Democratic backsliding in the United States

Democratic backsliding in the United States has been identified as a trend at the state and national levels in various indices and analysis. Democratic backsliding is "a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power more arbitrary and repressive and that restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection".
The Jim Crow era is among the most-cited historical examples of democratic backsliding, with Black Americans in particular seeing their rights eroded dramatically, especially in the southern United States. Backsliding in the 21st century has been widely discussed; some frequently-cited possible drivers include decisions made by the Supreme Court (especially those regarding money in politics and gerrymandering), attempts at election subversion, a growing interest in political violence and White identity politics.
Jim Crow era
In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, the federal government of the United States initially took an active role in reducing racial discrimination. Between 1865 and 1870, three amendments were passed to address racial inequality in the South: the Thirteenth (which abolished most forms of slavery), the Fourteenth (which addressed citizenship rights and equal protection under the law) and the Fifteenth (which made it illegal to deny the right to vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"). With this, the number of African American men who could vote went from 0.5% in 1866 to 70% in 1872.
By the late 1870s, however, white backlash against the social, economic and political gains of Black people (exemplified by the violence and persecution they faced from terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan) led to the Compromise of 1877, wherein the Democratic Party (then-dominated by Southern white supremacists) agreed to let Republicans win the 1876 presidential election, in exchange for removing federal troops in the South and, in the words of historian James M. McPherson, "the abandonment of the black man to his fate." Former supporters of Reconstruction era policies began to argue that the government had made "too many changes too fast", and a White conservative movement within the Republican Party started to gain influence.
What followed was an erosion of political and civil rights that would span decades; between the 1890s and 1910s, Southern governments passed Jim Crow laws, which instituted poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory systems, barring many Black and impoverished White Americans from voting. By 1913, this disenfranchisement extended into the federal government, as the Wilson Administration introduced segregation there as well. These policies have been described as a kind of "authoritarian rule". It was during this time that several violent, racially-motivated events occurred, such as Wilmington insurrection of 1898 wherein a mob of armed white supremacists staged a coup d'état against the elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, in which white supremacists (with the explicit approval of city law enforcement officials) attacked the Black neighborhood of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing around 300.
21st century
Robert Mickley and Ashley Jardina wrote in their article "White Racial Solidarity and Opposition to American Democracy" that during the twenty-first century voting rights eroded away and partisan gerrymandering by state legislatures increased. These scholars, alongside a doctor of philosophy named Robert Rowland wrote that during the presidency of Donald Trump the undermining of democratic norms would be accelerated. A paper published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science said, "Trump undermined faith in elections, encouraged political violence, vilified the mainstream media, positioned himself as a law-and-order strongman challenging immigrants and suppressing protests, and refused to denounce support from far-right groups."
In 2019, political scientists Robert R. Kaufman and Stephan Haggard saw "striking parallels in terms of democratic dysfunction, polarization, the nature of autocratic appeals, and the processes through which autocratic incumbents sought to exploit elected office" in the United States under Trump compared to other backsliding countries (Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary). They argued that a change to competitive authoritarianism is possible but unlikely. In 2020, Kurt Weyland presented a qualitative model for assessing democratic continuity and reversal using historical data from the experience of other countries. His study concluded that the United States is immune to democratic reversal. In 2021, political scientists Matias López and Juan Pablo Luna criticized his methodology and selection of parameters and argued that both democratic continuity and reversal are possible. With regard to the state of scholarly research on the subject, they wrote that "the probability of observing democratic backsliding in the United States remains an open and important question". According to Jamie Gillies, Canada may reevaluate historically close Canada–United States relations in response to democratic backsliding in the U.S.
Origins
Political scientists including Wendy Brown and H.A. Giroux argued that the United States has been de-democratizing since the 1980's because of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Some have linked the war on terror and the Iraq War as enabling later democratic backsliding under the Trump administration. Sociologist Behrouz Alikhani cited the growing political influence of the wealthy and global corporations with the loosening of campaign finance laws, especially the Citizens United decision. Constitutional law scholar Aziz Z. Huq agreed, adding that the inadequate democratization of national institutions since 1787 and a resurgence of authoritarian, white-ethnic identity politics also play a role. A number of other authors have made similar arguments, citing the Supreme Court's role in shifting political power enough to enable authoritarianism.
