Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age
The internet as we know it is broken. Here’s how we can seize back control
of our lives from the corporate algorithms and create a better
internet—before it’s too late.
“In the spirit of Thomas Paine’s Revolution-era Common Sense, this
manifesto challenges us to create new digital architectures to safeguard
democracy.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Elon
Musk
It was once a utopian dream. But today’s internet, despite its conveniences
and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken
hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. It’s why youth suicide
rates are rising, why politics has become toxic, and why our most important
institutions are faltering.
Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for
distributing it is corrupted at its heart. Everything comes down to our
ability to communicate openly and trustfully with each other. But, thanks to
the dominant digital platforms and the ways they distort human behavior, we
have lost that ability—while, at the same time, we’ve been robbed of the
data that is rightfully ours.
The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the
prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the
authors—a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist—show how a
centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has
set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.
And then they describe a groundbreaking solution to reclaim it: rather than
superficial, patchwork regulations, we must reimagine the very architecture
of the internet. The resulting “third-generation internet” would replace the
status quo with a new model marked by digital property rights, autonomy, and
ownership.
Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense,
Our Biggest Fight argues that we must act now to embed the core values of a
free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow. Do it right and we
will finally, properly, unlock its immense potential.
OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the
Digital Age
"As both an entrepreneur and a parent, I'm deeply concerned with how
Silicon Valley's move fast and break things ethos has co-opted and
corrupted the awesome power of the internet in ways that have put our
society and future at risk," said McCourt. "Through OUR BIGGEST FIGHT, I hope to convey the urgency of this moment and how autocratic
surveillance technology is stripping us of our personhood and causing
great harms to society. By drawing on lessons of the past and redesigning
what this powerful technology optimizes for, we can reclaim our ability to
chart a new course and build an internet that empowers people over
platforms."
Building upon McCourt's ongoing work with Project Liberty – a
far-reaching, $500-million initiative to create a better, healthier
internet – the book addresses the urgent, growing threat today's highly
centralized internet infrastructure presents to democracy, youth mental
health, and individual data rights. Described by Crown as "a resounding
call to action for building a healthier and more equitable internet that
frees users from Big Tech's exploitation, recognizes individuals' rights
to their data, safeguards children and prioritizes the common
good," OUR BIGGEST FIGHT provides a gameplan for
advancing innovative solutions.
OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital
Age—a resounding call to action for building a healthier and more equitable
internet that frees users from Big Tech's exploitation, recognizes
individuals' rights to their data, safeguards children and prioritizes the
common good—from Frank H. McCourt, Jr., and acclaimed journalist, Michael J.
Casey.
The internet was once a utopian dream. And its impact has transformed how
we live, learn, work and communicate. Despite its conveniences and
connectivity, today's internet is causing real harm and is the primary cause
of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic
societies. Instead of driving progress and collaboration, its dominant
platforms are fueling a youth mental health crisis, polluting public
discourse with misinformation and toxicity, eroding trust and undermining
our most important institutions. Left unchecked, the internet in its
current, highly centralized form—dominated by a handful of Big Tech giants
that feed on our data—threatens to destabilize societies, democracies and
human interaction at every level. And it will get exponentially more harmful
in the age of artificial intelligence. McCourt and Casey explain how we can
get off this destructive path and seize this most urgent of moments to build
an internet that serves society's needs.
For decades, thought leaders and policy experts have weighed in with
suggestions for fixing the internet's ills, mostly through top-down
regulation. What sets McCourt and Casey apart is their relentless focus on
the need to innovate our way forward and address the problem at its roots,
starting with the web's underlying infrastructure. Inspired by historical
calls to action like Thomas Paine's Common Sense, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT depicts
a set of compelling parallels between the American revolution and the need
for a similar action today to throw off the shackles of Big Tech. Now is the
time, McCourt and Casey argue, to embed the core values of a free,
democratic society in the internet of tomorrow.
