Sheri Berman – Solutions for Democratic Decay

Abstract

Democracy, as Freedom House put it in its 2021 report, is “under siege.” Over the past decade there has been a steady decline in the quantity and quality of democracies across the globe. And perhaps the most consequential case of democratic decay today is in the United States, one of the oldest and most powerful democracies in the world.

For years, the United States has experienced growing economic inequality, declining social mobility, and increasing geographic, racial, religious, and political divides. These problems, along with the inability or unwillingness of the government to deal with them, have made Americans increasingly pessimistic and dissatisfied with democracy. The Pew Research Center, for example, has found that by the year 2050, many expect the economy will be weaker, healthcare will become less affordable, the environment will be in worse condition, our political divisions will be more pronounced, and the U.S. role in the world will diminish. The 2020 Global Satisfaction with Democracy report, published by the Centre for [End Page 193] the Future of Democracy at Cambridge University, has documented a dramatic increase in Americans’ dissatisfaction with democracy from the 1990s to the present day. This is the context that made Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral victory possible. During his administration, U.S. democratic norms and institutions faced their most significant challenges in decades.