In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the play...
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...
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...
Over the last quarter century, Democrats and Republicans have become much more than just two competing parties, sorted into liberal and conservative camps. Their voters are now deeply divided by race,...
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...
Isolating popular extremists requires political courage. But when fear, opportunism, or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.
Opposition strategies in Colombia under President Álvaro Uribe were more successful.
In February 2010, the Constitutional Court struck down Uribe’s bid for a third term as unconstitutional, forcing him to step down after two terms. The lesson is this: Where institutional channels exis...
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,...
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...
The combination of a would-be authoritarian and a major crisis can, therefore, be deadly for democracy.
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...
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 post-1972 primary system was especially vulnerable to a particular kind of outsider: individuals with enough fame or money to skip the invisible primary. In other words, celebrities.
This perception may explain the rise of a discourse that distinguishes real Americans from those associated with liberals and the Democratic Party.
Players who cannot be bought must be weakened by other means.
Finally, in principle, congressional leaders could seek the president’s removal. This would be politically costly for them.
Public support is a useful tool in this regard. When an elected leader enjoys, say, a 70 percent approval rating, critics jump on the bandwagon, media coverage softens, judges grow more reluctant to r...
The process often begins with words. Demagogues attack their critics in harsh and provocative terms—as enemies, as subversives, and even as terrorists.
Trump also found new ways to use old media as a substitute for party endorsements and traditional campaign spending. A candidate with qualities uniquely tailored to the digital age, Trump attracted fr...
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