Gerrymandering
The Republicans took initiative in pushing state redistricting in their favor using the results of the 2010 United States Census. They implemented the Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, which was aimed to redistrict states where Republicans were in control of the district maps to push for stronger Republican representation, typically through partisan gerrymandering. This led to the Republicans gaining control of the U.S. House by winning over 33 seats in the 2012 United States House of Representatives elections.
These new Republican-drawn district maps because the contention of several lawsuits challenging their validity. The Roberts Court has never struck down an election law for infringing suffrage or Equal Protection rights. On the other hand, it struck down the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance regime in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which existed to prevent disenfranchisement by states. It has also not acted on partisan gerrymandering. As a whole, according to Huq, these changes shift the institutional equilibrium to "enable the replication of the system of one-party dominance akin to one that characterized the American South for much of the twentieth century". However, this has not always been the norm. In June 2023, the court ruled 5–4 to uphold rulings of the lower court which used Voting Rights Act of 1965 in order to instruct the state of Alabama to draw a second majority-black congressional district, which was hailed as a win for voting rights advocates. The court ruled 6-3 that state courts can adjudicate matters related to federal elections held in their state and the North Carolina Supreme Court was allowed to adjudicate whether the congressional map drawn by the North Carolina Legislature complied with the state constitution, because the United States Constitution "does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review." The court rejected the Independent state legislature theory, which contended that state legislatures have "effectively unchecked authority" to draw maps according to their wishes.
Supreme Court
Upon Trump's victory in the 2016 United States presidential election, the Federalist Society (FedSoc) played a major role in vetting candidates for the president to appoint to federal courts, including the Supreme Court. The Federalist Society, a conservative-libertarian group that advocates a textualist and originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution, had for decades helped law students and attorneys with federal judgeships, under the leadership of Leonard Leo. After Trump appointed three justices who were current or former FedSoc members, the Roberts Court had a 6-3 majority of such FedSoc justices.
The court's 2021 term was widely characterized as one of its most consequential, as it ruled in favor of major issues sought by conservatives for decades, such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which had overturned Roe v. Wade with the judgement that the right to abortion was not a constitutional right, allowing states to set their own regulations to allow or deny abortions. In a July 2022 research paper entitled "The Supreme Court's Role in the Degradation of U.S. Democracy," the Campaign Legal Center, founded by Republican Trevor Potter, concluded that the Roberts Court "has turned on our democracy" and was on an "anti-democratic crusade" that had "accelerated and become increasingly
extreme with the arrival" of Trump's three appointees.
Election subversion
By 2020, most state legislatures were controlled by the Republican Party, though some of those states had Democratic governors. As part of attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, many Republican legislators in seven battleground states won by Joe Biden created fraudulent certificates of ascertainment composed of "alternate electors" to declare Donald Trump had actually won their states, thereby overruling the will of voters. They hoped to pass these fraudulent certificates to vice president Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, so he would reverse Biden's election and certify Trump as the winner, a scheme which became known as the Pence Card. Pence instead counted the authentic slates of electors and properly declared Biden the victor. By June 2022, participants in the alternate electors scheme began receiving subpoenas from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack and the United States Department of Justice. Investigations into a Trump fake electors plot ensued.
Leonard Leo is also involved with the Honest Elections Project (HEP), a major proponent of the independent state legislature theory (ISL), which asserts that a textualist or originalist reading of the Constitution grants state legislatures exclusive authority to establish and enforce state election rules for federal elections, unfettered by oversight from state courts or governors. This interpretation was contrary to previous interpretations of the Constitution, which held that legislatures, courts and governors shared that authority. Critics said that if the ISL was adopted, it would be possible for state legislatures controlled by one party to establish and enforce election rules to suit their partisan objectives, including rejecting certain ballots or procedures to overrule the voting majority in federal elections and declare their party candidates the winners. The only restriction of this authority would be the Electoral Count Act, which requires governors to certify their states' election results; after the 2020 presidential election, the Act was found to have a flaw that Trump attorney John Eastman sought to exploit to advance his Pence Card scheme.
HEP had for years submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court advocating the ISL. In June 2022, the Court agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a case brought by the North Carolina Republican Party, during its next term beginning October 2022. At least four justices had previously signaled support for using the case to rule in favor of ISL. J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge who is highly regarded in conservative legal circles, remarked, "Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine ... and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress' own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency." He testified weeks later during a January 6 committee hearing that "Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy." The Supreme Court rejected ISL in a 6-3 decision in June 2023.
