Even in cases in which radical innovations are tried, for example, deliberative mini-publics, they never seem to be tried in a way that has radical implications (Van Dijk and Lefevre Reference Van Dijk and Lefevre2022; Welp Reference Welp2026). Since the radical democrats of varying stripes have not succeeded in revitalizing liberal democratic institutions, their critiques instead have a demoralizing effect. So, when liberal democracy is criticized from the right (Deneen Reference Deneen2023), radical responses tend to further run down the liberal democratic procedures rather than offer an effective defense of them (Isaac Reference Isaac2023), further eroding commitment to liberal democratic forms.
Some have attempted to make a positive case for liberal democracy on institutional grounds. For instance, instead of arguing that democracy is committed to a limited form of equality or liberty in which certain very bad things do not occur, it might be argued that democracy is positively committed to a rule of law that circulates elites (Acemoglu and Robinson Reference Acemoglu and Robinson2012; North et al. Reference North, Wallis and Weingast2009; Verzichelli Reference Verzichelli, Best and Higley2018). Democracy may not permit the people to rule, but it prevents any section of the elite from ruling exclusively and indefinitely. Elites are constrained by impersonal institutions that “tame” them (Winters Reference Winters2011). Their power is limited by the electoral process, and the elections involve the members of the demos who wish, or are compelled, to participate, even if they are not a coherent mechanism through which something like the “will of the people” could be articulated (Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016).
The trouble is that even in these accounts, the way of establishing that democracies do in fact have these features is to discuss authoritarian cases in which these features are clearly absent. In systems with “extractive institutions” (Acemoglu and Robinson Reference Acemoglu and Robinson2012) or “limited-access orders” (North et al. Reference North, Wallis and Weingast2009) where oligarchs are “ruling” (Winters Reference Winters2011), the rule of law is violated, elites do not circulate, and wild oligarchs run loose. When Achen and Bartels (Reference Achen and Bartels2016: 316–319) get around to asking “what is good about democracy” at the end of Democracy for Realists, they immediately raise the question of whether they would “rather live in a dictatorship.” They go to great lengths to emphasize that they are “inspired and heartened” when “a government of torturers collapses, when the Berlin Wall comes down, or when an unarmed young man faces down a tank during the Tiananmen demonstrations in China.” Ultimately, they conclude that, despite the myriad senses in which folk theories of democracy are not convincing, democracy is to be preferred because elections ensure that “no one group or coalition can become entrenched in power, unlike in dictatorships or one-party states.”
The need to repeatedly remind the reader of dictatorships and one-party states is significant. If obstructions to unchecked, total elite dominance become democracy’s key selling points, the specter of a regime in which such checks do not exist or come to disappear must be continuously raised. There must be an example of what happens if the rule of law is broken and the people lose even their capacity to dismiss incumbents. Since internal inequities and injustices are increasingly recognized as endemic in democracies—they are the rule, rather than the exception (Green Reference Green2016; Hanchard Reference Hanchard2018)—discussing internal conditions further delegitimates the democratic procedures. So, an external example is required, one that allows the badness of liberal democracies to be comparatively minimized.
If all the world’s countries had been liberal democracies for hundreds of years, it would be harder for lesser evil arguments to be convincing. The evidence for these kinds of claims is that there is some other regime out there in which liberal democratic principles of institutional design are not followed. Very bad things happen there, things that could happen here if we do not appropriately value our democratic procedures. In this way, the embedded democracies are politically sustained by the continued existence of viable nondemocratic states.
So institutional arguments for liberal democracy, even in so far as they might be said to make a positive case for the value of democratic institutions, still require a negative example to be adequately convincing. It is this dependence on the negative example that makes institutional arguments feel negative in character, even when they are expressed in otherwise positive language. While it might be argued that elite circulation and the rule of law are good, these arguments are much more convincing if we are familiar with systems that lack these features and we have strong negative associations with them. In these ways, institutional arguments for democracy rely on the last argument. They depend on the negative authoritarian examples against which the embedded democracies are defined.
