False charges of fraud can undermine public confidence in elections—and when citizens do not trust the electoral process, they often lose faith in democracy itself.
Convinced that something must finally give, a cabal of rivalrous conservatives convened in late January 1933 and settled on a solution: A popular outsider should be placed at the head of the governmen...
As key media outlets are assaulted, others grow wary and begin to practice self-censorship.
Weakened and discredited, the opposition could not stop the regime’s subsequent descent into authoritarianism.
The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to ach...
The reforms of the 1960s gave Americans a third chance to build a truly multiethnic democracy. It is imperative that we succeed, extraordinarily difficult though the task is.
The erosion of basic norms expanded the zone of acceptable political action. Several years before shots were fired at Fort Sumter, partisan violence pervaded Congress. Yale historian Joanne Freeman es...
Social policies that benefit everyone—Social Security and Medicare are prime examples—could help diminish resentment, build bridges across large swaths of the American electorate, and lock into place...
President Bush governed hard to the right, abandoning all pretense of bipartisanship on the counsel of his political advisor Karl Rove, who had concluded that the electorate was so polarized that Repu...
Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to ensure t...
North Carolina offers a window into what politics without guardrails looks like - and a possible glimpse into America's future. When partisan rivals become enemies, political competition descends into...
Norms are the soft guardrails of democracy; as they break down, the zone of acceptable political behavior expands, giving rise to discourse and action that could imperil democracy. Behavior that was o...
Many government efforts to subvert democracy are legal, in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy—mak...
If constitutional rules were enough, then figures such as Perón, Marcos, or Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas—all of whom took office under U.S.-style constitutions that, on paper, contained an impressive array...
For many citizens, it may, at first, be imperceptible. After all, elections continue to be held. Opposition politicians still sit in congress. Independent newspapers still circulate. The erosion of de...
Democracies work best—and survive longer—where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America’s checks and balances in ways we have come to take for...
After opposition parties won control of the Venezuelan congress in a landslide election in December 2015, they hoped to use the legislature to check the power of autocratic president Nicolás Maduro. T...
With this move, Marcos ensconced himself in power for the next fourteen years.
Scorched-earth tactics often erode support for the opposition by scaring off moderates. And they unify progovernment forces, as even dissidents within the incumbent party close ranks in the face of an...
If Democrats do not work to restore norms of mutual toleration and forbearance, their next president will likely confront an opposition willing to use any means necessary to defeat them. And if partis...