Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always incomplete.
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...
Huq and Ginsburg recently warned that the constitutional and legal safeguards of [American] democracy…would prove to be fairly easy to manipulate in the face of a truly antidemocratic leader.
If partisan animosity prevails over mutual toleration, those in control of congress may prioritize defense of the president over the performance of their constitutional duties.
In 2012 alone, the Koch family was responsible for some $400 million in election spending.
In Israel, the demographic threat created by the de facto annexation of the West Bank is pushing the country toward a political system that two of its former prime ministers have compared to apartheid...
In Tennessee, black suffrage made Republicans so competitive in 1888 that the pro-Democratic Avalanche predicted a sweeping Republican victory in the next election unless something were done.
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...
Party gatekeeping also helped confine George Wallace to the margins of politics.
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...
Populists tend to deny the legitimacy of established parties, attacking them as undemocratic and even unpatriotic. They tell voters that the existing system is not really a democracy but instead has b...
Social and cultural changes have also played a major role. Unlike the Democratic Party, which has grown increasingly diverse in recent decades, the GOP has remained culturally homogeneous. This is sig...
There is a mounting perception that democracy is in retreat all over the world. Venezuela. Thailand. Turkey. Hungary. Poland.
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.
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...
As key media outlets are assaulted, others grow wary and begin to practice self-censorship.
Donald Trump’s first year in office followed a familiar script. Like Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chávez, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, America’s new president began his tenure by launching blistering rhetorica...
Few societies in history have managed to be both multiracial and genuinely democratic.
Finally, elected autocrats often try to silence cultural figures—artists, intellectuals, pop stars, athletes—whose popularity or moral standing makes them potential threats.
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...
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