The concept of the specter regime
To establish these negative authoritarian examples, defenders of embedded democracies construct what I call a “specter regime.” A specter regime must appear both normatively repugnant and descriptively viable. It must be the case that a specter regime seems to pose a real threat of spreading, but it must also seem to be the case that a clear majority of citizens living in the democracy fear and oppose this spread. The threat to spread is not limited to a security problem—it also has a mimetic dimension. While the specter regime may appear poised to impose its system through conspiratorial or military action, it may also threaten to spread by serving as an example that inspires imitation. So, for instance, the Soviet Union was framed as threatening to spread not just by literally conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States but also by inspiring Americans to seek to imitate Soviet political and economic institutions.
Why must a specter regime appear both repugnant and viable? If the specter regime appears repugnant but nonviable, it will not be taken seriously as posing a threat. No one would plot to install a clearly nonviable regime type, and no one would imitate institutions that are clearly nonviable. Conversely, if the regime appears viable but non-repugnant, many citizens might actually come to desire its spread. They might actually overthrow democracy or imitate authoritarian structures to the point at which the concept of “democracy” no longer adequately describes their form of regime. But if a repugnant yet viable external authoritarian state is identified, critics can be credibly accused of imitating or conspiring with an even worse foreign state. Because the specter regime appears viable, it is believed that dissidents might in fact conspire with it or imitate it. Yet, because the specter regime appears repugnant, association with the specter regime carries a political taint. The concept of democracy can thus be defined against these viable but repugnant authoritarian alternatives.
It is difficult for a regime to appear both viable and repugnant over a long period of time, insofar as perceived viability tends to erode repugnancy and vice versa. To appear both viable and repugnant at one and the same time, a careful balance of praise and criticism must be struck. This narrative balance allows the democracy to credibly accuse dissidents of conspiring with or seeking to imitate something even worse to destroy something that is merely bad, or even comparatively “good.”
What does this balance look like, concretely? To appear repugnant, a specter regime must credibly appear authoritarian, in the specific sense that it must credibly appear to exhibit the negative qualities that embedded democracies do not have. So, a specter regime must seem to have more social inequality, to have an unstable commitment to the rule of law, or to have an entrenched elite that cannot be removed through electoral mechanisms. This last quality is perhaps the most easily demonstrable—in a country where the governing party has not changed in many years, there is a prima facie case that authoritarianism has taken root, even in cases in which multiparty elections are regularly held (Levitsky and Way Reference Levitsky and Way2002).
But while the credible appearance of authoritarianism is necessary, it is not sufficient to establish repugnancy. A specter regime not only must be authoritarian; it must serve as an example of why authoritarian alternatives are worse. This means that life under the specter regime must seem unattractive. There must be, for instance, a perception of regular abuses or a sense that the standard of living is markedly lower. If a specter regime is prosperous and the people living in it do not seem to be suffering under the domination of elites, the specter regime might instead seem to show that it is possible to abandon democracy without experiencing the negative consequences long associated with authoritarianism. In that case, the specter regime appears too viable and insufficiently repugnant.
This is a concern one might have had about attempts to use Hungary as a specter regime. While there was, until quite recently, a prima facie case that Hungary might be authoritarian, because its governing party had not changed since 2010, the relative prosperity of Hungary made it hard to create an association between the Hungarian regime and the standard consequences of authoritarianism. This is in no small part because Hungary remains within the European Union and continues to receive large amounts of foreign direct investment (Bohle and Regan Reference Bohle and Regan2021; Bozóki and Hegedűs Reference Bozóki and Hegedűs2018). Hungary’s economy is small enough that its relative prosperity depends largely on the way external powers choose to interact with it. The European Union has not acted to make sure the prospect of living in a place like Hungary seems repugnant, and this has allowed the Hungarian system to appear more viable than it would otherwise.
But if life in Hungary were unremittingly bleak, that would create a different problem. The specter regime must appear sufficiently viable to attract sincere, non-ironic support. If the specter regime is too repugnant, it becomes difficult to make the case that internal dissidents would want to conspire with it or imitate it. North Korea, for instance, has such an infamous reputation that it would be very difficult to argue that dissidents living in liberal democracies are seriously committed to installing a regime or creating institutions grounded on its Juche principles (Haggard and Nolan Reference Haggard and Nolan2009; Kim Reference Kim2017). The North Korean system does not appear to be a viable alternative, so it is difficult to credibly accuse anyone of being a genuine evangelist for it. Those who do, in fact, have financial links to North Korea are framed as ordinary criminals, not as political threats (Office of Public Affairs 2025).
