The esteemed American scholar of politics and international relations, Francis Fukuyama, wrote an engaging opinion piece in The Financial Times (2/3 March 2024: 11), entitled ‘We can still reverse America’s political decay’. He begins with a litany of issues tied to the widespread perception that liberal democracies, like the US, are declining. In fact, he argues that the US is the most serious case in point. In line with his view, the Eurasia Group sees the US as ‘the world’s most divided and dysfunctional advanced industrial democracy’ (Kelly, 2024).
Unfortunately, I must agree with his view and his examples, which include the polarization of politics and how this is reflected in the role of the MAGA faction of the Republican Party. He notes its role in blocking a vote on support for Ukraine when a majority of members in the House and Senate support continued funding for Ukraine. Is the system broken?
However, like so many other political scientists and pundits, Fukuyama sees the remedy to be institutional reforms, such as changing the electoral system and campaign finance laws, for example. These institutional rules of the game existed before the decay of democracy in the US over the last two decades. In fact, the US with its checks and balances, and electoral system, was a global model for a democratic society, particularly in the aftermath of the second world war. Now we are becoming the democratic basket case. What’s changed?
One dramatic change has been the decline of political participation, such as in supporting and identifying with a political party. The late-political scientist Lester Milbrath (1965) developed what he called a latter of political participation, and joining a party or canvassing for a party were among the critical ways people participated in politics. Direct voting in primary elections has been an institutional change, but I could not see Americans retreating on this or many other institutional reforms to the party system.
However, in 2024, only 28 percent of Americans consider themselves to be a Republican, and only 30 percent consider themselves to be a Democrat. The largest party is the non-party, as 42 percent identify as an ‘independent’. And this is not an aberration. Over the last years, about forty percent of Americans classified themselves as Independents. In March 2023, essentially half (49%) of all voters said they were an independent, neither a Republican nor a Democrat. This statistic reflects a huge disaffection from the existing political parties. Parties are no longer engaging a sizeable proportion of the electorate.
And this disaffection extends to politics in general. The political system itself is failing to gain the public’s trust. It is not altogether recent. Trust in government has been declining since the 1960s in the US, but in 2023 only 8 percent of Republicans (and those leaning towards the Republican Party) trusted the federal government. That is alarming.
It is particularly alarming because while nearly half of the American electorate shuns political parties, parties are still playing a huge role in the selection of elected officials. So now, in the US, maybe half of the Republican Party (that is 50% of 28% of Americans) – that is just over a tenth (14%) of Americans are driving Trump’s lead in the primaries. If he wins the Republican nomination, which he seems on course to do, then he has a very real chance of being elected, based on the participation of such a small proportion of the American electorate. That is, the so-called MAGA Republicans are choosing the Republican nominee, even though they are a small fraction of the American public. This is why you can see his Republican contender, Nikki Haley, performing better in polls than Trump against President Biden, and why she is staying in the race. If a poll includes Independents, Nikki Haley is more likely to win, and independents are more supportive of Haley than are Republicans.
Who or what is to blame for this contortion of the American electorate? As I’ve said, I’m not certain of institutional change being the secret remedy. And it is not technology. My own research argues that it is not the internet or social media creating filter bubbles or echo chambers (Dutton et al 2017). The internet enhances the diversity of information available to voters, but it does not prevent voters from going to sites and people who confirm their preexisting biases, what is called a propensity of people to confirm rather than challenge their biases.
In decades past, one’s party identification tended to predict how people would vote in the US. Party identification provided a substitute for being an informed voter. It was a rational way for voters to reduce the cost of gaining knowledge of all the candidates. But the decline of parties has limited the role of party identification and perhaps enhanced the propensity of the public to doubt governments and parties. Instead, they can find a personality who is confirming their own fears and preferences – their existing biases, which might well underpin the rise of a politics of personalities as well as attraction of conspiracy theories, both of which are prominent among the MAGA Republicans. Conspiracy theories undermine parties and other institutions, and personalities provide the cues for how to vote.
You can see where I am heading. If the electorate holds a mirror up to the American political system, we are likely to see ourselves in that mirror. As Fukuyama writes: “Any democracy depends on a well-informed electorate that is supportive of the system.” We have seen that support for the system has fallen. But how well informed are we? Clearly, the ideal of the well-informed rational voter is only a romantic notion.
However, information is available and accessible to the public. The press is arguably declining as newspapers move toward a Fox News model of partisan news to attract their core audience. The internet and social media are still alive, despite more paywalls and partisan polarization. A Fifth Estate is enabling networked individuals to source their own information and even creating new forms of accountability, as in enabling me to criticize other pundits (Dutton 2023). In other words, the press and social media are providing basic information. For example, any American who cares about politics cannot help but know who is holding up funding for Ukraine, and that it is not about Ukraine per se, but playing ransom politics with the lives of Ukrainians to support Trump in the upcoming Presidential election. This is wrong, shameful.
It fuels claims about the decay of liberal democracy, despite institutions that have served liberal democratic nations well in decades past. Why? There are undoubtedly multiple explanations, but I imagine that if we ‘the people’ hold a mirror up to our political system we will see ourselves, and forever wonder: What have we done?
If I’m right, it may be time to focus on developing and promoting norms of politics – agreed rules of the road, a political etiquette – for us to follow. Rather than blame institutions or technologies or sinking to name calling or playing ransom politics, we need to consider ways to regain the civility, trust, participation, and willingness to compromise that were once hallmarks of an American civic culture that underpinned a stable, liberal democracy.
Postscript: Happy to discover an Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C), so my thoughts might be lining up with others. This centre appears to be a timely initiative.
References
William H. Dutton, (2023), The Fifth Estate. New York: Oxford University Press.
William H. Dutton, and Reisdorf, Bianca and Dubois, Elizabeth and Blank, Grant (2017), Search and Politics: The Uses and Impacts of Search in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United States (May 1, 2017). Quello Center Working Paper No. 5-1-17, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2960697 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2960697
Jemima Kelly (2024), ‘How to stop talking past each other’, Financial Times, 19 February: 20.
Lester W. Milbrath (1965), Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company)