Restrictions on voting
Despite extensive research over decades finding that voting fraud is extremely rare, many Republicans assert it is widespread and that actions must be taken to prevent it. Amid persistent false allegations that widespread fraud had led to Trump's 2020 election loss, in 2021 Republicans in multiple states began taking actions to gain control of state and county election apparatuses, limit ballot access and challenge votes. By June, Republicans had introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials. Republican lawmakers had stripped authority from secretaries of state, who oversee state elections. In Georgia, Republicans removed Democrats of color from local election boards. In Arkansas, they stripped election control from county authorities.
Wisconsin Republicans, led by senator Ron Johnson, sought to dismantle the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which the party had created five years earlier. In Michigan and other swing states, Republicans sought to create an "army" of poll workers and attorneys who could refer what they deemed questionable ballots to a network of friendly district attorneys to challenge. Through May 2022, Republican voters had nominated at least 108 candidates, in some 170 midterm races, who had repeated Trump's stolen election lies; at least 149 had campaigned on tightening voting procedures, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Dozens of these nominees sought offices to oversee the administration and certification of elections.
Anti-democratic tendencies
By 2021, polling and research indicated a significant shift against democracy among Republicans, both in terms of rhetoric and acceptance of potential political violence. The shift was most pronounced among Republicans who trusted Fox News, and more so Newsmax and One America News (OAN), who were more inclined to believe the disproven assertion that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump. A November 2021 Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll found that two-thirds of Republicans believed the election had been stolen, as did 82 percent of those who trusted Fox News more than any other media outlet. Ninety-seven percent of those who trusted Newsmax and OAN believed the election was stolen. Thirty percent of Republicans agreed with the statement, "true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country," rising to 40 percent among those who trust Newsmax and OAN; eleven percent of Democrats agreed.
Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI, said he was deeply concerned about the poll findings and "we really have to take them seriously as a threat to democracy." Political scientist John Pitney, who was previously a domestic policy and legislative aide for congressional Republicans, remarked, "Back in the 1980s, Republicans aspired to be the party of hope and opportunity. Now it is the party of blood and soil. The culture war is front and center, and for many Republicans, it is close to being a literal war, not just a metaphorical one." Political scientist Larry Bartels, a co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University, wrote in August 2020 that "substantial numbers of Republicans endorse statements contemplating violations of key democratic norms, including respect for the law and for the outcomes of elections and eschewing the use of force in pursuit of political ends." He ascribed the primary cause to "ethnic antagonism" among Republicans toward immigrants and minorities seeking political power and claims on government resources.
Religious and white nationalism
During the Trump era, a far-right, populist movement based on Christian nationalism surged, gaining some degree of mainstream acceptance. The ideology of Trumpism broadly adheres to a deeply-held belief that America was founded as a Christian nation. Philip Gorski, a Yale professor of the sociology of religion, calls this "a mythological version of American history." Movement adherents believe their Christian dominance has been usurped by other races and faiths, which Gorski characterizes as a form of racial tribalism: a "'we don't like people who are trying to change [our country] or people who are different' form of nationalism."
Researchers have observed that many in the movement seek to reduce or eliminate the separation of church and state found in the Constitution. Some also believe Trump was divinely chosen to save white Christian America. In their 2022 book, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, Gorski and co-author Samuel Perry, a professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, wrote that white Christian nationalists share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles that "add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place." Some believe in a "Warrior Christ" they will follow with the use of righteous violence.
During a September 2020 presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would condemn white supremacists and militia groups that had appeared at some protests that year. After his opponent Joe Biden mentioned Proud Boys, Trump stated, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," adding "somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem." After Trump and his allies exhausted legal avenues to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, several leaders of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were indicted and convicted on federal seditious conspiracy charges for their roles in the January 6 United States Capitol attack on the Capitol as Congress assembled to certify Biden's election. The Department of Homeland Security stated in October 2020 that white supremacists posed the top domestic terrorism threat, which FBI director Christopher Wray confirmed in March 2021, noting that the bureau had elevated the threat to the same level as ISIS. The release of the DHS findings had been delayed for months, which a whistleblower, the department's acting intelligence chief Brian Murphy, attributed to reluctance of DHS leaders to release information that would reflect poorly on the president in an election year.