It is hard to find authoritarian regimes that are both viable and repugnant. But the past contains many authoritarian regimes that were, at one time, well-positioned to play this role. Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union were all powerful enough and rich enough to meet a criterion of seeming viability, but they were also associated with major abuses and/or with a lower standard of living. The Soviet Union, in particular, played this role very effectively for a long period of time. It was easy to make the case that the Soviet Union was repugnant, that its citizens were unfree and subject to economic hardship. But it was also easy to make the case that the Soviet Union was a viable alternative—it was the second most powerful country on earth, and it (at least formally) guaranteed rights to housing, health care, and education (George and Manning Reference George and Manning1980; Herlemann and Murphy Reference Herlemann and Murphy2019). It could plausibly be argued that many internal dissidents sympathized with the Soviet Union or had connections to it. Even in recent years, Bernie Sanders’ trip to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s received a nontrivial amount of media attention (Kranish Reference Kranish2019; Otterbein Reference Otterbein2019; Troianovski Reference Troianovski2020).
This symbolic use of the Soviet Union had consequences for foreign policy. As Murray Edelman (Reference Edelman1985: 15) put it:
‘USSR’ and ‘Khrushchev’ can come to stand so repeatedly for danger that adaptive thinking becomes unlikely, and political actions that accept the USSR or Khrushchev as reasonable or potential associates are met with hostility.… American and Soviet diplomats and analysts, working with each other and with hard facts and discovering bases for agreement in the cold war, may thus be hampered by a rigid consensus of the uninvolved from going very far with negotiations. Neither Khrushchev nor Johnson could do so without the risk of offending groups with wide support.
The Soviet Union came to be regarded nearly universally as a threat, and this allowed the way democracy is understood to be policed. Democracy could mean a lot of things, but it could not mean anything that points, or can be made to seem to point, in the Soviet direction. For Edelman, this produced “rigidity” rather than “manipulability”—it produced a public with a fixed attitude that was difficult to shift. This rigidity was inconvenient from the point of view of foreign policy. It was an obstacle to détente. But it had advantages from the point of view of legitimating liberal democracy. By limiting what democracy could defensibly become, it contributed to a stable understanding of what democracy is. Those hoping to change things in the United States would have to work within the limits of this understanding or risk ostracism.
Dissidents and specter regimes
While it may be difficult to make positive arguments for democracy, the presence of a specter regime in the discourse makes it difficult to make positive arguments for alternatives to democracy, too. Alternatives to democracy are immediately analogized to the specter regime. During the 20th century, leftist dissidents associated with Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School continuously had to ward off accusations that they were attempting to conspire with or imitate the Soviet Union, while right-wing dissidents who objected to social democratic reforms continuously had to ward off accusations that they were trying to conspire with or imitate Nazi Germany.
These arguments were so effective that dissident critics of liberal democracy were forced to explicitly commit themselves to saving democracy. Western Marxists had to continuously emphasize their opposition to the Soviet Union, and in the hands of Jürgen Habermas (Reference Habermas1973), critical theory became firmly wedded to the project of democratization. Instead of arguing that they had in fact found a superior alternative to liberal democracy, critical theorists went to great lengths to deny that they were authoritarian and instead reversed the accusation, alleging that it was the right that was in possession of the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al. Reference Adorno, Frenkel-brunswick, Levinson and Sanford1950). Conversely, dissidents on the right emphasized their opposition to totalitarianism, seeking association with the concept of liberty or with libertarianism rather than with fascism (Hayek Reference Hayek1978; Mises Reference Mises1944; Rothbard Reference Rothbard2006).
