How Resilient is Democracy in America?
The election of President Donald Trump along with Trump’s adoption of Elon Musk’s role is seriously testing the resilience of American democratic processes. Most media coverage has focused on the scattergun of policy initiatives out of the Trump administration, such as on immigration, but some have focused on the erosion of democratic checks and balances that could undermine pluralist democratic accountability and power in the US. It is understandable that in the first days of the Trump administration, executive orders were flowing so fast and furiously that many in the opposition were caught like deer in the headlights.
However, there are some signs of pluralist accountability emerging. A federal judge in the US, Judge Carl Nichols, supported a lawsuit filed by two unions in issuing a ‘limited temporary restraining order’ that stopped the Trump administration from putting thousands of workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave.[1] Another federal judge blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) from accessing personal financial data of Americans held in Treasury Department records, as this present’s a clear risk to personal privacy of the public, a right derived from early amendments of the US Constitution.
Arguably, stripping staff and funding from USAID is a blow to democratic processes on its own, as the agency supports independent journalism across the world (Weaver and Dunai 2025). For example, while Russia has jettisoned independent news outlets since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while at the same time censoring state-controlled media, some independent outlets from Russia survived through support of USAID to provide some accountability of the Putin regime. In diminishing USAID, Trump and Musk are undercutting media that Putin’s regime and other autocratic regimes cannot but would like to control.
These are just current examples of Trump’s decisions that threaten democratic processes. I hope to follow this over the coming months or years. Why is it important?
Liberal democratic regimes of the West have never conformed to romantic, idealistic notions of democracy. Influence is unequally distributed, much in the spirit of Michel’s ‘Iron Law of Oligarchy’ (Michels 1962). Even democratic institutions, such as political parties, and legislatures, tend to be controlled by a few. Rather than rely on the democratization of influence, modern democracies need to rely on the ability of checks and balances across separate institutions and estates – that is, on pluralistic forms of accountability.
For example, estate theory has developed over centuries to argue that there are distinct ‘estates’ based on different sources of power: the clergy (now public intellectuals), aristocrats (now economic and business elites, like Musk), the commons (government, such as the President), and, later, the Fourth Estate of the press, and, most recently, the Fifth Estate, of ordinary networked individuals, empowered online (Dutton 2023).
This is a simple theory of modern notions of pluralism with many variations, such as the separation of powers in the US, based on Montesquieu’s notion of the three powers. The separation of powers and broader forms of separate estates break down when they are not independent, such as with a state-controlled press, or an alliance of government and business elites. But the separation of powers, and the independence of the estates are the safeguards of democracy as they force centers of power to consult and persuade others on the merits of their policies rather than to impose them.
As Richard Neustadt (1960) argued, the practical and rightful power of the US President in a democratic system is limited to the President’s power to persuade. In due course, if the Trump administration continues to pursue efforts to impose its policies on the nation and the world, other estates and separate powers within government will increasingly rise to hold the Presidency accountable. The resilience of American democratic institutions will depend on the independence of the three branches of the government and the five estates. The next four years will demonstrate whether democracy in the US is truly resilient in the face of threats to pluralist governance.
References
Dutton, W. H. (2023), The Fifth Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
Michels, R. (1962), Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchal Tendences of Modern Democracies. New York: The Free Press.
Neustadt, R. E. (1960), Presidential Power. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Weaver, C., and Dunai, M. (2025), ‘Strongmen celebrate as Trump aid freeze threatens to silence free media’, Financial Times, 8/9 Februrary: 6.
Notes
[1] The order remains until 15 February. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdd9p8g405no
Which estate is home to the unelected bureaucrats frequently called the deep state.
Maybe there should be an ‘estate of Trump’s imagination’. Seriously, I don’t know who they are, but every sector from foreign affairs to education to Trump’s Whitehouse tends to have a small set of individuals who are most involved and informed and influential. That is akin to Michels’ iron law of oligarchy. That is why we need checks and balances and other pluralistic means of accountability rather than any concentration of power – even in an elected official.
Nancy, thanks for your question. Unelected bureaucrats help translate the words and decisions of elected officials into actions, as well as being critical to advising elected officials, who often lack expertise on most initiatives within governments at all levels. So they are part of the commons which can be broken down into many specific groups within government. Regarding the Deep State, I believe that conspiracy theorists could place anyone in collaboration to powerfully shape government as the Deep State. You might notice that these theorists seldom if ever concretely identify the ‘deep state’ as it is very much a conspiracy theory not an empirical observation.