Populist chief executives tend to weaken democracies by undermining the rule of law and horizontal accountability. For insight into the resilience of American democracy against such threats, this article takes a close look at how the Republican Party in Congress responded to President Donald J.Trump's attack on the legitimacy of American elections following his loss in the 2020 elections. It examines post‐2020 congressional Republicans’ decisions about party positioning, legislative party leadership and membership, and Trump's status as party leader. In each set of decisions, congressional Republicans pursued their own interests rather than echoing Trump's claims or taking direction from him. Congressional Republicans, however, largely declined to criticize Trump directly in light of their voters’ continued support for him, support that was evident in the 2022 Republican primaries. The overall conclusion is that the self‐interest of separately elected members of Congress offers a significant, albeit imperfect defense against a populist chief executive's bid for hegemony.
This fascinating book illuminates a democratic practice that was very important in nineteenth-century politics but has disappeared almost entirely from view: the petition to Congress and other legislative assemblies. The First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances is today construed informally, almost as merely an extension of the rights to speech and assembly. But for much of the nineteenth century, the right to petition Congress had a more judicial character.In the nineteenth century, individuals or groups could bring petitions to Congress in a manner analogous to a petitioner's complaint in court. One could file a petition and actually expect a response from Congress, just as one expects a response from a judge. As Carpenter explains, petitions had a formal structure. Congress set aside specific times to hear petitions. On each of the first thirty days of a session of Congress, the House would call the roll of states for the presentation of petitions. After that, every other Monday was designated a petition day. Petitions would be read on the floor, entered into the Congressional Record, and be tabled or taken up for further consideration.In other words, petitioning in the nineteenth century was a way to actually have an effect on Congress's agenda. It's amazing to imagine outside groups and interests having this kind of agenda influence on Congress or a state legislature today. Petitions constituted a large share of the workload of the nineteenth-century Congress. Carpenter estimates that petitions were on the agenda on 30-50% of the days Congress was in session. Petitioning activity grew over the first half of the nineteenth century, peaked on a population-adjusted basis in the 25 th Congress (1837-1839), and then declined. The petitioning era comes to a close with the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act, which banned the private bills often used to resolve petitions and transferred jurisdiction over the most common topics of petitions to the courts and the executive.Carpenter's book investigates how petitioning was used in the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the democratizing potential of this form of political participation. Importantly, the right to petition was available to those who could not vote, including enslaved people, women, and Native Americans. Some of the most important and famous petitioning activity occurred around the effort to abolish slavery. Readers who don't know much about petitioning generally are probably
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