In this way, the presence of a specter regime domesticates the dissidents. They cannot appear to support the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, and this sharply limits the forms their dissent can take. But if we do not have a specter regime, then we do not have the limitations on the concept of democracy that a specter regime imposes. Without the Soviet Union, the concept of democracy is allowed to become much less clear. We can have continuous disputes over what democracy means, over who is in fact on its side (Brancati Reference Brancati2014; Laebens Reference Laebens2023; Studebaker Reference Studebaker2023b; Wagrandl Reference Wagrandl, Sajó, Uitz and Holmes2021). Democratic theorists attempt to adjudicate these disputes at the level of theory (Bermeo Reference Bermeo2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018; Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2019; Scheppele Reference Scheppele2018), but while these adjudications may be convincing among democratic theorists, they are unable to produce a consensus within wider society.
For instance, it is often unclear whether attempts to increase the power of executives ought to be regarded as executive aggrandizement (Studebaker Reference Studebaker2023b). Consider the very Churchill speech with which this piece began. There, Churchill attempted to defend the power of the unelected House of Lords on the grounds that this power was necessary to check the prime minister. When a prime minister moves to reduce the capacity of the second chamber to frustrate government policy, the prime minister modifies constitutional essentials to reduce institutional checks, hampering the power of opposition forces to check executive preferences. Lords reform can easily be made to fit definitions of executive aggrandizement, yet it was widely regarded not merely as compatible with democracy, but as necessary for its extension.
In the same way, when the Trump administration moves to make it easier to fire civil servants or defund public programs, there are those who regard this as executive aggrandizement and others who regard it as a check on a process of technocratization. For some years now, academics have attempted to adjudicate the dispute at the level of theory (Emerson Reference Emerson2019; Kucinskas Reference Kucinskas2025; Moynihan Reference Moynihan and Bauer2021; Shane Reference Shane2022), but they have not been able to adjudicate it at the level of practice. Their arguments have not produced a functional level of consensus in wider society around an answer. Instead, the dispute has repeatedly resurfaced with an increasing virulence.
Alternatively, consider the post-Cold War literature on populism, in which populist dissidents are framed as having a contradictory relationship to democracy (Bugaric Reference Bugaric2019; Urbinati Reference Urbinati2019). The populists argue for themselves in seemingly democratic terms, and yet they are also regularly accused of authoritarianism by their opponents (Abts and Rummens Reference Abts and Rummens2007; Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2019). Conversely, opponents of populism think of themselves as defending democracy, but are accused by populists of being supporters of oligarchy or technocracy (Howse Reference Howse2019; Mouffe Reference Mouffe2018). To further muddy the waters, some political parties mix the different frames together, using populist rhetoric to win elections and technocratic methods to govern effectively (Accetti and Bickerton Reference Accetti and Bickerton2021). Is populism authoritarian, democratic, or a cloak for further technocratization? Is it sometimes one of these things and at other times another?
How might a wider social consensus on these questions—one that is not restricted to the academy—be established? There are attempts to dispel ambiguity by drawing attention to any dissident figure who does take an explicitly authoritarian stance. In the United States, Curtis Yarvin has received an enormous amount of media attention (Kofman Reference Kofman2025; Marchese Reference Marchese2025; Wilson Reference Wilson2025). Under the pen name “Mencius Moldbug,” Yarvin has made detailed institutional proposals for an alternative type of regime (Moldbug Reference Moldbug2008). Opponents of the Trump administration have worked to establish a connection between Curtis Yarvin and Vice President Vance (Kofman Reference Kofman2025; Ward Reference Ward2025). If the administration can be explicitly and thickly connected to a figure who calls for a blatantly authoritarian form of government, the opposition hopes that the ambiguity surrounding the administration’s position vis-à-vis democracy can be dispelled.
Supporters of the administration can, however, reply by emphasizing Vance’s connections with other figures who remain explicitly committed to democracy. Vance has himself explicitly promoted the work of Patrick Deneen, who claims liberalism threatens democracy and that an “egalitarian shroud” has allowed an “oligarchy” to operate in the United States (Deneen Reference Deneen2023, Reference Deneen2024; Ward Reference Ward2023). Indeed, former US President Barack Obama included one of Deneen’s books on his list of favorite books in 2018 (Martinez Reference Martinez2018). Because Deneen argues in a more populist style and has not made an explicitly authoritarian proposal, it is more difficult to place him—and, by extension, Vance—in the role of “dissident authoritarian.”
