In 2020, fear seems like an appropriate outlook. Political developments from India to Brazil, Hungary to the United States, have led many to anticipate the rise of a new authoritarian right that will eliminate democratic freedoms altogether.

It’s unlikely that these countries will repeat the experience of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany: too much has changed for that to be a plausible model. Rather than ask whether “X is a fascist,” it’s more useful to look at these trends from a different angle. Will any government of the radical right set aside the formal limits of democracy and impose a fully-fledged authoritarian regime? If not, how repressive can such governments be while remaining within those limits?

These questions have gained much greater urgency over the past decade. In Europe, the post-fascist right has broken out of the cages that formerly constrained its advance. In Hungary and Poland, ultranationalists have taken power through the ballot box. Far-right parties have joined governments in Italy and Austria without attracting the same hostility from neighboring states as the short-lived Austrian coalition involving Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party two decades earlier.