Almost two years ago, Donald Trump won a second term. Critics accuse him of waging an unprecedented attack on democracy. Some experts are very worried about this. Others, however, are appeasing and are of the opinion that the guard rails to protect the liberal system have “largely” held.
Donald Trump is different. The 47th President of the USA rules with a claim to power that none of his predecessors had. This makes some Americans fear for democracy in the country.
The country is in "free fall" and she doesn't know when it will hit, says Jill Lepore, for example. She is a professor of American history at Harvard University. She won the Pulitzer Prize this year for her book “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution.”
The current development is without precedent, argues Lepore in an interview with Bloomberg: "The kind of power that this administration has usurped and exercised over Congress, the Supreme Court, the states, the American people, citizens, immigrants and foreigners alike is unprecedented." There have been such things in the history of other nations, but not in the history of the United States.
Executive orders, threats, lawsuits
Trump governs primarily with the help of executive orders. He sends the judiciary after his opponents, the FBI uses lie detectors to test the loyalty of agents to the boss, and media companies have billions in lawsuits from the president on their hands. Television channels are threatened with license revocation, and the administration ignores hundreds of court orders, especially when it comes to implementing migration law regulations and laws. The government is forcing law firms to their knees and attacking the independence of universities.
This may no longer be just an ordinary conservative government program, but it may stand outside the country's liberal democratic order.
Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist at Stanford University, described himself in a BBC interview as "quite concerned" about developments since Trump's second inauguration in January last year: "In the history of the United States we have never seen such an attack on American democracy, except perhaps during the Civil War."
From the scientist's perspective, the events of January 6, 2021, when an armed mob stormed the Capitol, still have an impact. At the time, Trump refused to acknowledge his election defeat and tried to overturn the result of the vote. Fukuyama says something like this is “very bad” for a democracy. Nobody expected that a politician would not accept a “democratic verdict” from voters.
The end of democracies - a gradual process
Democracies do not end suddenly, from one day to the next. Rather, it is a process that experts often describe as a slide or a relapse. There has long been an entry on Wikipedia about this development in America with the title “Democratic backsliding in the United States”.
Several research projects in America have already looked into this and have come to similar results. Accordingly, the USA has not yet become a complete autocracy under Trump. Because there are still elections, opposition parties, courts, federalism, a vibrant civil society and independent media. But experts largely agree that democracy in the USA has weakened.
The V-Dem Institute no longer classifies the USA as a “liberal democracy”. At Freedom House, the country slips from 84th to 81st place on a scale of 0 to 100. It is rare for a country that is considered "free" to fall so low so quickly, explains Freedom House. The Century Foundation states: “Democracy is collapsing under Trump.” The US government has become authoritarian in its intentions and actions.
Declining approval ratings for Trump
Shortly before the midterm elections on November 3rd, approval of Trump and his administration is steadily declining. Practically every new representative opinion poll always shows new lows. However, whether this means that more and more Americans are now rejecting the president's authoritarian government policy is another question.
In 2021, a study by the business intelligence company Morning Consult found that one in four of the American population leans towards right-wing authoritarianism. That is a far larger proportion than can be found in other Western countries. The majority of these people probably support Trump and have found a political home and a vehicle in his MAGA movement and the Republican Party.
“Alarmistic and exaggerated”
There is a controversial debate among scientists about the state of democracy in the USA. Grant Reeher doesn't think the situation is nearly as bleak as Jill Lepore and Francis Fukuyama. Reeher is a political scientist at Syracuse University.
He expressly states that he takes the concerns of his colleagues seriously. And he is also worried about the course that the USA has taken under Trump. But to claim that the country has already lost a significant part of its democracy is "alarmist and exaggerated."
From Reeher's point of view, the guardrails of the constitution to protect the free system have held up "quite well": "The institutions that we have set up to prevent an individual or a single institution from seizing all power are working." The Trump administration has so far accepted all rulings by the Supreme Court.
Are there complaints about alleged election fraud?
The next stress test for America's democracy comes with the midterm elections. It is not certain that Trump will accept all election results. Instead, Republicans could go to court in numerous states alleging voter fraud. Republican election officials could refuse to recognize and certify Democrats' victory. Weeks of court proceedings would result.
This could culminate on January 3, 2027, when the newly elected House of Representatives - presumably with a majority of Democratic representatives - is sworn in in Washington: The Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, could simply refuse to swear in Democratic representatives.
In The New Republic magazine, retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig lays out this scenario in detail and warns that a real constitutional crisis is looming. Luttig, who was considered arch-conservative during his active time and at the same time enjoyed an excellent reputation among lawyers, became a sharp critic of President Trump after the storm on the Capitol in January 2021. In his essay, he writes that on January 3rd, "Trump and his MAGA Republicans could bury our democracy once and for all." “The final battle” for America’s democracy is imminent.
