, Columnist
Trump and the Path Toward Kleptocracy
How transnational political-criminal networks, often run by families, govern in their own economic interests.
The very model of a modern major kleptocrat.
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Ever since President Donald Trump took office, people have been struggling to explain his administration’s sometimes sharp departures from American norms. Theories have ranged from personality disorders to alarms about the potential birth of an American autocracy.
Let me suggest another: kleptocracy. The Trump administration, its personnel and early practices, resembles nothing so much as a kleptocratic network of the type seen in many developing countries and post-Soviet states. No, I am not implying that Trump is about to turn the U.S. into a banana republic. But Americans would do well to scrutinize nascent changes in the ways the most powerful sectors of our society are interacting.