The End of Democratic Consolidation in the US

The US has ceased to be a consolidated democracy, Andreas Schedler, lead researcher of our De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup and Alexander Bor, our Post-doctoral Fellow write in the latest DI Working Paper based on the results of their online survey "Polarization and Democratic Trust in the U.S."

By a common phrase, democracy is consolidated when it has become “the only game in town,” where all relevant actors play by the democratic rules and know everyone else does so as well, they write. In the United States of America, decades of escalating polarization culminating in the 6 January 2021 assault on the Capitol have eroded such mutual trust in the democratic reliability of politicians, officials, and citizens. We have little systematic knowledge, though, about the depth of basic democratic distrust among US citizens.

The authors conducted the online survey “Polarization and Democratic Trust in the U.S.” to start exploring how American citizens perceive the democratic commitments of politicians from both sides of the political divide. Their results suggest that the US has ceased to be a consolidated democracy. Rather than seeing their political adversaries as trustworthy democrats, substantive majorities perceive them as hypocritical opportunists who are willing to sacrifice the democratic game for partisan advantage.