Is The USA STILL A Democracy? | 250 Years Of American Independence

Summary

History Uncensored – “Is The USA STILL A Democracy? | 250 Years Of American Independence”

Podcast by Wake Up Productions
Host: Bianca Nobilo
Air Date: July 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special episode marking 250 years of American independence, host Bianca Nobilo digs into one of the most provocative contemporary questions: Is America still a democracy? Through a deeply historical and critical lens, Nobilo examines the origins, myth, reality, and evolution of American democracy, focusing on how definitions of democracy have shifted, and how the U.S. now may exemplify a form of “competitive authoritarianism.” Political scientist Lucan Way provides expert commentary, exploring not only the fragility of American democracy but also its persistent myths, unique vulnerabilities, and the realities of contemporary American political life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Democracy—What Does It Mean Today?

(00:31–03:47)

• Nobilo frames the episode with the provocative question: Is America still a democracy? She notes America's founding myths and the longstanding reality of limited suffrage and exclusion.
• Lucan Way defines modern democracy:
  • “The way we understand democracy right now is basically two main components. One is a free and fair election in which all adults can run for office and can vote. The second dimension is systematic protection of civil liberties… right to organize, right to criticize the government without facing any kind of retribution.” (03:20–03:31)
• America’s timeline as a true democracy is positioned as much more recent than myth suggests, with genuine universal suffrage and protection of civil rights only solidifying post–Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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2. The Myth & Reality of “The World’s Oldest Democracy”

(03:47–06:41)

• Way rebuts the common claim that America is a 250-year-old continuous democracy:
  • “The common myth is that the United States is the world’s oldest democracy… That is simply incorrect by any sort of normal standard definition… I would only sort of put America as being democratic beginning in 1965, which was the Voting Rights Act, which gave African Americans full suffrage.” (05:43–06:21)
• America is thus a “relatively young democracy… about 50 plus years.” (06:29–06:31)
• Deeply undemocratic elements (slavery, exclusion of women, Native Americans) persisted for generations.

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3. Democracy’s Fragility: Complacency vs. Vigilance

(06:41–09:09)

• Discussion: Is democracy in the U.S. more fragile because it’s relatively “young”?
• Way:
  • “What makes it fragile is… complacency, the assumption that democracy is somehow core to who we are.” (07:11–07:21)
  • Contrasts with South Korea’s “intense vigilance” post-authoritarianism, whereas in America: “We sort of assume that democracy is somehow part of our genetic code… it makes you complacent and willing to sort of put up with people who are openly authoritarian.” (07:21–07:58)
• Memorable analogy: “If you believe… democracy is going to survive regardless, well, why not get some… economic benefit out of this relationship?” (08:45–08:54)

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4. Is This Moment So Different From America’s Past?

(09:09–13:29)

• Nobilo raises past undemocratic moments: Jim Crow, McCarthyism, etc.
• Way:
  • Emergence of authoritarianism not new in the long view, “but in the context of the last 50 years, it is quite striking.” (10:07–10:11)
  • Trump compared to Nixon: both pushed informal boundaries, weaponized the state, but “Nixon faced much more resistance from institutions… When Nixon told [Treasury Secretary] Shultz to go after his enemies with the IRS, Shultz quietly said no.” (11:33–11:51)
  • Now, “a Republican party… is completely under the thumb of Trump, willing to put up with literally whatever Trump says… Trump is much more free to do whatever he wants in a way that Nixon wasn’t.” (13:01–13:25)

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5. Media in Democracy—From Watchdog to Weak Link

(13:29–15:46)

• Nobilo: Even with the First Amendment, US governments have tried to repress criticism (e.g., Alien Sedition Acts).
• Way:
  • Explosion of social media gives everyone a voice, but “the vast majority of it is opinions. And what’s missing… is the sort of reporting based on verified facts.” (15:19–15:37)
  • Old media’s market strength gave autonomy; now, weakened professional journalism makes the system more vulnerable.

