Democracy In America Research Articles

Local Democracy in America: How Access, Competition, and Place Shape Turnout in Mayoral Races

The vast majority of the roughly half-million elected officials in the U.S. occupy local offices, however, research examining how they get elected to remains scant. The present study examines turnout in local elections, focusing on the effects of electoral rules, the competitiveness of local races, and whether and how place matters. Based on a sample of roughly 10,000 mayoral elections, this study represents the most systematic empirical analysis of local turnout to date. While we find substantial differences in turnout across rural towns, suburbs, and central cities, these differences are largely explained by electoral and contextual factors that are unevenly distributed across the local landscape. Though election timing is far and away the most important factor, uncontested mayoral races, local elections in states with restrictive voting laws as well as those mid-sized municipalities are associated with significantly lower turnout.

“Making America Gothic Again: Reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Today”

Few historical phenomena seem less gothic than democracy, an ideal that is virtually always figured in terms of rational enlightenment and transparency, all of which made the January 6th insurrection in Washington especially unsettling: an interruption, not just of the important business of the day but of the most fundamental progressivist narratives of western civilization. But there have been other, more ominous accounts of democracy that would have figured these events more as a culmination than an interruption of the larger historical forces at work. Writing in the aftermath of the insurrection, this paper returns to Alexis de Tocqueville’s warning in Democracy in America that however precious, democracy was not the antithesis of despotism but an historically specific set of conditions that lent themselves to new, more insidious forms of despotism which would “degrade men without tormenting them.” Confronted with the spectre of this unprecedented form of oppression, Tocqueville warned in classic gothic terms that its greatest threat may have been its obscurity: “the old words of despotism and of tyranny do not work. The thing is new, so I must try to define it since I cannot name it.” It was, by all measures, a classic gothic tale: democracy as the basis for rather than safeguard against unprecedented and even unnameable forms of tyranny. This paper asks how Tocqueville’s warning can better understand our own highly polarized political situation today.

The Most Iniquitous Lobby: The Committee for Constitutional Government and the Shaping of American Politics, 1937–1955

AbstractThis article examines the Committee for Constitutional Government, a conservative organization that spearheaded a novel form of mass-based mobilization and direct-mail propaganda to counter New Deal reforms from 1937 to the late 1950s. I argue that the members of the committee offered a supple and variegated response to New Deal liberalism, one with deep roots in the American past. Organizationally, the committee differed from other conservative groups of the period in the vastly greater reach of its propaganda, the small-donor financial base of its operations, and its extensive cultivation of a grassroots movement committed to right-wing reform. The committee was a critical political actor from 1937 to 1955, systematically shaping legislation and countering the trend toward social democracy in America. The ultimate result of its campaigns was to retard the growth of the administrative state and help formulate a cogent conservative critique of reformist liberalism.

Kathryn Lasky, “Women’s Voice Counts”

The American women did not await the 21st century to express their disapproval of matters of general interest. At every stage of human history, they always assert their presence as agents of social development and promoters of liberties; they prove their ability to serve humanity. In all parts of the world, despite the deliberate ideological restrictions inflicted upon them, they show integrity, decency, and honesty; their pragmatism, literacy, actions, and ideas serve as bow. Those qualities enable them to free themselves from all forms of ostracism and subjugation. Along the march of history, when defending their common cause, some of them sometimes lose their lives, others are incarcerated, but the survivors remain committed and hopeful. They continually fight to climb the social ladder. In socio-professional and political sectors where men are hostile, they demonstrate absolute resilience. A retrospective glance at the US history helps to revivify the American women’s involvement. Labeled as vulnerable and passive beings, they embark on a timeless struggle whose purpose is to restore their tarnished image and dignity. Better still, their awareness enables them to eradicate the prejudices, social inequalities, and barriers, which disadvantage and devalue them. Like other Western countries, the United States has a long tradition of marginalizing women. Its excluding policy is narrowly connected with patriarchal tradition; a practice, which emerges not only in the family sphere, but also on the political stage, where women are deprived of their suffrage. In such circumstances, they suffer from male domination with impunity. That burning social injustice is pictured by writers, such as Kathryn Lasky whose literary works pay tribute to the American suffragists for their boldness and great sense of duty in the construction of democracy in America. As a field par excellence for the symbolization of social facts, literature appears as a location where the American women’s bravery and ingenuity are realistically expressed. Therefore, the study of Laskian female characters’ trajectories through the textual prism is advantageous. For that purpose, the use of Derridean deconstruction as a methodological tool will be helpful. This will scrutinize the political scope of Laskian female characters’ struggle for suffrage through two axes: “A masculinized political system” and “women’s awareness and US democracy.”

