Reflections: Can American Democracy Still Be Saved?

• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Nancy Bermeo
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716218818083
• Subject Matter: Conclusions

228 ANNALS, AAPSS, 681, January 2019

DOI: 10.1177/0002716218818083

Reflections:

Can American

Democracy Still

Be Saved?

By

NANCY BERMEO

818083ANN The Annals of The American AcademyReflections: Can American Democracy Still Be Saved

research-article2018

This article reflects on whether the erosion of democ-

racy in the contemporary United States can be halted.

Using the cases and conclusions from McCoy and

Somer’s eleven country collective project, it argues that

democracy’s decline is not inevitable. A case for cau-

tious optimism emerges from analyzing the coalitions

around democracy’s disassemblers and democracy’s

defenders. The actors disassembling democracy have

activated cleavages and adopted a style of rule that

exacerbates fault-lines on the Right. The actors defend-

ing democracy have thus far done what’s needed to

eventually build the sort of winning coalition that has

proven successful elsewhere. Creating broad, cross-

class networks, mobilizing peaceful protest, and draw-

ing on mass values that are still supportive of democracy

bolster the likelihood of successful defense.

Keywords: democracy; polarization; opposition;

Trump; Republican Party; business lobby-

ing; Democratic Party

As every morning’s news sets our heads spin-

ning, it is natural to steady ourselves with

historical parallels and to speculate about the

future with an eye to the past. McCoy and

Somer’s collective project enables us to do pre-

cisely this. By analyzing the association between

polarization and democracy in eleven countries

across four continents, it provides a broad plat-

form for viewing the turbulence of the Trump

administration in comparative perspective.

What can the effects of pernicious polariza-

tion on democracies elsewhere teach us about

Correspondence: nancy.bermeo@politics.ox.ac.uk

Nancy Bermeo is currently a PIIRS senior scholar at

Princeton University and a Nuffield senior research fel-

low at Oxford University. Her books include Parties,

Movements and Democracy (with Deborah Yashar;

Cambridge University Press 2016), Mass Politics in

Hard Times (with Larry Bartels; Oxford University

Press 2014) and Ordinary People in Extraordinary

Times (Princeton University Press 2003), an award

winning study of the breakdown of democracy.