Securitization as a means to legitimize autocratization: the case of Bukele’s El Salvador

Abstract

It is rare, even unprecedented, that a democratically elected leader would refer to themselves as the World’s Coolest Dictator as a selling point. It is even rarer that an electorate will wholeheartedly embrace a leader for his authoritarian appeal. Yet that is exactly what happened in El Salvador since Nayib Bukele took the presidency in 2019. The Bukele administration has simultaneously enjoyed widespread domestic support and widespread international condemnation for human rights abuses and for bringing the country down an authoritarian path. This thesis seeks to explain this paradox; more specifically, what explains the widespread support for the Bukele administration and its authoritarian measures. Using critical securitization theory, which is understood as a means of obtaining legitimacy, this thesis delves into how the government of El Salvador in the Bukele era generated public support for its measures that contributed to the autocratization of the country. Notably, it analyzes El Salvador’s war on gangs and the following war against corruption, starting from its State of Exception in March 2022 to the date of submission in May 2025. As a single-case study using critical discourse analysis as its method of analysis, this thesis looks into how discourse was used to shape public opinion and generate legitimacy amongst the public. The findings provide insight into how autocratization can obtain legitimacy from the public when discursively argued as being in response to an existential security threat. In addition, this thesis’s focus on digital utterances of discourse sheds a new light on how social media can be used to shape domestic opinion and perceptions.