{"title":"Delegitimization, Deconstruction and Control: Undermining the Administrative State","authors":"D. Moynihan","doi":"10.1177/00027162211069723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211069723","url":null,"abstract":"Three phenomena that undermine the U.S. administrative state were taken to extremes under President Trump, contributing to democratic backsliding. The first is delegitimization: a suspicion of the public sector that has curdled into claims that public officials are deep state enemies of the people. This undermines belief in the capacity of government to deliver on democratic promises. Second is deconstruction, which includes undermining administrative capacity and delivery of services, making it harder for institutions to deliver on democratic promises, or to do so in ways that are transparent or generative of conditions in which the public sees government helping. The third is political control, in which loyalty to the political leaders is a primary virtue: this weakens structural protections of public employees and the capacities of government agencies to pursue their statutory mission or respond to other sources of democratic control such as Congress.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"36 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42552757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Threats or Gains: The Battle over Participation in America’s Careening Democracy","authors":"D. Slater","doi":"10.1177/00027162211070059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211070059","url":null,"abstract":"Modern democracies comprise multiple institutions and diverse principles. This can make them vulnerable to “democratic careening,” as polarized actors emphasize opposing views of what democracy means and requires. I argue that America’s current bout of democratic careening is founded on differing partisan perspectives of the ultimate purpose of government, and whether widespread political participation is necessary to fulfill it. While leftists generally take a gain-oriented approach to government, conservatives are more threat oriented. A byproduct of this foundational difference is that leftists’ conception of democracy is participation heavy, while conservatives’ conception tends to be participation light. The fact that liberals and conservatives differ on the importance of participation to democracy is a potential source of democratic careening, and the fact that conservatives do not necessarily see participation as a core democratic virtue poses the more serious risk of outright democratic collapse.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"90 - 100"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47137682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Democratic Capacity: Election Administration as Bulwark and Target","authors":"L. Jacobs, Judd Choate","doi":"10.1177/00027162211061318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211061318","url":null,"abstract":"Headlines decried the fragility of American democracy during the 2020 elections, but extensive institutional structures steered officials in both political parties to certify the results of the election, and independent judges have validated their decisions. Political battles over election laws and procedures are not themselves signs of democracy’s demise, because legal and administrative guardrails contain the degree to which voting rights are threatened. These formidable institutional structures blunted former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and limited the scope and impact of new state legislation to restrict access to voting. The guardrails of elections operated as designed, but Trump’s unfounded charges of fraud coupled with state restrictions are corroding the credibility and fairness of elections. We examine the scope and function of election law and administration to understand how they protected American democracy in the contentious 2020 election.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"22 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48474206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moderation, Realignment, or Transformation? Evaluating Three Approaches to America’s Crisis of Democracy","authors":"Lee Drutman","doi":"10.1177/00027162221083494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221083494","url":null,"abstract":"As American democracy remains in crisis, reform proposals proliferate. I make two contributions to the debate over how to respond to the current crisis. First, I organize reform proposals into three main categories: moderation, realignment, and transformation. I then argue why transformation is necessary, given the deep structural problems of American democracy. Only reforms that fundamentally shake up the political coalitions and electoral incentives can break the escalating two-party doom loop of hyperpartisanship that is destroying the foundations of American democracy.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"158 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42284529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Supreme Court and the Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding","authors":"Aziz Z Huq","doi":"10.1177/00027162211061124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211061124","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in contemporary democratic backsliding. I identify three dynamics that have placed American democracy under strain: (1) the incomplete democratization of national institutions created in 1787; (2) a half century of rising inequalities in wealth, market power, and political influence; and (3) a resurgence of intolerant, authoritarian, white-ethnic identity politics associated with the Republican Party. I argue that the Court has proved itself to be capable of creating linkages between these distinct institutional, economic, and sociocultural domains. In doing so, the Court has enabled the transformation of economic or sociocultural power into durable political power and the transformation of political power into the entrenchment of a “permanent minority” immured from democratic defeat. I describe specific doctrinal mechanisms by which this arbitrage role is performed, showing how the Court can be a vector of democratic backsliding.