Every Republican voted against a July 2022 House measure requiring Homeland Security, the FBI and the Defense Department to "publish a report that analyzes and sets out strategies to combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity" in their ranks. A 2019 survey of active service members found that about one third had "personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the ranks in recent months." About one fifth of those who were charged for participating in the January 6 attack were veterans, with some on active service.
Rachel Kleinfeld, a scholar of global political violence and democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, found in July 2022 that Trump's affinity for far-right militia groups dated to his 2016 campaign and such groups had since become increasingly mainstreamed in the Republican Party. She argued the militia influence had spread since the January 6 attack among Republican leaders at the national, state, and local level. Political scientist Barbara Walter, who has studied political violence leading to civil war, commented in March 2022 that "There are definitely lots of groups on the far right who want war. They are preparing for war ... We know the warning signs. And we know that if we strengthen our democracy, and if the Republican Party decides it's no longer going to be an ethnic faction that's trying to exclude everybody else, then our risk of civil war will disappear."
Reactions
In September 2023, thirteen presidential centers dating from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama released an unprecedented joint message warning of the fragile state of American democracy. The statement called for a recommitment to the rule of law and civility in political discourse, as well as respect for democratic institutions and secure and accessible elections.
President Joe Biden warned of threats to democracy during addresses in 2022 and 2023. At a fundraiser in August 2022, Biden said Donald Trump's MAGA philosophy was "like semi-fascism." In September 2023, weeks after Trump had been indicted on federal and state charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, and as most Republicans still refused to accept Trump's 2020 election loss, Biden said:
Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in 2016, said in October 2023 that Trump was likely to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee and if elected "will wreck our democracy," likening his MAGA supporters to a "cult."
Indicators
National-level
Freedom House downgraded the United States's score significantly in their civil rights and political liberties index between 2010 (94) and 2020 (83), citing the need for 3 main reforms: removing barriers to voting, limiting the influence of money in politics, and establishing independent redistricting commissions.
The Economist Democracy Index started the U.S. at the index's launch in 2006 at an 8.22/10 (full democracy) though the rating started declining in 2010 and dropped to its lowest rating yet of 7.85 in 2021 (flawed democracy). The Economist cited functioning of government and political culture as major reasons for the lower score (both related to polarization).
The V-Dem Democracy indices show significant declines from 2016-2020. V-dem has measures on democracy starting in 1789, providing rare historical data to compare backsliding events, though comparing across centuries is not without its challenges.
International IDEA labeled the US a "backsliding democracy" after evaluating 2020 and 2021 events, including January 6 and a poorly-functioning legislature. IDEA's democracy scores started sliding for the United States in 2016.
State-level
Jacob Grumbach published the State Democracy Index which evaluates states between 2000-2018 on the strength of their electoral democracy. While starting in 2002 and accelerating after the 2010 elections and redistricting, Grumbach finds American states under unified Republican Party control began significant backsliding, while Democratic Party-controlled and divided states have become more democratic. Grumbach found Alabama, Tennessee, Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina were the worst performers (with Wisconsin and North Carolina previously ranking at the top), and suggested a sense of racial threat was one of the main drivers in these states with larger black populations becoming more anti-democratic. Grumbach also cites economic inequality, the nationalization of state politics through declining journalism and an increase in national donors as contributors of backsliding. While he notes it would be difficult to compare across eras, he believes that the slavery and Jim Crow eras in particular had far greater gaps in the quality of democracy between states than the present day gaps he analyzes and notes that the US, in the eyes of some, was not a democracy until 1964.
Public opinion
Longitudinal surveys
Bright Line surveys from the University of Chicago have taken frequent measurements on attitudes around democracy in the US from political scientists and a representative sample of the public.
Point-in-time surveys
One survey between 2017 and 2019 found that a third of Americans want a "strong leader who doesn't have to bother with Congress or elections", and one-quarter had a favorable view of military rule. A research study administered in 2019 found an association between support for Trump and support for executive aggrandizement. Republicans are more likely to support a candidate who suspends Congress or ignores court verdicts. Multiple studies have found that support for democracy among white Americans is negatively correlated with their level of racial prejudice or racial resentment, and 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."
A 2022 Quinnipiac University poll found that 69 percent of Democrats and Republicans and 66 percent of Independents think American democracy is "in danger of collapse".
See also
American decline
Corruption Perceptions Index
Freedom in the World
List of democracy indices
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
Further reading
(preview)
2010s in American politics
2020s in American politics
Trumpism
Political history of the United States
History of voting rights in the United States