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Understanding democratic decline in the United States [1]

['Vanessa Williamson', 'Molly E. Reynolds', 'Naomi Maehr', 'Itai Grofman', 'Michael Hais', 'Morley Winograd', 'Kurtis Nelson', 'Darrell M. West', 'Linda Peek Schacht']

Date: 2024-10

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Experts agree that the health of U.S. democracy has declined in recent years—but what does that mean? The United States is experiencing two major forms of democratic erosion in its governing institutions: election manipulation and executive overreach. Most obviously, after the 2020 election, the sitting president, despite admitting privately that he had lost, attempted to subvert the results and remain in office. But democratic erosion in the United States is not synonymous with Donald Trump. Since 2010, state legislatures have instituted laws intended to reduce voters’ access to the ballot, politicize election administration, and foreclose electoral competition via extreme gerrymandering. The United States has also seen substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service. Against these pressures, the gridlocked and hyperpartisan Congress is poorly equipped to provide unbiased oversight and accountability of the executive, and there are serious questions about the impartiality of the judiciary. What is democratic decline? Globally, it is increasingly rare for an authoritarian to come to power via a coup.1 Instead, democracies in decline usually experience a slow but steady erosion. The process is often incremental and episodic. Each step is only partial. There can be intermediate moments of apparent stability or equilibrium.2 In the words of political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky: “The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive… People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts.”3 Political scientists use a variety of terms to describe this phenomenon, including “democratic erosion,” “democratic backsliding,” “democratic regression,” and “autocratization.” Whatever the terminology, democratic decline has ramifications throughout society. It is associated with certain changes in public attitudes, including vilification of members of the opposing party and widespread misinformation. There tends to be a decline in non-governmental institutions critical to a healthy public sphere, such as an independent media, a vibrant education system, and an engaged civil society. All these symptoms of decline are present in the United States.4 This report, however, focuses on democratic decline in the government itself because democratic backsliding tends to be driven by the choices of political leaders, not a sudden groundswell of authoritarianism in the general populace.5 The United States is experiencing two major forms of democratic erosion in its governing institutions:6 Strategic manipulation of elections. Distinct from “voter fraud,” which is almost non-existent in the United States, election manipulation has become increasingly common and increasingly extreme. Examples include election procedures that make it harder to vote (like inadequate polling facilities) or that reduce the opposing party’s representation (like gerrymandering).

Executive aggrandizement. Even a legitimately elected leader can undermine democracy if they eliminate governmental “checks and balances” or consolidate power in unaccountable institutions. The United States has seen substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service. In addition, there are serious questions about the impartiality of the judiciary. Before we examine democratic decline in the United States in the 21st century, it is important to recognize the historical context. Many longstanding aspects of America’s governing institutions can reasonably be criticized as anti-democratic or a danger to civil liberties. The Senate and Electoral College are part of the Constitution; the filibuster7 and the doctrine of “judicial supremacy” date back to the 19th century. The United States has always relied on winner-takes-all geographically based representation, which can result in substantial misrepresentation when partisans are segregated—even absent intentional gerrymandering.8 In addition, though the nation’s founders saw a standing army and strong executive as dangers to the republic, the power of the presidency has steadily increased over time and the American military has for decades been by far the most expensive in the world. Most significantly, the United States only achieved nearly universal suffrage after 1965, when the federal government finally protected the voting rights of Black Americans in the South. The period since universal suffrage has seen massive expansions in policing and incarceration.9 The pathologies that beset American governance today are a part of the long backlash to the successes of the Civil Rights Movement.10 The idiosyncrasies of American government and the nation’s long history of race-based political exclusion create specific susceptibilities to democratic erosion, but the United States is far from alone in seeing its democracy erode. Democracy is in decline around the world. For the first time in decades, there are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies 11 in the world. Experts downgrade U.S. democracy In 2020, then-President Trump, knowing that he had failed to win re-election, refused to concede and instead sought to subvert the vote counting and certification process. On January 6th, with President Trump’s encouragement, his supporters stormed the Capitol. The House Select Committee that investigated the January 6th attack concluded that the president had engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.” But 2020 does not mark the beginning of democratic decline in the United States. Precise quantitative measures of democracy are difficult to develop—there are, for example, multiple metrics used just to define gerrymandering.12 But to measure the core elements of democracy between countries and over time, social scientists have developed a robust toolkit of indices that track and aggregate indicators of electoral processes, political participation, government functioning, and civil liberties. These indices vary somewhat in their measurement strategies, but across the board, they demonstrate substantial erosion of democratic functioning in the United States for years before President Trump’s 2020 election subversion attempt. According to the Economist, the United States now ranks not among the world’s “full democracies” (such as Canada, Japan, and most of Western Europe) but among the “flawed democracies” (such as Greece, Israel, Poland, and Brazil).

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[1] Url: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-democratic-decline-in-the-united-states/

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