The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis

Lieberman, Robert C.; Mettler, Suzanne; Pepinsky, Thomas B.; Roberts, Kenneth M.; Valelly, Richard M.

doi:10.1017/s1537592718003286

Cited by 100 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“… 1 See especially Carey et al (2019), Huq and Ginsburg (2018), Kaufman and Haggard (2019), Lieberman et al (2019), Miller, Szakonyi, and Morgenbesser (2017), and Przeworski (2019). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Is support for democracy in the United States robust enough to deter undemocratic behavior by elected politicians? We develop a model of the public as a democratic check and evaluate it using two empirical strategies: an original, nationally representative candidate-choice experiment in which some politicians take positions that violate key democratic principles, and a natural experiment that occurred during Montana’s 2017 special election for the U.S. House. Our research design allows us to infer Americans’ willingness to trade-off democratic principles for other valid but potentially conflicting considerations such as political ideology, partisan loyalty, and policy preferences. We find the U.S. public’s viability as a democratic check to be strikingly limited: only a small fraction of Americans prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices, and their tendency to do so is decreasing in several measures of polarization, including the strength of partisanship, policy extremism, and candidate platform divergence. Our findings echo classic arguments about the importance of political moderation and cross-cutting cleavages for democratic stability and highlight the dangers that polarization represents for democracy.

show abstract

“… 1 See especially Carey et al (2019), Huq and Ginsburg (2018), Kaufman and Haggard (2019), Lieberman et al (2019), Miller, Szakonyi, and Morgenbesser (2017), and Przeworski (2019). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When decline stimulates counterforces, political development can have cyclical turnarounds. Precisely by threatening to undermine liberal democracy, Trump's populism may unintentionallythrough its deterrent effects-end up strengthening this rusty system and fuel attempts to ameliorate its many problems (on those, see Lieberman et al 2019).…”

Section: Unintended Consequences Of Trump's Populism: Democratic Mobimentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism’s Threat to Democracy: Comparative Lessons for the United States

Weyland¹

2020

Perspect. polit.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How grave is the threat that populist leaders pose to democracy? To elucidate the prospects of the United States under president Donald Trump, I conduct a wide-ranging comparative analysis of populism’s regime impact in Europe and Latin America. The investigation finds that the risks have been overestimated. Populist leaders manage to suffocate democracy only when two crucial conditions coincide. First, institutional weakness, which comes in various types, creates vulnerabilities to populist power grabs. Second, even in weaker institutional settings populist leaders can only succeed with their illiberal machinations if acute yet resolvable crises or extraordinary bonanzas give them overwhelming support which enables them to override and dismantle institutional constraints to power concentration. Because none of these conditions prevail in the United States, an undemocratic involution is very unlikely. First, the federal system of checks and balances, rooted in an unusually rigid constitution, remains firm and stable. Second, President Trump encountered neither acute crises nor a huge windfall; consequently, his mass support has remained limited. Facing strong resistance from an energized opposition party and a vibrant civil society, the U.S. populist cannot destroy democracy. Instead, Trump’s transgressions of norms of civility have sparked an intense counter-mobilization that may inadvertently revitalize U.S. democracy.

show abstract

“…There are many other episodes of non-democracy in American history that would be useful to compare. In “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy,” Lieberman et al (2018) enumerate a few: the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II; Watergate; the McCarthy investigations; the FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO). These episodes are non-democratic in different ways: some involve abuse of state surveillance power, while others involve the suspension or erosion of constitutional protections.…”

Section: American Political Development and Race And Ethnic Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ours is a time of high stakes and dire predictions. After decades of rising inequality and political polarization at home, and democratic recession abroad, political scientists are weighing in on the fate of the American republic (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Albertus and Menaldo 2018; Mounk 2018; Lieberman et al 2018). In doing so, they are bringing comparative lessons to bear on the study of American politics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing America: Reflections on Democracy across Subfields

Kuo¹

2019

Perspect. polit.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Is America in a period of democratic decline? I argue that there is an urgent need to consider the United States in comparative perspective, and that doing so is necessary to contextualize and understand the quality of American democracy. I describe two approaches to comparing the United States: the first shows how the United States stacks up to other countries, while the second uses the theories and tools of comparative politics to examine relationships between institutions, actors, and democratic outcomes. I then draw on research in three literatures—clientelism and corruption, capitalism and redistribution, and race and ethnic politics and American Political Development—to lay out a research agenda for closing the gap between the subfields of American and comparative politics. In doing so, I also argue for richer engagement between academics and the public sphere, as opportunities for scholars to provide commentary and analysis about contemporary politics continue to expand.

show abstract

The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis

Cited by 100 publications

References 16 publications

Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States

Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States

Populism’s Threat to Democracy: Comparative Lessons for the United States

Comparing America: Reflections on Democracy across Subfields

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About