BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians system. This form of digital totalitarianism would allow cies that make it difficult for opposition parties the state to gather information on Chinese citizens to raise funds or present their political message, from a variety of sources and use it to maintain scores creating a structurally uneven political playing or rankings based on an individual's perceived trust- field. Other elected leaders with authoritarian worthiness, including on political matters. Chinese mindsets will take notice and follow suit. officials have claimed that by 2020, the system will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under 4. Authoritarian states are likely to intensify efforts heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take to influence the political choices and govern- a single step.”! A citizen could receive bad marks for ment polices of democracies. The pressure will petitioning the government, participating in protests, vary from country to country, but it will become or circulating banned ideas on social media. increasingly difficult to control due to global economic integration, new developments in As for Russia, the Kremlin complemented its covert in- the delivery of propaganda, and sympathetic terference overseas with open and ugly acts of repres- leaders and political movements within the de- sion at home. In one brief period in early 2017, Russian mocracies. Putin and his cohorts have learned opposition politician Aleksey Navalny was blocked from well how to use democratic openness against competing in the 2018 presidential contest through democracy itself. a trumped-up criminal conviction, dissident journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza nearly died from his second sus- 5. Authoritarian leaders can count on an increas- pected poisoning, and the Russian parliament passed ingly vocal group of admirers in democratic a law to decriminalize domestic violence that results in states. For several ye