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6. “Competitive Authoritarianism”—Modern Authoritarian Threats

(15:46–18:43)

• Way outlines “competitive authoritarianism,” a concept coined with Stephen Levitsky:
  • “Basically, competitive authoritarian regimes exist when, on the one hand, there is… authoritarian abuse… but at the same time, you also have genuinely competitive elections… there’s a highly uneven playing field.” (16:53–17:38)
• The US now exemplifies this model: significant abuses co-exist with real elections, but “that doesn’t sort of magically wipe away all those other abuses.” (18:32–18:39)
• The presence of elections alone is not proof of true democracy.

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7. American Exceptionalism and Global Patterns

(19:04–20:46)

• Historical perspective: Competitive authoritarianism emerged globally after the end of the Cold War, especially in societies with weak democratic norms.
• Way: Points to Ukraine, Serbia, early post-Soviet Russia, and modern Turkey as earlier or parallel cases.

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8. What Enabled America’s Democratic Backslide?

(21:16–23:13)

• Factors contributing to the rise of competitive authoritarianism:
  • Weakening political parties and media
  • Decline of elite gatekeepers (“in the past, parties would have kept ‘Trump-like’ figures out.”)
  • Social fears, racism, backlash to change as drivers of support for outsized, norm-breaking leaders

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9. The Cost of Dissent and Corruption

(23:13–25:47)

• Way addresses critics who argue democracy still exists because elections, courts, and media persist:
  • True, but the costs for those targeted by the regime are very real:
    • “People like James Comey, Letitia James… have had to worry about family, spend their life savings for lawyers… the process is the punishment in the United States.” (24:04–24:58)
  • Trump has also been able to operate without traditional constraints, leading to “massive levels of corruption… we’re only going to discover later on”—including foreign policy (e.g. war with Iran) actions that would have faced barriers in earlier eras.

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10. Everyday Effects for Americans

(25:47–27:06)

• Nobilo: Ordinary citizens may not feel affected.
• Way:
  • Effects are increasingly visible—tariffs and wars managed by executive fiat lead to inflation and price spikes.
  • “There is a real kind of visible cost which… is actually ultimately good for American democracy. Because… in a lot of cases, it doesn’t necessarily affect most people.” (27:04–27:06)

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11. Is Democratic Decline Inevitable? Signs of Resilience

(27:14–29:47)

• Democracy doesn’t “naturally” ebb and flow, but resilience is built by:
  • High levels of economic development and robust capitalist systems, which buffer against authoritarian consolidation.
  • US civil society is wealthy and organized enough that
    “it’s really, I wouldn’t say impossible, but very hard to consolidate authoritarian rule.” (29:42–29:47)
  • Market and legal sector complexity allows for continued resistance and the formation of new support structures.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “America only became a full mass democracy barely 60 years ago.”
  (Host, 00:31–02:17)

• “In a democracy, people are able to engage in all sorts of peaceful opposition activity and not have to worry that it will have some kind of impact on their career or livelihood.”
  (Way, 02:19–02:52)

• “The process is the punishment in the United States.”
  (Way, 24:54–24:58)

• “We sort of assume that democracy is somehow part of our genetic code… it makes you complacent and willing to sort of put up with people who are openly authoritarian.”
  (Way, 07:21–07:58)

• “What’s missing to a significant extent is the sort of reporting based on verified facts.”
  (Way, 15:37–15:46)

• “Competitive authoritarianism… reflects the combination of these two elements of competitive elections and authoritarian abuse.”
  (Way, 18:39–18:43)

• “Society in the United States is sufficiently well resourced that… it’s really… very hard to consolidate authoritarian rule.”
  (Way, 29:42–29:47)

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Timed Segment Highlights

• 00:31 — Is America still a democracy? Early exclusions from suffrage.
• 03:10 — Modern definition: universal suffrage, civil liberties.
• 06:21 — “America as a true democracy starts in 1965.”
• 07:13 — Complacency as a unique American danger.
• 11:33–12:19 — Nixon vs. Trump: institutional resistance then, lack thereof now.
• 13:05 — Media fragmentation weakens democracy.
• 16:53 — “Competitive authoritarianism” defined.
• 24:54 — “The process is the punishment.”
• 27:04 — Ordinary Americans may now feel real costs.
• 29:42 — Robust civil society as a democratic bulwark.

