There’s a term for DeSantis’s war on Disney — it’s called autocratic capture
Disney’s lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may turn out to be one of the more important cases litigated in this era of challenges to liberal democracy.
That’s a term we started using a few years ago to describe the phenomenon of authoritarian leaders trying to use the regulatory powers of the state to force private actors to toe a political line. If “state capture” or “regulatory capture” is the process of moneyed interests buying improper influence over government, “autocratic capture” is the opposite: government using its power to coerce political loyalty from moneyed interests.
In a well-functioning democracy, business operates at arm’s length from the government. It neither has undue influence on it, nor is unduly influenced by it. For most of American history, if anything, we suffered from too little of the former: businesses had outsized sway over politics and policy compared to the electorate writ large. That may have been a desirable state of play for many CEOs. But the pendulum is quickly swinging in the other direction, where CEOs may soon find themselves the ones under a thumb.
And while autocratic capture is a new phenomenon here in the US, it has a sordid history overseas. In particular, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has been a model for both Trump and DeSantis. What happened there and elsewhere should be a warning to businesses beyond Disney.
