What are the major challenges to democracy in the United States
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Challenges to Democracy
The Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Populism/Challenges to Democracy focuses on the different and similar threats to democracy faced by nations around the world. Our aim is to foster conversation between scholars of developing and established democracies, including America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Formerly known as the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Populism, the Global Populism/Challenges to Democracy cluster has broadened its mission under the leadership of Bart Bonikowski, Steve Levitsky, and Daniel Ziblatt.
Beginning with the so-called “third wave” of democratization, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many analysts and policymakers believed that authoritarianism was on the wane and that democracy had become, as the phrase commonly went in the 1990s, “the only game in town.” That era of self-confidence has passed. Not only is authoritarianism alive and well in China, Russia, central Asia, and much of the Middle East, but democratic breakdown in Thailand and Venezuela and democratic backsliding in countries like Ecuador, Hungary, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, and Turkey has triggered debates over whether we have entered a period of global democratic recession. With the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the rise of populist, Eurosceptic, and anti-immigrant forces in Europe, some observers have begun to worry that even the world’s most established democracies may be at risk. We are faced, then, with one of the most pressing issues of our time: can liberal democracy around the world survive?
Our goal is to facilitate a more systematic conversation among Harvard faculty of different disciplines and schools. Our programming is built around monthly panels of diverse guests to address broad issues that currently sit at the forefront of concern for democracy scholars. To create a multigenerational community we also host an undergraduate study group and a graduate student advisory group to encourage students to pursue the study of challenges to democracy. Ultimately we plan to disseminate the knowledge and ideas that emerge out of the cluster’s activities to the broader public and to policy makers.
Our research focuses around the following five broad topics:
1) Overcoming polarization
While some partisan polarization is healthy for democracy, one of the key drivers of democratic decay in new and established democracies is intense polarization, where political opponents begin to regard each other as existential enemies, allowing incumbents to justify abuses of democratic norms to restrain the opposition, and encouraging the opposition to use “any means necessary” to (re)gain power. If citizens remain loyal to a political party even if it violates key democratic norms, political polarization represents a genuine threat to functioning of democratic accountability. A key question for students of democratization and democratic erosion is how such intense partisan polarization can be overcome. Many students of advanced and developing democracies have highlighted institutional reforms (e.g., electoral reforms, reforms to systems of candidate selection), but others have highlighted the importance of deeper social, economic, and even the need to rebuild democratic norms.
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