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Conclusion

This episode challenges foundational American myths, highlighting the nation’s brief period as a full democracy and the dangerous complacency that may be undermining it today. Through the lens of comparative politics and history, Bianca Nobilo and Lucan Way illuminate both the vulnerabilities and the enduring strengths of American democracy—ultimately suggesting that while current trends are worrying, robust social and economic institutions may provide crucial resistance to full democratic collapse.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

is America still a Democracy? Might sound like a crazy question Democracy is one of America's great national myths, born in rebellion against tyranny and destined to show the world how free people govern themselves. In 1787, the U.S. constitution created a republic with elected government, checks and balances and written rights. But voting was controlled by the states and largely restricted to white men, often property owning white men. Enslaved people had no rights. Women couldn't vote nationally, Native Americans were excluded. So when did America become a full Democracy? Not in 1776, not in 1787, not even fully in 1920 when women won the constitutional right to vote. It was the mid-1960s, especially after the Voting Rights act of 1965, when the federal government enforced voting rights for black Americans in the South. Which means America only became a full mass democracy barely 60 years ago. And what about today, two hundred and fifty years on from America's independence? Is the country really backsliding, like many experts in American democracy argue and international watchdogs that monitor democracy like Freedom House? Or is it actually behaving in a way that's entirely consistent with its past? One influential warning comes from Lucan Way, distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto. His argument is that democracies don't just die when tanks roll through the streets, parliaments are dissolved, or elections are cancelled. In the modern world, the warning signs can be quieter. So I asked him how would Americans know if they had lost their democracy?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

The United States simply we know if

we've lost our democracy if we have to think twice before we engage in sort of normal opposition activity. Criticize the government online. If you're a law firm, do you have to be concerned about representing someone who is opposed to the government? Is that going to undermine your business model and things like that? So in a democracy, people are able to engage in all sorts of peaceful opposition activity and not have to worry that it will have some kind of impact on their career or livelihood or the like.

[Podcast Host]

And before we begin to judge America by the yardstick of democracy at the 250th anniversary of its founding. We need to define what that means today because obviously it's a word applied to ancient Greece, to other periods in history that haven't included everyone. So what's your definition?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So basically, obviously, there were elements of democracy in ancient Greece, the founding of the American Republic. The way we understand democracy right now is basically two main components.

One is a free and fair election

in which all adults can run for office and can vote.

The second dimension is systematic protection of civil liberties.

In other words, the right to organize, the right to criticize the government without facing any kind of retribution. It's those two elements, free and fair elections and civil liberties, that represent the core of modern representative democracy.

[Podcast Host]

So the American founders inherited their democratic ideas and ideals from thinkers from the United Kingdom, from the ancient world. In 1787, when they gathered to sign the Constitution in Philadelphia, what exactly were they trying to create?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Well, first of all, they were trying

to create a system that was separate from British control, but that also gave representation to a very kind of ultimately a very small percentage of the population that then lived on what was called the United States. This was this excluded, obviously, all African Americans. It excluded women.

And it was basically, I think, crudely put.

It's what I've sometimes called the kind of white democracy in the sense that even the great thinkers like John Stuart Mill really thought of democracy as something that was for the quote, unquote, civilized right, that, you know, Native Americans or certainly Africans, they didn't have the reason, the sophistication, the civilization to have democratic freedoms, that they had to be managed through much more coercive means.

And that was really core to the

original American conception of democracy.

[Podcast Host]

I find that so interesting because I'm completely fascinated by national myths and the extent to which they're based on anything truly real and then how they're employed today. And I think when a lot of people think about America or Americans talk about America, I'm not sure that that is the kind of democracy that they think America stood for, because in actual fact, it took a very long time for America to approach anything resembling a full mass democracy. Right?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Absolutely. So, I mean, so the common myth

is that the United States is the world's oldest democracy, 250 years old, and that we've been in democracy for over 200 years.

