The plan was reminiscent of the Chávez government’s repeated moves to strip opposition-run city governments of their control over local hospitals, police forces, ports, and other infrastructure. Unlik...
The new leader’s threatening words often have a boomerang effect. If the media feels threatened, it may abandon restraint and professional standards in a desperate effort to weaken the government. And...
The device the founders came up with was the Electoral College. Article II of the Constitution created an indirect election system that reflected Hamilton’s thinking in Federalist 68:
Party gatekeepers were shells of what they once were, for two main reasons. One was a dramatic increase in the availability of outside money, accelerated (though hardly caused) by the Supreme Court’s...
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company. One of the richest men in the world in the early twentieth century, Ford was a modern version of the kind of extremist demagogue Hamilton had warned...
Despite their vast differences, Hitler, Mussolini, and Chávez followed routes to power that share striking similarities. Not only were they all outsiders with a flair for capturing public attention, b...
By the 2000s, married white Christians constituted barely 40 percent of the electorate, and they were now concentrated in the Republican Party.
As we noted earlier, the chief executive’s constitutional power to pardon is without limit,
As constitutional scholar Martin Redish put it, If the president can immunize his agents in this manner, the courts will effectively lose any meaningful authority to protect constitutional rights agai...
Among the most important figures to emerge during this period was Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Catholic priest whose fiery nationalist radio program reached up to forty million listeners a...
A comparative approach also reveals how elected autocrats in different parts of the world employ remarkably similar strategies to subvert democratic institutions. As these patterns become visible, the...
The United States has an impressive record of gatekeeping. Both Democrats and Republicans have confronted extremist figures on their fringes, some of whom enjoyed considerable public support. For deca...
In the 1950s, married white Christians were the overwhelming majority—nearly 80 percent—of American voters, divided more or less equally between the two parties.
But presidents have historically exercised it with great restraint, seeking advice from the Justice Department and never issuing pardons for self-protection or political gain.
There is a mounting perception that democracy is in retreat all over the world. Venezuela. Thailand. Turkey. Hungary. Poland.
The easiest way to deal with potential opponents is to buy them off. Most elected autocrats begin by offering leading political, business, or media figures public positions, favors, perks, or outright...
Rebuilding democratic norms after a civil war is never easy, and America was no exception. The wounds of war healed slowly; Democrats and Republicans only grudgingly accepted one another as legitimate...
Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, racial, or religious differences give rise to extreme partisanship, in which societies sort themselves into political camps whose worldvi...
Meanwhile, the Democrats grew divided between supporters of Johnson’s foreign policy and those who had embraced Robert Kennedy’s antiwar position. This split played out in a particularly disruptive ma...
Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from ot...