Content area
Full text
For helpful comments and suggestions, the authors thank Sheri Berman, Daniel Galvin, Didi Kuo, Joseph Margulies, Paul Pierson, Daniel Stid, Sidney Tarrow, and the participants in the 2017 Workshop on the State of American Democracy in Historical and Comparative Perspective and the 2018 conference, “A Republic, If We Can Keep It,” sponsored by the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality and New America.
Trump and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy
Is the United States on the brink of regime change? This possibility was long considered unthinkable in American politics, yet many citizens, activists, pundits, and scholars now actively worry about the state and future of American democracy. Numerous assessments echo this anxiety. As early as 2016, in its annual rating of democracy in 167 countries, for example, The Economist reclassified the United States as a “flawed democracy” (as opposed to a “full democracy”), largely due to eroding public confidence in American political institutions as documented in surveys by Gallup, Pew, and others.1 Several surveys of experts have also revealed growing pessimism about the state of American democracy.2
Donald Trump’s presidency, as it unfolds, amplifies these doubts. First as a candidate and now as president, Trump openly derides core institutions of democratic governance: the independent press, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the validity of elections, the legitimacy of democratic contestation, and the centrality of facts to political discourse. He has signaled support for the white nationalist mobilization that has surged since his inauguration. He pursues a governing vision that challenges the hard-won policy and institutional commitments of global democratic liberalism. In international affairs, he clashes with America’s strongest democratic allies and obviously admires autocratic rulers. And less than two years into his term, Trump’s administration is mired in a criminal investigation by a special counsel into apparent connections between his presidential campaign and the Russian government—and into possible obstruction of justice.
The Trump presidency indeed destabilizes the integrity and resilience of the American political regime and the future of liberal democracy in the United States. Voices of concern span the political spectrum, and can be found among voters, activists, and elites. Of course, some more sanguine observers have noted that America’s political institutions have faced severe threat before—from the Civil War to the Palmer...