So, those who are convinced that the Trump administration poses an authoritarian threat will struggle to make that case to skeptics purely by appeal to the policies of the administration, the avowed views of the members of the administration, or the avowed views of the administration’s prominent intellectual supporters. Even in cases where some members or some supporters have taken explicitly authoritarian stances, it quickly becomes unclear whether the administration does in fact champion their views or proposals. So far, the president claims to be committed to holding competitive midterm elections (Traylor and Wren Reference Traylor and Wren2025). If plausibly competitive midterm elections do in fact occur, this will make it even more difficult to allege that the president or the vice president is in fact committed to something like Curtis Yarvin’s proposal.Footnote 3
Of course, the argument also operates in the opposite direction, politically. The administration frequently alleges its opponents are communists, but most of its opponents profess a commitment to liberal democracy or democratic socialism (Kellman Reference Kellman2025). The administration and its supporters might well believe that these opponents are secretly committed to communism, but they struggle to make a compelling case because of the paucity of instances of administration opponents explicitly making authoritarian proposals. Even where such proposals are made—by, for instance, college students who have joined Maoist reading groups—it is difficult to establish that these marginal figures have influence over opposition leaders in the Democratic Party.Footnote 4
The introduction of a new specter regime would clear all of this up. It would become possible to threaten dissidents with a tie to this regime, arguing that they are conspiring with or seeking to imitate something even worse. But without a new specter regime, embedded democracies lack the imagination to develop new political conceptions. They are forced to rely on the defunct specter regimes of the 20th century. As these regimes fade into history, they lose the appearance of viability that is necessary for them to perform this function.
To be sure, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the other, older specter regimes did not eliminate the possibility of using these states as specter regimes overnight. Political actors still accuse one another of being communists or fascists, but without living regimes, the accusation carries an increasingly different meaning. Rather than suggest that their political foes are in league with a viable repugnant specter regime, political actors are now effectively accusing their opponents of failing to have a viable politics, of being committed to something retrograde. They seem to have failed to accept reality, to have a politics of nostalgia for a more ideological age, or for an earlier point in the process of modernization (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1992; Kemmerzell and Selk Reference Kemmerzell and Selk2024).
The memory of these regimes, kept alive for new generations in films, video games, and public education, allows these regimes to continue to perform some of the functions of specter regimes. Dissidents are still keen to avoid appearing analogous to communists or fascists. But because these regimes are no longer living, there is no possibility of establishing concrete material ties to them. Sanders’ trip to the Soviet Union was, in 1988, a concrete tie to a specter regime. Today, that trip may still be raised by opposition researchers, but as evidence of eccentricity or unseriousness, not as evidence of an active, credible authoritarian threat.
How long can the last argument subsist on the mere memory of specter regimes? Rather than find out, the embedded democracies might be hard at work constructing new ones. China, Russia, and Iran are now increasingly positioned in this role. But these states are not perfect fits.
New specter regimes
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the United States seemed to frame China as a specter regime. President Trump blamed China for the virus (Jaworsky and Qiaon Reference Jaworsky and Qiaon2021). In due course, many media outlets framed China’s zero-COVID policy as authoritarian (Ang Reference Ang2022; Hamid Reference Hamid2022; Xuecun Reference Xuecun2023; Yuan Reference Yuan2022).
These critiques extended beyond China’s emergency policies. In 2019, the Trump administration launched a trade war with China (Swenson and Woo Reference Swenson and Woo2019). In 2021, Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, bluntly declared (Unherd 2021) that the United States needs to “take back the means of production” from China:
China is not a free market economy—we tried! We let them into the WTO; we sent our businesses over there; we made trade deals. They are a controlled top-down economy. You will never compete and win against them unless you take back the means of production.
Despite this rhetoric from prominent voices in both American parties, the United States continues to do a lot of business with China. While the Trump administration has restarted its trade war, reports continuously circulate suggesting that it remains interested in a grand bargain (Hurst and Trubowitz Reference Hurst and Trubowitz2025; Liu Reference Liu2025). Apparent concessions on computer chips and international students suggest a continuing desire to have a considerable amount of intercourse (Winter-Levy and Phillips-Robbins Reference Winter-Levy and Phillips-Robbins2025; Ziwen Reference Ziwen2025).
