This Is Why Dictatorships Fail
The authors of the Constitution separated powers for a reason.
Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is also a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the School of Advanced International Studies. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her most recent books include the New York Times best sellers Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. She was a Washington Post columnist for 15 years and a member of the editorial board. She has also been the deputy editor of The Spectator and a columnist for several British newspapers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications.
Latest
Roger Kisby / Redux America’s Future Is Hungary
MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.
Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic The Rise of the Brutal American
This is how the bad guys act.
Brian Snyder / Reuters Putin’s Three Years of Humiliation
The Russian president can’t win his war against Ukraine unless he persuades its allies to betray it.
David Guttenfelder / The New York Times / Redux The End of the Postwar World
Trump and Vance are sending a dark message to America’s allies.
Photograph by Andres Kudacki for The Atlantic There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing
How regime change happens in America
Illustration by Ben Hickey Europe’s Elon Musk Problem
He and other tech oligarchs are making it impossible to conduct free and fair elections anywhere.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Sources: Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Oxford Science Archive / Print Collector / Getty; mikroman6 / Getty. Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe
What a single phone call from the president-elect did to an unswerving American ally
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Jared C. Tilton / Getty. The New Rasputins
Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe.
Illustration by Ben Hickey The ‘Anthropological Change’ Happening in Venezuela
Maduro is still in place, but a pro-democracy movement is transforming the beleaguered country.
Gaby Oraa / Reuters
