Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I didn’t mean Fascist Italy exactly. I meant a weaker kind of authoritarianism which has trouble infiltrating and taking over competing institutions within the political system. Even then, American federalism makes that pretty unlikely.
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Federalism offers no protection whatsoever. Things will just deteriorate at different speeds, slower somewhere and faster someplace else.
Russia is a federation too for example. Germany was and is a federation.
Every federal level authoritarian is also a state level authoritarian. You can't have an authoritarian federal government without strong state level support.
In fact you could argue that a federal system makes it easier for things to go south, because a) there's an extra level of government pushing things b) "the new normal" that's worse than previous can begin to happen immediately in the states which are already authoritarian strongholds politically, even before they're made normal on a national level.
Basically a more complicated system just has more points of vulnerability.