This perception may explain the rise of a discourse that distinguishes real Americans from those associated with liberals and the Democratic Party.
The 1990–2015 period was easily the most democratic quarter century in world history—partly because Western powers broadly supported democracy. That may now be changing. Under Donald Trump, the United...
Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is t...
Seeking to diminish minority groups’ influence in the party—and we cannot emphasize this strongly enough—is the wrong way to reduce polarization.
Resentment fuels polarization.
Opposition strategies in Colombia under President Álvaro Uribe were more successful.
I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money….So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, wh...
Isolating popular extremists requires political courage. But when fear, opportunism, or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.
In the darkest days of the Second World War, when America’s very future was at risk, writer E. B. White was asked by the U.S. Federal Government’s Writers’ War Board to write a short response to the q...
In his 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter described the phenomenon of status anxiety, which, he believed, is most likely to emerge when groups’ social sta...
Germany’s 1919 Weimar constitution was designed by some of the country’s greatest legal minds. Its long-standing and highly regarded Rechtsstaat (rule of law) was considered by many as sufficient to p...
Finally, in principle, congressional leaders could seek the president’s removal. This would be politically costly for them.
Enfranchisement empowered African Americans: More than two thousand southern freedmen won elective office in the 1870s, including fourteen congressmen and two U.S. senators. At one point, more than 40...
By contrast, a social policy agenda that sets aside stiff means testing in favor of the more universalistic models found in northern Europe could have a moderating effect on our politics. Social polic...
This book has reminded us that American democracy is not as exceptional as we sometimes believe. There’s nothing in our Constitution or our culture to immunize us against democratic breakdown. We have...
The changing media landscape had a stronger impact on the Republican Party. Republican voters rely more heavily on partisan media outlets than do Democrats.
Most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country’s cherished institutions,...
Governments prefer to co-opt popular cultural figures or reach a mutual accommodation with them, allowing them to continue their work as long as they stay out of politics.
Day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world...
You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power….This party does not need another generation of cautious, prudent, careful, bland, irrelevant quasi-leaders….What we really need are people who are willing...