Mettler and Lieberman, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Author Meets Critics: Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman, FOUR THREATS: THE RECURRING CRISES OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (St. Martin's, 2020)

Many people assume that democracy must be safe in the United States, given the nation’s long history, enduring Constitution, system of government, and progress toward more a more inclusive democracy. Yet our historical analysis of five periods reveals that American democracy has been quite fragile, again and again. The United States has undergone numerous crises, when democracy—in whatever form existed then—risked severe deterioration. It has been a tumultuous history; the past half century has been relatively serene by comparison. Over and over again, the nation risked secession and civil war and experienced considerable violence and threats to rights. All four characteristics of democracy were threatened, repeatedly: free and fair elections, rule of law, legitimacy of the opposition, and integrity of rights. On occasion, backsliding occurred, some of it with long-enduring consequences.

Four threats have been known to endanger democracy: polarization, conflict over membership & status/formative rifts, rising economic inequality, executive aggrandizement. The four have waxed and waned throughout our history and combined in different ways. When three threats converged, which happened on two occasions, it led first to secession and a bloody civil war, and later in the 1890s, to disenfranchisement of 4 million African Americans, for a half century to come. Today for the first time ever, we face the convergence of all four threats at once. This means that we live in precarious times, when democracy is genuinely at risk.

The United States’ prior episodes of democracy under siege did not typically end well or heroically; with the exception of Watergate, they do not offer us positive lessons for today. Time and again, threats were managed or a settlement reached by reinforcing the racial hierarchy of society. (e.g. 1800 election, disenfranchisement in 1890s, how FDR kept domestic peace in the 1930s.) To extract ourselves from the crisis today, we need to find a new way forward, as a multiracial, multiethnic democracy.

The convergence of the four threats does not doom us to democratic deterioration: it is not predetermined and it does not happen automatically. Rather, it depends on political choices, made by public officials and by citizens. In the United States today, preserving and revitalizing democracy needs to be our top priority. Despite the deep partisan divide, Americans do share democratic values; we need to reaffirm what we share and protect it.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Chair

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

Presenters

• E.J. Dionne Brookings Institution

• Archon Fung Harvard University

• Anna M. Grzymala-Busse Stanford University

• Margaret Weir Brown University

• Daniel F. Ziblatt Harvard University

• Suzanne Mettler Cornell University

• Robert C. Lieberman Johns Hopkins University