That is simply incorrect by any sort

of normal standard definition.

If you sort of take a look back at American history, it's filled with

huge elements of authoritarianism, above all slavery. And of course, after slavery, even after the Civil War and slavery was abolished, you had the system of Jim Crow.

And in many ways America is quite relatively young democracy. I would only sort of put America

as being Democratic beginning in 1965, which was the Voting Rights act, which gave African Americans full suffrage.

So it's really, you know, for about,

you know, 50 plus years that America has really been what political scientists by any kind of standard definition would call a democracy.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think that means the youth of it? The fact that it isn't this 200 plus year political experiment that I think could naturally make people feel a bit more complacent, like this is the natural state of affairs. It's always going to be this way. The fact that America has only been a full democracy for about 50 or 60 years, does that make it more fragile than people think it is?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Well, actually, I think it's youth doesn't make it fragile.

What makes it fragile is something other

you just mentioned, which is the complacency, the assumption that democracy is somehow core to who we are.

Right. Which is actually quite different from other

countries, which I've done investigations and I just spent a month or several weeks in South Korea, which has a very robust democracy.

But part of what keeps South Korean democracy robust is their intense vigilance. They see the threat of authoritarianism everywhere, whereas the United States is the exact opposite. We sort of assume that democracy is somehow part of our genetic code. And, and if you believe that, well, there's nothing you can do that will undermine it. And so it makes you complacent and willing to sort of put up with

people who are openly authoritarian.

[Podcast Host]

It's weird that, because you'd think if people identify with democracy being part of the genetic code, it would make them more allergic to signs that undemocratic things were happening. But that doesn't seem to be the case, right?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

No, I think it's the opposite. Because if you don't have to worry about it, then let's say you're a Jeff Bezos and you have this openly

authoritarian Trump, who he himself to pick on him for a second, understood full

well that this was a sort of

toxic figure for America, if you think.

But at the same time, by making

deals with him, he benefits his businesses and the like.

And if he thinks that, you know, the American democracy is going to survive regardless, well, why not get some, you

know, get some economic benefit out of this relationship?

You know, what's the cost? Right. There's really nothing at stake. But if you believe, as I do in South Korea, that You know that democracy is very much a possibility all the time, well, then you're much more,

much less willing to make those kinds of compromises.

[Podcast Host]

So if we're measuring American democracy by the cost of opposition. So that's one of the main things I get from your work and from that description you just gave. When we look at American history, as you've just mentioned, we have Jim Crow laws, slavery, red scares, McCarthyism, lots of deeply undemocratic moments throughout American history. So in that way, is this current moment actually that different from the long view of American history?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So, you know, I.

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[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

I think certainly from the, you know,

from the long view, the emergence of authoritarianism by itself is not all that surprising.

But I think in the context of

the last 50 years, it is quite striking.

It's true that until 1965, for a

variety of reasons, mainly having to do with the restrictions on African American suffrage and as well as the behavior of the FBI and the Red Scare and the like, America was not a democracy.

But for the past, like, 50 years, and especially post Watergate, there's been. America has really been a full democracy. And I think it's. This is where I sort of differ

with some of the Marxists who say,

well, Trump is the same as it's

always been in sort of capitalism and inequality. And so what's the big deal, Essentially, is their point.

I think it's actually a huge shift. I mean, take someone like Nixon, right, who's probably the closest equivalent to Trump

in terms of his willingness to sort of violate informal norms and try to. In his efforts to weaponize the state.