The level of economic integration between China and democratic states both facilitates and frustrates the employment of China as a specter regime. The standard of living in the Maoist period prior to economic integration was too low for the Chinese system of government to appear viable. It could not be believed that China could use its military to spread its system across water, nor could it be believed that many Americans would sincerely desire to imitate Chinese political institutions. Now, economic integration has made China appear more viable. The citizens of many democracies are visiting China and marveling at the improved quality of life in its modernized cities. Videos and images evincing China’s rapid economic development have spread all over the internet (Lu et al. Reference Lu, Pan, Xu and Xu2025; Yuan Reference Yuan2026). An appearance of economic prowess quickly leads to speculation about military capability. There are not only many Americans who seem interested in imitating Chinese industrial policy, but there is also a lot of worry about the possibility that China may attack US allies across water (Freymann Reference Freymann2026; Hirata and Sakai Reference Hirata and Sakai2026).
But as long as China is treated as a commercial partner, it will not appear sufficiently repugnant to perform the spectral function. Its economic prosperity will instead produce an excessive appearance of viability, inspiring dissidents to seek to imitate its structures. Insofar as its industrial policy seems to be efficacious, it will be copied and framed as compatible with democracy.
To make China into a specter regime, it would be necessary to treat China as repugnant, that is, to stop doing business with it. But China’s appearance of viability is directly linked to the economic support China receives from the embedded democracies (Pettis and Klein Reference Pettis and Klein2020). Because these democracies welcomed China into the WTO and have played a critical role in absorbing Chinese production surpluses, the Chinese political system cannot be straightforwardly credited or blamed for Chinese economic performance.
In principle, China’s viability might be proven through economic decoupling. If China remained viable without the support of the democracies, it would be in a strong position to perform the spectral role. But decoupling from China would be risky. It could do so much damage to the Chinese economy that Chinese political institutions would fail to appear viable. Instead of revealing Chinese viability, decoupling might reveal underappreciated regime weaknesses. Decoupling would also considerably undermine the prosperity of the democracies. It would disrupt supply chains, imposing significant adjustment costs. It would also destabilize the international credit market because of the sizable role China plays in subsidizing borrowing costs for many democracies (Gelpern et al. Reference Gelpern, Horn, Morris, Parks and Trebesch2023).
This means that, in practice, efforts to position China as a specter regime tend to be aborted at the last hurdle. Political actors frame China as an authoritarian regime, but they do not go so far as to sever economic links or to undermine the security of shipping in the South China Sea. Since China is never treated as an unambiguous threat, it never becomes a specter regime. There seems always to be something insincere about the claim that the Chinese political system poses a threat, because no one seems able or willing to act as if this is in fact the case.
Consider, for instance, the case of Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer served as the Trump administration’s trade representative from 2017 to 2021. After leaving office, Lighthizer (Reference Lighthizer2023) wrote a book claiming that it is impossible to negotiate in good faith with China because of its authoritarian characteristics. While many anticipated that Lighthizer would receive a cabinet post in the second Trump administration, he was ultimately excluded completely (Bade et al. Reference Bade, Behsudi and Hawkins2024). Trump instead picked Howard Lutnick for Secretary of Commerce, who, it has been reported, has advised Trump to seek out a deal with China (Swanson Reference Swanson2025).
So far, the United States has been unwilling to fully embrace the use of China as a specter regime. The reluctance of the United States to absorb the economic costs of something like a new Cold War in East Asia encourages it to look to Russia or Iran (or, in the previous generation, to Iraq or Afghanistan) to provide an adequate authoritarian specter. But while there is more willingness to treat these states as repugnant (i.e., by imposing sanctions and even by engaging in military conflict), these states are not so prosperous or so powerful as to appear viable. Attempts to position these states as specter regimes fail to unite democratic publics around a particular understanding of liberal democracy. Instead, democratically elected governments that become associated with expensive, protracted struggles against poorer, weaker authoritarian states tend to become unpopular.