Book Review: Wes Markofski, Review of Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America

Book Review: Wes Markofski, Review of <i>Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America</i>

Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America, written by Wes Markofski

Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America, written by Wes Markofski

Democracy in America: French perspectives on Andrew Jackson’s Government in the United States in the 1830s

RESUMO Michel Chevalier esteve nos Estados Unidos em viagem oficial, enviado pelo governo francês, no início da década de 1830, ali encontrando, assim como seu contemporâneo Alexis de Tocqueville, um quadro de intensos debates em torno do conceito de “democracia”, à época bastante mobilizado pelo então presidente Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). Embora exaltasse o “homem comum”, a “era de Jackson” era caracterizada pela expansão da escravidão nos Estados do Sul e no Oeste e por uma política violenta em relação aos indígenas. Essa “democracia” dos “homens brancos” inspirou a reflexão não somente acerca da política na república estadunidense, mas forneceu material para a análise das sociedades europeias da primeira metade do século XIX. Isto posto, este artigo tem por objetivo discutir a interpretação de Chevalier do conceito de “democracia” estadunidense, sem perder de vista seu diálogo com as abordagens de Tocqueville.

Machiavelli and Tocqueville on War and Armies

In the Democracy in America’s chapters on war and armies in the transition from the aristocratic to the democratic social state (état social), Tocqueville briefly draws on Machiavelli regarding the conquest of a country with or without intermediary powers between political leadership and the people by which he primarily understands the existence of local nobilities. In this reference, Tocqueville is quick to express skepticism about the overstated importance of Machiavelli in the history of political philosophy. In different places of his work though a more mitigated stance is documented. A comparative approach of Machiavelli and Tocqueville on war may seem odd, even inappropriate. In this paper I argue that the “brief encounter,” in Melvin Richter’s terms, of Tocqueville with Machiavelli can be fruitfully explored in order to make sense of the key importance for modern warfare of the collapse of nobility in Europe. Concomitantly, Machiavelli ‘s intuitions about conquering an absolutist state without intermediary powers compared to a state endowed with “prince” and “barons” can be further elaborated to better grasp its impact on wars including civil strife. In this paper I first explore Machiavelli’s perception of the intermediary powers in conquest and broadly in warfare paying due attention to the importance for the preservation of liberty of latent or open civil discord between social powers or classes; then I turn to Tocqueville’s rich analysis of the transformation of modern warfare due to democratic centralization and obsession with private welfare. Democratic armies constantly challenge democratic liberty and they can sometimes successfully albeit perversely integrate democratic ambition and turn it against democracy. I conclude with some reflections on the connection between war and politics regarding latent civil conflicts in democracies.

LEGAL ASPECTS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

If description democracy not they are at war between yourself we take like relevant, then we can predict for example, will democratic America to be less hostile in a good mood according to Russia and others democracies rather a table it was Soviet Alliance in time communist system, as and a table will democratic Russia under the same conditions the same to be hostile in a good mood according to democratic America.&#x0D; International politics is not like laboratory science. Controlled experiments do not exist because it is impossible to hold other things constant by looking at one thing that changes. Aristotle said that one can be as precise in a science as the subject (science) allows.&#x0D; The modern world is situated between the paradigm of global community and the paradigm of global turmoil. Contemporary international relations lie between state-centric and transnational visions of the future. The modern world, on the other hand, is between increasing interdependence and increasing conflict.

An Analysis of Congressman Bennie Thompson’s Leadership in Advancing Equality and Democracy in America

This article analyzes Congressman Bennie Thompson’s leadership role in the fight for equality and justice for all Americans and his fight to maintain and sustain the democracy experiment in America. The analysis examines the political trajectory of the subject in question, casting light on their initial engagement and underlying motivations. Additionally, this article examines the strategies and initiatives utilized by Thompson. This study aims to assess the impact of Thompson’s leadership on advancing equity and democracy in the United States by thoroughly analyzing his policies, legislative achievements, and public advocacy. Finally, it looks at Thompson’s political career, casting light on the efficacy and significance of his efforts to advance a society characterized by justice and democracy.

The Abolition of Democracy

Democracy seems shaky in the contemporary United States. In recent polls, an overwhelming 70 percent of Americans say that democracy is under threat, in crisis, and at risk of failing. Conventional wisdom tends to lay the blame for those findings—and the underlying fragility of democracy in America—at the feet of discrete political actors or at growing “polarization” in the electorate. But in The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis gives us reason to look deeper—at the difficult relationship, in practice, between modern democracy and enduring values. This essay shows how Lewis helps us better understand the crisis of democracy in America (including the crisis of faith in democracy in America) today.