And so I think as a person, Trump and Nixon are probably roughly equivalent. The difference was is that when Nixon tried to do it, he faced much more resistance from institutions on a number of levels. First of all, Nixon is famous for the enemy's list. He created his enemies. Listen, what people don't realize is he was ever actually able to do much with this list because the Treasury Secretary, George Shultz at the time, who later

became very famous Secretary of State, when

Nixon told him to sort of go after his enemies with the irs, Shultz sort of quietly said no. He just refused. And so, interestingly, this is quite interesting,

relevant to what's going on right now

is despite this very famous enemies list of Nixon, which had hundreds of names. There was not a single Department of Justice indictment or serious investigation of any of these people. Nixon faced much more resistance, and obviously, most famously, he faced resistance from within the Republican Party, which nearly led to his impeachment, which is why he ultimately

resigned, because he knew that the Senate would convict him for his actions surrounding Watergate. This is a totally different environment on a number of levels right now. First of all, on a broad sort

of structural level, because of the Internet and such, mass media is much weaker. Of course, Nixon, as everybody knows, you had the Washington Post and the New York Times, which actively investigated Nixon and really provided a check on his power. Now, we have, for a variety of

reasons, a media environment ecosystem, which is

just very weak and lacks autonomy, is

much more vulnerable to attack.

Second, we have a Republican Party, which, in contrast to the Republican Party in the Nixon era, is now completely under

the thumb of Trump, willing to put

up with literally whatever Trump says. And as a result, Trump is much

more free to do whatever he wants in a way that Nixon wasn't.

[Podcast Host]

You started talking about the media. Obviously, that is a key component in democracy. You need a free press to be able to have freedom of expression, hold a government and power to account. And right from the very beginning in America, I think it's so fascinating, you have the First Amendment, but then you have the Alien Sedition Acts in the late 1700s, which basically say, we don't want you criticizing the government, actually. And we see similar impulses from Trump and, of course, many other presidents. But what you said about how the media has actually weakened the ability to hold power to account in America is something I think many viewers would like to hear more about, because often, particularly younger people, when they think about the democratization of social media, they think, well, anyone can say anything in the west and criticize the government, so why has that made it weaker rather than stronger?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So I think it's weaker because anybody can.

Everybody has an opinion, but ultimately we want to know, you know, what the truth is and what the facts are.

And that takes money, right?

It takes professional journalists who are out

there interviewing people and fact checkers, right, who ensure that stuff that's printed is actually the case.

And in the old model, it worked

because media was highly profitable and so could rely on advertising.

And therefore, when people like Nixon or even John Adams in the, you know, in the 1800 election, as you kind of refer to, when they attacked the

press, the press was able to basically to rely on the market to kind

of fight back and to provide a source of autonomy that simply doesn't exist today.

And so at some level, I think you're right that you might not notice it because there's so much kind of quote, unquote, media out there. Right. But the vast majority of it is opinions. And what's missing

to a significant extent is the sort of reporting based on verified facts.

[Podcast Host]

So you talk about how modern authoritarianism doesn't necessarily look the way that people would expect it to look. We're not saying that there need to be tanks rolling through the streets and mass lockups of political prisoners and that that makes it harder to detect. Tell me about your concept of competitive authoritarianism and what that can look like.

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Right. So your grandparents, authoritarianism, I guess. Right.

Exist.

[Podcast Host]

And actually my grandparents, because my grandparents are from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. So

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

even more so for you.

Right. Basically were systems that had no multiparty

elections after the World War II. There were about roughly 85, 90% of authoritarian regimes, had no national elections whatsoever. Today, over two thirds of authoritarian regimes have some form of multiparty election. Among these regimes is something that my co author Stephen Levitsky and I coined, which is competitive authoritarianism.

Basically, competitive authoritarian regimes exist when, on the one hand, there is sort of serious, you know, authoritarian abuse.

You have the police harassing opposition, they're investigating, you know, engaging in sort of, you know, some kind of vote manipulation. They're harassing the media, they're sort of, you know, sometimes, you know, arresting journalists.

But at the same time, you also have genuinely competitive elections and in which opposition is allowed to run and in which there's a highly uneven playing field in favor of whoever is in power, but the opposition has some chance of winning. This is very much what we have

in the United States, where you have

really systematic abuse that we saw in

the form of ice, most spectacularly in the form of ICE in Minnesota

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and

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

other abuse of law firms and the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

But at the same time, you obviously

have very competitive elections.