Attempts are sometimes made to make poorer, weaker authoritarian states appear viable by tying them to richer, more powerful authoritarian states like China. But rivalries among authoritarian states make it difficult to sustain an image of an authoritarian popular front under the heading of something like “BRICS.” And in so far as there are weaker authoritarian states with genuine connections to China, these connections serve to limit the degree to which these states can be straightforwardly opposed at an acceptable economic and political cost.
Conclusion
Concerns about the embedded democracies—especially American democracy, given the United States’ position of relative strength in international politics—have worrying implications for international relations. Because the rank-and-file citizens of embedded democracies struggle to imagine compelling new ways of doing politics, a weakening of the positive case for liberal democracy produces a need for a negative case. Negative cases rely on the construction of a specter regime, a viable, repugnant authoritarian regime against which democracy can be defined. The need for a specter regime strengthens these democracies’ interest in creating an appearance of Chinese repugnancy via a trade war with China. It may also contribute to the democratic tendency to embark upon divisive quagmires in Eurasia.
The positive arguments for democracy made over the past several decades imply that the embedded democracies are insufficiently free, equal, or democratic, but these arguments have failed to transform the embedded democracies to bring them into alignment with more demanding, radical criteria. They therefore fail to provide support for these embedded democracies, increasing their reliance on negative arguments and therefore on specter regimes. In this way, these positive arguments for democracy inadvertently contribute to the increasingly hawkish foreign policy of the United States and its democratic allies. Without an expansion of the political imaginarium, these embedded democracies need positive arguments that affirm them despite their many apparent flaws, that assert that they are enough. But there are few people who seem motivated to make such arguments (Chapman Reference Chapman2022; Elliott Reference Elliott2023; Rosenblum Reference Rosenblum2008; Urbinati Reference Urbinati2014) and fewer still who seem prepared to believe them. A pragmatic argument for enthusiasm does not generate the thing—all it can do is underline its absence (Adorno Reference Adorno2007: 373–375). Where there is no enthusiasm, all that democratic theorists can do is lament that which is lacking. They cannot, in sincerity, speak as Churchill once did of a widespread sense that, in democracy, the people rule.
In the Cold War, the last argument was just one of the arguments to which Winston Churchill had recourse. The construction of specter regimes could therefore be said to serve further purposes—it defended a form of political order that was still widely regarded as valuable in its own right. If the Churchill line is the last argument left, it is invoked in service of a lacuna, a place of emptiness once filled by a variety of positive arguments that large parts of the population found not just normatively compelling, but politically motivating. Yet, in an increasingly economically integrated international system, the costs of constructing and maintaining specter regimes are higher than ever before, while the readily apparent benefits of democracy have been very much reduced.
What is needed is not new normative arguments for democracy from theorists, but a reopening of the political imaginarium in wider society that can produce a sincere commitment to new political procedures capable of performing the functions liberal democracies are unable to perform. Democratic theorists have imagined many different ways of reconfiguring democracy, but they have not been able to produce this commitment.
The failure of normative arguments to be adequately motivating stems from the context in which these arguments are made. Democracies have been debilitated (Jörke and Studebaker Reference Jörke and Studebaker2025), and they have come to operate under a shadow of unfairness (Green Reference Green2016). This leaves democratic theorists without coherent, capable social and political units to advise or inspire.
Liberal democracies continue in the absence of positive commitment by cultivating fear of alternatives. The fear only appears credible insofar as there appear to be specter regimes capable of posing a real threat. To make the threat seem real, wars must be fought, of both the economic and military variety. In the name of perpetuating a form of government that can no longer inspire positive commitment, a kind of hell is in the process of being unleashed. And yet, this hell will be defended on the grounds that while it is admittedly very bad, it could be even worse. The worse democracy appears, the worse must appear the even worse.
Data availability statement
There is no empirical data to make available.
Acknowledgements
The author is particularly grateful to Jean-Paul Gagnon for his advice and encouragement, as well as the rest of the staff and reviewers at Democratic Theory.
Author contributions
B.S. is the only author.
Funding statement
This paper was written without the support of outside funding.
Competing interests
There are no competing interests to declare.
Ethical standards
No human subjects were used.
Benjamin Studebaker is an American political theorist from Indiana who received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of two books, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut and Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies. He is currently on the job market.
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