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"50 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64684274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Far-Right Threat in the United States: A European Perspective","authors":"C. Mudde","doi":"10.1177/00027162211070060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211070060","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of Donald Trump has weakened the dominance of the “American exceptionalism” paradigm in analyses of U.S. politics, but the pivot to views of the United States as part of a global trend toward democratic backsliding ignores important, uniquely “American” cultural, historical, and institutional attributes that make the country more at risk for democratic erosion than most other established democracies. This short article puts Trump, and his Republican Party, into the broader comparative perspective of (European) far-right studies. I argue that Trump in many ways fits the “fourth wave” of postwar far-right politics, lay out the unique challenge that the United States is facing in terms of democratic erosion, and draw on the case of Viktor Orbán in Hungary to learn lessons for the United States. The article ends with some suggestions of how democrats (not just Democrats) should address the far-right Republican challenge to U.S. democracy.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"101 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43620031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Growing Rural-Urban Political Divide and Democratic Vulnerability","authors":"Suzanne Mettler, T. Brown","doi":"10.1177/00027162211070061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211070061","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout American history and as recently as the early 1990s, each of the major political parties included both rural and some urban constituencies, but since then the nation has become deeply divided geographically. Rural areas have become increasingly dominated by the Republican Party and urban places by the Democratic Party. This growing rural-urban divide is fostering polarization and democratic vulnerability. We examine why this cleavage might endanger democracy, highlighting various mechanisms: the combination of long-standing political institutions that give extra leverage to sparsely populated places with a transformed party system in which one party dominates those places; growing social divergence between rural and urban areas that fosters “us” versus “them” dynamics; economic changes that make rural areas ripe for grievance politics; and party leaders willing to cater to such resentments. We present empirical evidence that this divide is threatening democracy and consider how it might be mitigated.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"130 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42410522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"White Racial Solidarity and Opposition to American Democracy","authors":"Ashley Jardina, R. Mickey","doi":"10.1177/00027162211069730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162211069730","url":null,"abstract":"Political observers have expressed concern about the failure of some Americans to uphold democratic principles. We argue that support for antidemocratic authoritarian governance is associated with some whites’ psychological attachment to their racial group and a desire to maintain their group’s power and status in the face of multiracial democracy. Drawing on historical work, we posit that whites’ efforts to restrict democracy are deeply rooted in America’s past; and we present empirical analysis demonstrating that today, whites with higher levels of racial solidarity are notably more supportive of authoritarian leadership than whites who do not possess a racial group consciousness.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"79 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44414899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can Black Lives Matter within U.S. Democracy?","authors":"M. Francis","doi":"10.1177/00027162221078340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221078340","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the impact of anti-Black state violence on U.S. democracy, tracing the history of that violence and how it has changed from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. I underscore the persistence of state violence against Black Americans, how it undercuts democratization, and how those dynamics provide a useful context for ongoing discussions about the imperfect development of democracy in the United States. I also explore the Black Lives Matter Movement’s (BLMM) emphasis on dismantling the criminal punishment system and the movement’s amplification of the voices of citizens who have often been excluded from the formal political process. I argue that by centering the issue of anti-Black violence, the BLMM is offering a transformative pathway to a more fully functional democracy.","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"186 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47096761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Suzanne Mettler, R. Lieberman, Jamila Michener, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Kenneth M. Roberts
{"title":"Democratic Vulnerabilities and Pathways for Reform","authors":"Suzanne Mettler, R. Lieberman, Jamila Michener, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Kenneth M. Roberts","doi":"10.1177/00027162221077516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221077516","url":null,"abstract":"A democracy is in trouble. even before the 2016 election, the united States had slipped in international democracy rankings, losing its long-held stature as a “full” democracy and joining the “flawed” democracies (economist Intelligence unit 2020; V-Dem Institute 2021). Scholars of democracy around the world have identified several key weaknesses in American democracy, such as an increasingly dysfunctional government and fraying social cohesion, that undermine the regime’s accountability and responsivness. For decades, political scientists have observed key threats to democracy that have been on the rise: political polarization; conflict—incited by racism and nativism—over the boundaries of American citizenship and the civic status of those in different social groups; soaring economic inequality; and executive aggrandizement (Mettler and Lieberman 2020). the confluence of these threats fueled the candidacy","PeriodicalId":48352,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science","volume":"699 1","pages":"8 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47091840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}