But the fact that I think what people kind of are confused about is that, well, you have these elections, so why is this democracy? Right? And I think that's. That is misleading because, you know, it may be, which I think is actually

fairly likely, that the Democrats, for example, we have midterms coming up in 2026, that the Democratic Party will do very well in those midterms and perhaps take control of the lower House, House of

Representatives, but that won't, you know, that

will be sort of good for democracy

by the way, I think that's really

positive phenomenon in terms of democracy.

But that doesn't sort of magically wipe

away all those other abuses,

those peaceful

protesters who were killed by ICE and stuff. So having competitive elections does not sort of mean that there isn't serious forms of authoritarian abuse. And that's why I think the term competitive authoritarianism is important, because it reflects the combination of these two elements of competitive elections and authoritarian abuse.

[Podcast Host]

And does that idea apply just to America today, or are there other countries now or at other times in their history that you can see real similarities emerging between what's happening in America and what happened there?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So competitive authoritarianism really emerged after the Cold War ended when you had, you

know, the Soviet Union collapsed, you had

the spread of, you know, multiparty elections everywhere and basically everywhere in the world, throughout Africa, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Asia.

But it spread to places which the kind of. The kind of societal basis of democracy, relatively weak. So what you had is like this, what we called sort of the original form of competitive authoritarianism existed in places

like Ukraine or Serbia or Hungary, where

you had sort of multiparty elections, but in which, you know, abuse persisted.

And you had this sort of combination of what I'm talking about. You know, in Russia in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, you had all sorts

of authoritarian abuse, but you still had elections in which the incumbent had to

sweat on election night. You know, that's the. We have a sweat index.

How much do they, you know, right

now, you know, Russia is not a competitive authoritarian regime. It's a fully authoritarian regime. Putin doesn't have to sweat on election night. He knows he's going to win. That wasn't the case in the 1990s and the like. So this, you know, existed in a number of places today in Turkey

until

very recently in Hungary as well.

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[Podcast Host]

What has caused competitive authoritarianism to emerge in America? Because a lot of political scientists point to Trump. But. But are there other forces that contributed to this Prior to him, whether it was weak parties, an expansion of executive power, media fragmentation, like you were saying.

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So there are basically two ways of

thinking about this question, which is obviously very important. The first has to do with Trump's rise. And I think there's a great deal of disagreement about that. You know, why was someone like Trump, you know, able to sort of go as far as he was? I think, you know, there's a kind of. Some people think it had to do with economic inequality. Other people think, which is something I think is more the case that it had to do with sort of fears of social change, sort of kind of some forms of racism. So that was one thing.

It was also the fact that you

had such an outsider was a function of the fact that sort of some of the old forms of establishment parties had broken down. The parties themselves became weaker in part because of the Internet and the breakdown of mainstream media.

There were fewer basic gatekeepers that historically

would have kept someone like Trump out of power. We had Trump, like, figures, ford in the 20s, and Lindenberg and others who basically were sort of Trump, like, admitted the same kind of quasi fascist appeals of Trump, but who, because of the strength of party institutions, the parties never sort of let them in and allowed them to take over the party the way that Trump was able to take over the Republican Party.

So I think that's sort of the

main reason why I think you have this threat emerge.

[Podcast Host]

Now, of course, the counterargument would be defenders of President Trump would say, well, we still have elections in America. Democrats can still win. The media criticizes Trump every single day. Courts still exist. What is the strongest argument against that, in your view? To say, well, that might be the case, but.

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Right. So I think that what that undermines is the real cost. I mean, it's true.

I think that, and thankfully, knock on wood, that there remains a robust Democratic opposition in the United States.

But that doesn't mean that what he's done has not been enormously costly.

And let's start with the cost of those targeted. People like James Comey, Letitia James, who have faced completely sort of politicized investigations.

Now, on one side, this isn't Russia. It's unlikely that they will end up

in jail the way Alexei Navalny did under Putin recently.

But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they don't suffer enormous costs. Someone like Letitia James has been, because

of these indictments, has had to worry about her family.

