How to Break an Autocrat’s Coalition

Abstract: Authoritarian coalitions look unbreakable, but they are not: Allies defect when the costs of loyalty rise and the costs of defection fall, and opposition parties and civil society can engineer both. Moderate institutional strategies—contesting elections, courts, and legislatures—force stealth autocrats to abandon their democratic façade, as in Guatemala, where Bernardo Arévalo's Semilla party stayed on the 2023 ballot and pushed the elite alliance known as the “Corrupt Pact” into overt manipulation that split it. Persistent journalism makes loyalty reputationally costly, as years of corruption reporting in Hungary did before Péter Magyar broke with Viktor Orbán. Depolarization lowers the price of defecting, as when Colombia's opposition refused Alvaro Uribe's provocations, or when Indiana activists sent thank-you notes to Republicans resisting mid-decade redistricting. Such wins are partial—Uribe's chosen successor still won—but defections that build “broad thin coalitions” across ideological lines do shift power, and marginal gains are worth the effort.