Elite Donors and Democratic Resistance: The Case of the United States

• In Event: Does Civil Society Replicate Political Inequality?

Abstract

Civil society serves many purposes in liberal democracies, including as a space for learning and practicing the skills of good citizenship and organizing interests to press concerns before government. Amid democratic backsliding, civil society might play another role: as a forum for resistance. This paper exams the role of one key segment of civil society – philanthropy – in shoring up democratic norms and institutions in the United States. Using the 2016 presidential election as a natural experiment, I ask: What did donors do as threats to norms and institutions accumulated? Did they rethink their roles as democratic actors and strike out in new directions? Did they double down on existing commitments? Or did they do nothing different at all? What considerations guided their thinking on these questions? The paper is based on a “large n” analysis of foundation grants, as well as interviews with dozens of prominent billionaire donors and leaders of very wealthy foundations.

Author

• Kristin Goss, Duke University