She's been tailed. Many of these people have to spend their life savings to pay for lawyers. You know, they have to have, you

know, they have enormous anxiety about, you

know, you know, whether they're going to be able to get a job after they've been targeted. And so, as someone, I think, said, someone said in the United States, the process is the punishment in the United States. Right. It's the pro. You know, being being investigated is enormously costly for people, even if you don't

end up being in jail.

So that's one thing. The second thing is that I think is even more obvious right now is that sort of the unconstrained nature of Trump's power has led to massive levels of corruption that I think we're only going to discover later on. I mean, this is a president who's

literally been able to earn billions of dollars and sort of take money from the state.

And also you have these disastrous foreign policy escapades, as you saw with Iran. That's really a function of the fact that Trump no longer operates with any constraints. So the war in Iran simply would not have happened in an older era

where there are more constraints on the president's power.

[Podcast Host]

And if this is the case that America is in this new era of competitive authoritarianism and there's corruption at the top, that exists. And the cost is extremely high for criticizing the government in terms of business deals, perhaps universities are being impacted. What about most Americans day to day? Because a lot of Americans might think, well, I elected Trump, I like his policies. I want him to be able to pursue them largely unfettered so that we can get stuff done and lawsuits. Corruption doesn't really affect me. How does the day to day American recognize these changes in their life?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

Well, I think they do notice it

in the form of inflation. I think under the previous system, the types of tariffs that Trump put in place.

The reason why tariffs.

He's able to put tariffs in place is that he ignored Congress. And as a result, these tariffs, because unconstrained policy, there's inflation.

So that is very real.

And also the war and around has caused a spike in energy prices.

So I think there actually is, in this case, which is not true in all other cases, there is a real kind of visible cost which I think

is actually ultimately good for American democracy.

Because the sort of impulse behind your question is absolutely correct, that in a lot of cases it doesn't necessarily affect most people.

[Podcast Host]

It's escaped my mind right now who said this, but it's that history zigzags in terms of progress. Do we tend to see the same with democracy? Would you Expect natural ebbs and flows, and people recognize, oh, actually, we want that back. We're going to push for it again, we're going to fight for it. And if so, how does one do that?

[Interviewee - Political Scientist]

So I don't actually see any kind

of natural, I don't think there's, you know, kind of any natural evolution.

I do think, you know, a few things.

One, I do think that, as my other research has shown, that high levels of economic development, capitalist development, does sort of protect societies against authoritarianism, that there's a very strong relationship between how wealthy and capitalist the country is and how democratic it is. This is contrary what some people on the left argue, that capitalism is bad for democracy. I think overall, unbalanced is quite good for democracy.

So in a sense, what, what this means is that it's very hard in

a context like the United States for authoritarianism to succeed, because in Russia, when Putin comes to power, you don't have a dynamic private sector.

And so Putin jails the richest guy in the country and everybody else shuts up. This is simply not the case in the United States. There's a.

For example, this is research I've been doing recently. He targeted some of the law firms,

but the legal sector is very large, and many others responded, created their own law firms to defend those targeted by Trump. So as a result, thankfully, because of our robust market system, you have a situation in which even if Trump targets several law firms, there's enough wealth in

the, there's enough infrastructure out there that others are able to come and replace those who, for whatever reason, refuse to represent those targeted by Trump.

So I think, and also the wealth

in society means that there's money for

civil society, for sort of NGOs who

are also able to defend democracy.

So I think the good news is that while the United States has clearly descended into competitive authoritarianism, you know, society in the United States is sufficiently well resourced that it's really, I wouldn't say

impossible, but very hard to consolidate authoritarian rule.

[Podcast Host]

Who can we. Let's end on some good news. Thank you so much for joining me. It's the goal of this show to uncover the history behind today's headlines, those deeper patterns of power, geography, empire, and human nature that are shaping the world around us. So if you do want to understand not just what happened, but why it happened and what it tells us about what's likely to come next, you are in the right place. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. It makes a huge difference to the channel at this stage. And it also means. Hopefully, you'll see the world differently and everything will make a lot more sense. See you next time.