The d-word: surveying democracy in America

ABSTRACT Political science has a “d-word” problem. Democracy is a central construct in political science, yet researchers have not settled on a single, unified definition. Furthermore, scholars increasingly fear mass publics are dividing on their meanings of democracy. This study uses two nationally representative American public and expert surveys to determine how Americans construe the word democracy. Using Blackbox transpose analysis, it finds that Americans conceive of liberal democracy – a democracy with civil liberties and political rights – more so than of democratic institutions by themselves. Additionally, the publics’ ratings are highly consistent with ratings provided in parallel expert surveys. However, partisanship, education, and political interest colour how democratic citizens perceive different countries to be.

It is time to use the F word about Trump: Fascism, populism and the rebirth of history

Donald Trump and the movement that he represents pose grave dangers for democracy in America, and throughout the world. I argue that it is now appropriate to describe Trumpism as a form of fascism. The events of January 6th, 2021, when an attempted insurrection sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as President, and the agenda that Trump and his supporters are developing for a proposed second term, are viewed as turning points that have transformed Trumpism from populism into an increasingly open form of fascism. I therefore analyse Trump’s rise to power, before discussing the nature of fascism in-depth and considering how Trumpism measures up to the criteria commonly identified as characterising fascism. It also means recognising that without the person of Donald Trump at the helm the MAGA movement will remain a potent threat for the foreseeable future. But it can be defeated. Thus, I identify some of the factors that enabled fascist movements to take state power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its victories were not inevitable then and are not inevitable now. Readily available lessons from the past point to how Trumpism can be defeated in the present.

Review of “Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America”

Review of “Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America”

Tocqueville and the Bureaucratic Foundations of Democracy in America

One of Tocqueville’s best-known empirical claims in Democracy in America is that there is no national-level public administration in the United States. He asserts definitively and repeatedly that “administrative centralization does not exist” there. However, in scattered passages throughout the text, Tocqueville points to multiple federal agencies that contemporary historians and APD scholars characterize as instances of a growing national administrative system, such as the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I reevaluate Tocqueville’s treatment of bureaucracy in America in light of this evidence. I contend that Tocqueville, perhaps in spite of himself, reveals even the most paradigmatic examples of active, democratic self-government in Democracy in America—townships and other voluntary associations—to be embedded in and causally supported by a network of interrelated, centralized public administrative institutions. Crucially, Tocqueville never resolves the tension between his acknowledgment of the causal power of these institutions and his claims that they do not exist. This new picture of the empirical and normative complexity of Tocqueville’s treatment of bureaucratic institutions offers a rich set of conceptual resources for contesting, among other claims, the political construction of nostalgia for a lost age of do-it-yourself White settler democracy in a time before bureaucracy in America.

Hoping for More: Tocqueville and the Insufficiency of ‘Self-Interest Well Understood’

ABSTRACT Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was convinced that without a new possibility for transcendence, democracies would be ill-prepared to allow for actual freedom. In Democracy in America, his study of the United States, he explained that when self-interest was enlightened, individuals would tend to identify their personal benefits with the well-being of the community. By transcending their individualistic tendency to self-enclose, they would contribute to forming and maintaining a real sovereignty of the people. However, unless the “doctrine of self-interest well understood” was aided by a higher ideal, by itself it would eventually fall short, thus paving the way for new forms of despotism. Religion, and more specifically, reformed versions of Christianity, seemed to effectively elevate the outlook of the early Americans. As I will argue, however, Tocqueville ultimately held that those versions lacked the profundity and stability required to resist the strong materialistic and individualistic tendencies of people living in a democracy. Tocqueville’s apparent, if anxious-ridden, preference for Catholicism as the more adequate civil religion resonates with important aspects of Augustine’s theory of the Two Cities, the earthly and the heavenly city. For both Tocqueville and Augustine, the Roman Church’s stable doctrine was what could more successfully teach mankind the truth about their limited condition, hence making them more capable of learning the “art of being free.”

A post-colonial reading of Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on slavery and its aftermaths

This article develops a postcolonial and comparative reading of Tocqueville’s writings on slavery. It argues, first, that Tocqueville analyzed the ending of slavery as a revolutionary social transformation involving changes in laws, social relations and mores, and second, that he employed the same analytical framework consistently to discuss processes of abolition in the United States and in the French Caribbean Islands. In the United States the process of abolition of slavery was deepening rather than ending racist prejudices, racial segregation and hatred between the black and the white populations. This would, so Tocqueville predicted, undermine democracy in America. In the plantation colonies he believed the French could draw lessons from the English experiences when organizing the abolition process. Only when legal changes and changes in mores developed in tandem there could be economic and political stability in the aftermath of slavery. This would allow the French to end slavery peacefully, which he deemed necessary if they intended to continue exploiting the colonies. The article argues that Tocqueville demonstrated a deep and critical understanding of the reprehensible, long-lasting role of anti-black racism and slavery in barring the emergence of democratic cultures based on equal standing and integration across racial difference. Yet, he combined this critical perspective on racist slavery with an accepted defense of European supremacy and with a sense of pessimism about the possibilities for Africans to ever become capable of self-government.

