Crazier than usual domestic politics in the last two years has convinced the commentariat that liberal democracy is in trouble. There’s a little room for reassurance as new data from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group shows that citizens of established democracies “still overwhelmingly prefer democracy as the best form of government.” Also encouraging is the number of Americans who prefer a “strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress or elections” dropping back to 1995 levels, 24 percent, after rising consistently for two decades.
Something worrisome, though, is the party breakdown of these numbers. Trump voters were twice as likely to favor the authoritarian option, and voters who switched from Obama to Trump in 2016 were the most authoritarian leaning of all. But a populist groundswell need not necessarily translate into electoral victory, as political parties have historically acted as gatekeepers to weed out extreme candidates. Political scientists recognize this as one tool that keeps liberal democracies stable.
A large part of Trump’s success came from the breakdown of the Republican Party’s ability to stymie its more extreme elements. When push came to shove, the Democratic nominee was an unlikeable yet conventional career public servant. She was bad within the normal parameters. Given the factors within the Republican camp driving its populist urges — partisanship, anxiety about demographic changes, and racial resentment — it’s not clear these illiberal trends will go away anytime soon. Moderate figures may not have much of a shot in the GOP.
In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, Harvard scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt trace the history of the Republican Party’s populist evolution. They place its origins in the rise of Newt Gingrich, who would become Speaker of the House in 1995. Gingrich believed in “politics as warfare” and encouraged members of his party to “stop using ‘Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but lousy in politics.’”
Gingrich’s importance to this story may or may not be overstated, but as Levitsky and Ziblatt write, he was tapping into growing trends of discontent and polarization within voters: “Gingrich didn’t create this polarization, but he was one of the first Republicans to exploit this shift in popular sentiment.” Polarization has not abated. Since 1994, the share of Republicans who have a “very unfavorable” view of Democrats has risen from 17 percent to 45 percent, according to Pew. Democrats answering the same question about Republicans now stands at 44 percent, up from 16 percent.
This polarization is worrisome because of what’s driving it: America isn’t doing so hot in our experiment with a multiracial society. Trump is often criticized for breaking long-held democratic norms, but those norms developed in an era of exclusion. The massive realignment that shaped the current makeup of both parties occurred in the post-Civil Rights era. As Levitsky and Ziblatt say, Democrats became “the party of civil rights and Republicans of the racial status quo…[this] [r]ealignment has gone well beyond liberal versus conservative. The social, ethnic, and cultural bases of partisanship have also changed dramatically,” giving rise to parties that represent “not just different policy approaches but different communities, cultures, and values.”
The racial divide amongst the parties, according to political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster of Emory University, is the “single most important factor underlying the rise of negative partisanship.” Their research, published in the newest issue of Advances in Political Psychology, argues the party realignments that took place from the 1960s onward resulted not just in a growing gap in the “racial composition of the Democratic and Republican electoral coalitions but a dramatic increase in racial resentment among White Republican voters.” In 1980, there was very little divergence among Democrats and Republicans on this issue, but by 2016, a wide gap had emerged.
One of the factors driving American democratic decline is demographic changes, according to political scientist Yascha Mounk. Culturally homogenous towns far enough away from urban centers, such as exurban communities in Michigan, have experienced relatively high levels of immigration. Data from Pew shows that only 42 percent of Republicans say immigrants strengthen the country, compared to 84 percent of Democrats.
It’s troubling for the future of democracy when one party has defined itself in opposition to inevitable demographic shifts. By the 2040s, whites will be a statistical minority in the U.S. It’s possible that Trump will be an aberration within the Republican camp, but November’s Alabama Senate race doesn’t inspire much confidence, as Republicans were willing to back an alleged pedophile. The same goes for the Virginia gubernatorial race, where GOP candidate Ed Gillespie, previously an establishment candidate, took a populist turn.
For these reasons, the Republican Party is going to be a major test for liberal democracy going forward. So far, they’re having a hard time adjusting to our experiment in multiracial pluralism. Trumpism will dominate the party through the 2020 election at least, as he seeks a second term. Given that this populist wave has been building for several decades, it’s not obvious it will wane in the eventual post-Trump era. Only time will tell.
Jerrod A. Laber is a writer living in northern Virginia. He is a Young Voices Advocate, and was a Writing Fellow with America’s Future Foundation.
