The Crisis of American Democracy in Historical Context

Abstract

The present is not the only time in American history that American democracy has been at serious risk of backsliding. When we place recent developments in a broader historical and comparative context, we discover that any of four known threats to democracy can weaken it and lead to backsliding. These include political polarization, conflict over who belongs in the political community, high and rising economic inequality, and executive aggrandizement. American democracy has often been fragile, and each past episode of democratic fragility was characterized by some configuration of these four. Now, for the first time in our nation’s history, we face the confluence of all four threats at once. Analyzed through this framework, the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was not a surprise. Although the attempts to overturn the 2020 election failed, the threats remain with us.