Introduction to “Dialogue on Democracy”

On June 2, 1939, Langston Hughes gave a lecture at the Third International Writers’ Conference in New York entitled “Democracy and Me.” To that audience, Hughes said that when in Europe he had spoken “first as an American and a writer, and second as a Negro.” But in America, “I feel it was in the interest of democracy to reverse the order and to speak primarily as a Negro and a writer, and secondarily as an American—because Negroes are secondary Americans.” He added that all the difficulties that Jews face in Hitler’s Germany are the same as those that African Americans in the United States face with one big difference. Democracy allows him, and others like him, to speak out. “Democracy permits us the freedom of a hope, and some action towards the realization of that hope. Because we live in a democracy, tonight I can stand here and talk to you about our common problem, the problem of democracy and me” (203).Hughes talked at some length about the difficulties of being an African American author in the United States, where black writers were paid less for books and lectures than their white colleagues. He also mentioned the pressure to conform to white expectations. “We are considered exotic. When we are not exotic, we do not sell well” (204). Rampersad suggested that the speech “was perhaps an apologia for the compromises forced on him since his return from the Soviet Union” (370). But in his conclusion, Hughes returned to the more general theme of democracy in America. “It is not a matter of mine or yours. It is a matter of ours. We want to create the American dream, a far more democratic America. I cannot do it without you.” His last words were: “We want America to really be America for everybody. Let us make it so!” (206).“Dialogue on Democracy” is a previously unpublished piece from the Langston Hughes Papers at Yale University.1 The Hughes Papers contain drafts and typescripts for this document that bear a date of February 9, 1939, although there is no date on the final version. Our text comes from the final typed text, with some handwritten additions and corrections. These are all clear, so we have silently incorporated the indicated changes to make the text readable. There is no evidence that it was ever submitted elsewhere for publication. Our goal has been to offer “Dialogue on Democracy” to readers of the Langston Hughes Review so that it can be part of further discussion.In Hughes’s style of “just myself talking to me. Or else me talking to myself,” as he said of about the creation of Simple, “Dialogue on Democracy” forms a kind of pairing with “Democracy and Me.” In the latter piece, in a voice with which we are familiar, Hughes offers the positive view of the future that we see in other works as he asks the audience to join with him to make progress. The premise is that Americans of all colors care about democracy and have faith in it. “Dialogue on Democracy,” offers the opposite assertion.2 Many Americans, faced with the fact that democracy means equal rights for all, would want to have no part of it.With all the talk of democracy and its future in recent election cycles, it seemed like a good idea to let Hughes speak to us on the subject with words that we had not yet heard from him. What Langston has to say here has relevance today, and it also shows that the crisis about democracy has been with us for decades. Hughes’s voice evokes Socratic questioning, and while one does not often see Plato and Hughes in the same sentence, it is worth noting that where Plato investigates the meaning of “beauty” and “virtue,” Hughes explores “democracy” and “freedom.” Hughes once stated, “I wish the smart people of the world could realize that they don’t know what they don’t know” (“Simple and Me” 262). That is the whole point of Socratic dialogue.

Democracy in America

In a dystopic America, a European expat falls in love with a woman named Honey, who shortly offers to ‘consign’ her youthful skin to an aging client for money. In the aftermath of abandonment, the protagonist struggles to cope with her lover’s transfiguration and the implications of time and beauty, all set against a distinctly capitalist America.

Reconstruction and Social Development

Reconstruction, after slavery and the Civil War, helped lay down the foundation of what we call Constitutional Democracy in America. As the world wars ended, countries woke up after a long oppressive night of bad dreams. These “undeveloped states” of the post-postcolonial heritage have evolved into the so-called Third World, aka, the “underdeveloped” or “developing” nations. There is a developmental dialectic in the becoming of these “welfare states” striving for democratic governance for progressive social change. A general rubric of reconstruction or “nation building” is usually referred to as Social Development (SD) with implicit specificity of regional goals. This article is a critique of the developmental processes which have impacted human lives and social structures in the global North and South with emphasis on the American history, racial ideology, and political structuralism, loosely entitled “Third Reconstruction.”