Is American Democracy Built to Last? [View all]

[Celerity]

Yascha Mounk’s new book questions deeply held beliefs about the stability of Western societies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/us/politics/us-democracy.html



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You’re worried about American democracy falling apart. Tell us why.

I sometimes joke that I’m a democracy hipster: I started arguing that democracy was in danger in 2014 and 2015, before it was cool. I was seeing the rise of authoritarian populist candidates and parties in many countries around the world. If they were not in power yet, they were within arm’s reach of it.

The most dangerous thing about them is the anti-pluralism, the claim that they alone represent the people. That drives them to concentrate power in their own hands and refuse to accept electoral defeats.

So in that sense, there’s nothing especially surprising about the way that Trump conducted himself in office, or for that matter, how he has refused to accept his defeat as legitimate. For him, it’s a conceptual impossibility that the majority of his compatriots might actually have chosen President Biden.

When Trump first won election in 2016, I don’t think he recognized the extent to which various institutions reined in his power. If he’s re-elected in 2024, he would be much more determined to concentrate power in his own hands from Day 1. A second Trump presidency would be much more dangerous than the first one was.

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