BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians of criticism in the media to justify a tenuous claim Jinping as Communist Party leader. In Turkey, of pluralism. In recent years, tolerance for ideas progovernment commentators have accused and opinions that are not aligned with those of the U.S. government and even an American the regime has steadily eroded. In Russia, a bad think tank of involvement in the failed coup of situation became much worse after the invasion 2016. ° of Ukraine in 2014. Those who criticized or even raised questions about the morality or wisdom of e Closing doors to the outside world: More the Kremlin's actions were persecuted, dismissed than anything else, modern authoritarianism is from employment, and banned from media com- distinguished from traditional autocracy by its mentary. Putin also expanded the zone of media openness to relatively normal relations with the control from the mainstream television and print outside world. China, for example, long sought sectors to the internet. to balance calibrated repression at home with participation in an impressive array of global in- In Venezuela, one opposition or independent stitutions. Beijing welcomed the establishment voice after another has been neutralized, as key of local branches of foreign, mostly American, newspapers and television stations were sold, universities, joint research ventures with foreign under duress, to businessmen with ties to the scholars, and even the involvement of foreign government. The new and often opaque owners NGOs in areas such as legal reform and envi- generally watered down political reporting and ronmental conservation. While more ambiv- forced out prominent journalists.’ alent about the international media, Chinese authorities did give unprecedented freedom of Even before the 2016 coup attempt, media free- movement to foreign journalists in the period dom in Turkey was deteriorating at an alarming surrounding the 2008 Beij