A lot of nations are currently or in the past have undergone democratic backsliding where the nation becomes more and more authoritarian and inhumane.
But from what I can tell, pretty much every example is spearheaded by the executive branch. The executive branch is the one pushing to make the country more and more authoritarian. The legislative branch may cooperate, but they don’t spearhead it.
The judicial branch gets stacked with rubber stampers (this happened in Venezuela, where the supreme court rubber stamps everything the government does. Poland is also trying to attack the independent judiciary). But again, its the executive branch that is spearheading the attempts to destroy democracy.
Have there been attempts by the judicial branch or legislative branch to undermine democracy in world history?
The only things I can really think of are in some US states, republican legislatures try to take away the powers of the executive branch after an election but before a democratic governor takes over. So a democrat may get elected governor in early nov, so the GOP legislature and the GOP governor pass a lot of laws taking power away from the governor in December, since the new Governor takes power in January. Those are rollbacks on democracy, but I wouldn’t say they actually end democracy and create an actual authoritarian regime by doing that.
It seems like its usually the executive branch that tries to roll back democracy. They stack the judiciary with loyalists and they neutralize the power of the legislative branch. That seems to be the trend.
Given that authoritarianism is all about a single monolithic and all powerful leader. And given that executive branches inherently have one head honcho whereas judiciaries function by a small supreme committee of near peers over seeing an army of no-kidding peers, and legislatures function by a large (multi-hundred) member committee of peers with some few peer-appointed leaders / ushers.
I conclude that …
It’s sure the way to bet that any wannabe authoritarian dictator seeks to achieve power as head of the executive, not chief judge of the high court nor agenda leader of a legislature.
Have there been exceptions in history? I expect so, and I have a soft recollection of one such in 18th or 19th century Ltin America. ISTR one of the Roman supremos arose to power from within the Senate.
I’m not sure an elected legislature could be technically authoritarian; profoundly illiberal and in theory holding unbounded legal power, sure. To some extent the governments of ancient Rome and some Greek city-states might be examples. If it were unelected it would be an oligarchy.
As for judiciaries, there’s Kritarchy - Wikipedia, a form of traditional rule such as the ancient Hebrews had before the establishment of a kingship.
In theory, if the legislature had a veto proof majority they could pass endless laws putting all the government power in themselves. However I don’t know if that has ever happened.
In a parliamentary democracy, the executive is chosen by, and accountable to, the legislature. So if you want to become an authoritarian leader in such a country, your options are:
(a) seize power in a coup d’etat; or
(b) get the legislature to make you the chief executive, and then to allow you to exercise power without constraint or accountability, either formally (e.g. by constitutional amendment) or informally (by being utterly supine) or a combination of both.
Nazi Germany is a good example of the latter. An early coup attempt was an abject failure; ten years later the Nazis came to power by winning a sufficient number of seats in the Reichstag to make Hitler a plausible candidate for Reichskanzler, and then persuading President Hindenburg to appoint him and enough other right-wing factions to assent to this. In short order the Reichstag gave Hitler what amounted to unconstrained and unaccountable power through the Enabling Act of 1933, which embodied and gave effect to the Nazi ideology of the Führerprinzip, and reduced the role of the Reichstag itself to a purely ceremonial one, meeting occasionally to affirm the continuation or expansion of the Leader’s supreme power…
So I think this is a case of the legislature creating an authoritarian state, not by seizing all authority for itself, but by transferring its own authority to the executive, and at the same time dismantling all the systems and safeguards that made the executive accountable to the legislature and the courts. (But they didn’t, of course, thrust all this on a surprised and reluctant executive.)
In a presidential democracy a similar evolution of authoritarianism can occur, but the legislature necessarily plays a smaller role. If your initial coup attempt fails you can attempt to become the chief executive by the traditional method of winning an election — you don’t need the legislature to put you in office. Thereafter becoming a dictator does involve the legislature’s co-operation, either by passing laws thatq concentrate power in your hands or by being utterly supine and making no attempt to constrain you to respect the constitution, the law or the limits of your office, or by doing both.
I thought the military overthrew the government in Thailand. The same thing happened in Myanmar. What role did the legislature play in these situations? These seem like military coups.
But I feel like this isn’t an example of the legislature becoming a dictatorship, its an example of the legislature giving the executive the power to become a dictatorship.
11 different laws were passed making the executive branch a dictatorship in the Weimar republic. However the laws didn’t empower the legislature. They took power away from the legislature and ensured the legislature was staffed with loyalists to the executive branch.
I’m more thinking of a situation where the legislature passes veto proof laws taking large amounts of power away from the executive and judicial branches, and removes any oversight of the legislative branch, as well as gives the legislative branch the ability to staff the judiciary and executive with loyalists.
But, no offence, that’s not what you ask in the OP. You didn’t ask for examples of the legislature making itself the dictator, but for examples of the legislature making the state a dictatorship.
I think the question perhaps is, can we think of an authoritian state in which authority is concentrated in the legislature, and both the executive and the judiciary are (either formally or effectively) subservient to it?
The UK is not an authoritarian state, but it is one in which the legislature is supreme. The UK legislature’s power is unconstrained; there are no enforceable limits on what it can provide by law, and there is no power of veto. It has, and indeed exercises, the power to staff the executive with loyalists. Even more, it can remove and replace the executive entirely if it wishes — and it regularly does. It could do the same with the judiciary if it wanted, but happily it doesn’t want to. It controls its own elections, to the point of being able to dispense entirely with elections, if it chooses.
The UK, as I say, is not an authoritarian state, but it’s only political convention that keeps it from being so. It is a state in which supreme power is concentrated in a single institution, the legislature. Separation of powers, the rule of law and respect for human and democratic rights persist only to the extent that, and for so long as, it pleases the legislature.