McCourt is the executive chairman of McCourt Global, a private family
company committed to building a better future and extending the McCourt
family's 130-year legacy of developing infrastructure and merging community
and social impact with financial results through its work across the real
estate, sports & media, technology and capital investment industries, as
well as its significant philanthropic activities. Named one of the Top 50
Philanthropists in the U.S. by The Chronical of Philanthropy, McCourt is the
foundational donor of Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public
Policy. As a fifth-generation builder, he's wary of Silicon Valley's "move
fast and break things" ethos and, as a father of seven, concerned about how
technology is impacting children, families and communities – and putting our
future at risk. Determined to carry out projects that leave a positive
impact on society, McCourt is focused on Project Liberty, a bold and
far-reaching effort to build an internet where individuals have more control
over their data, a voice in how digital platforms operate, and more access
to the economic benefits of innovation. Supported by a $500-million
commitment from McCourt, Project Liberty encompasses the work of the Project
Liberty Foundation—a 501(c)(3) with an international partner network that
includes Georgetown University, Stanford University, Sciences Po, and other
leading academic institutions and civic organizations—and Amplica Labs, a
technology business launched by McCourt Global that is focused on developing
the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for
accessing, engaging and sharing it is corrupted at its heart. Rather than a
free-flowing exchange of ideas in a decentralized environment, today's
internet is a closed-loop system, dominated by large technology firms
feeding on our individual data and using increasingly sophisticated
algorithms to keep people addicted and perpetually doom scrolling. In plain
but forceful language, the authors illustrate how this centralized system,
controlled by a small group of for-profit entities, has set a catastrophe in
motion and stripped us of our personhood. Trust is gone, hostility is on the
rise and people—especially parents concerned about their kids' use of social
media—are desperate for solutions.
McCourt and Casey offer much-needed hope for a better future.
Optimistically and convincingly, they lay out a groundbreaking solution to
reclaim what Big Tech has co-opted and corrupted: a new, decentralized model
for managing information over the internet that, by its very design, puts
the rights of the individuals first. They reimagine the internet as a place
where the individual can choose whether or not to share their data. A place
where people can reclaim their identity, digital footprint, and personal
sovereignty. A place where individual rights are sacrosanct – and where tech
corporations must agree to our terms of use before accessing the data,
content and connections we create online.
Much like Americans have amended the U.S. Constitution in order to enshrine
new rights and obligations, so too must we amend the protocols by which the
internet operates. By upgrading the internet's current architecture, we can
lay the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive web that prioritizes
people over platforms and enables users to own and control their personal
data.
McCourt and Casey make a powerful argument for acting now, before a Big
Tech-driven AI transformation is complete, to build a new, open internet
that works for humanity, rather than against it. Americans have an
opportunity—perhaps the last one we'll ever get—to lead the world out of a
mess we helped create.
Billionaire Frank McCourt says the surgeon general is only half right about
the social-media mental health crisis. It’s a crisis of personhood, not
privacy
It’s “mental torture,” McCourt and Michael Casey write in “Our Biggest
Fight”: How online platforms allow algorithms to encourage antisocial
behavior.
Take the story of Walker Farriel Montgomery, a 16-year-old from Starkville,
Mississippi, who loved fishing, hunting, and football. On the evening of
December 1, 2022, Walker was up late, on his phone, scrolling through
Instagram when a pretty girl who seemed to share some of the same contacts
appeared in his message feed. She reached out to him, flattering him and
enticing him with talk about football. One thing led to another and, when
they opened up a video chat, she exposed herself and invited him to do the
same. But the minute after he obliged her request that he perform and share
a recording of a graphic act, the girl disappeared and a stranger entered
the chat. The girl’s image, manipulated from footage of a porn star, had
been a front for a sextortion scam. The scammer demanded that Walker pay him
$1,000 and threatened that if he didn’t comply, he would send the recording
to all of Walker’s contacts.
“We’re gonna destroy you if you don’t give us the money,” the scammer told
him. “Everybody’s gonna disown you. Your life is over.” As Walker pleaded
for mercy, his attacker started listing the names of those who would see the
video. When he got to the teen’s mother’s name, it was too much. Walker went
to his father’s safe, retrieved a handgun, and shot himself.
This grim story was revealed after the FBI, in a forensic investigation,
unlocked the teen’s phone. The ordeal had lasted several hours and, all the
while, Walker’s parents, Brian and Courtney Montgomery, had been oblivious
to the fact their son was under- going such psychological torture that he
turned to what he thought was the only way out. Despite the unfathomable
emotional pain the Montgomery family has had to endure, Brian has endeavored
to turn the experience into something constructive for the world—for
society, for the rest of us. In an effort to hold platforms like Meta’s
Instagram to account for their role in extortion tragedies, he joined forces
with other mothers and fathers with similarly heart-wrenching stories to
become an anti–Big Tech activist.
The parents with whom Brian started working have become the public face of
a movement to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which seeks to compel
social media platforms to maintain a safe environment for children. Some in
the group have lost a child to suicide following bouts of cyberbullying.
Others discovered that their children died after participating in internet
fads such as the “choking challenge.” Still others learned that their teen
kids overdosed on drugs provided by chat group syndicates. At the bottom of
a letter urging support for KOSA, we find the names of more than
seventy-five such parents and those of their deceased children.
These accounts of children’s deaths just scrape the surface of the
suffering that’s out there. As cases in which lives were literally
extinguished, they represent the most extreme examples in which people have
been harmed by an information system that actively drives them into
dangerous situations, one that strips people of their rights. But abuses
don’t need to involve deaths or professional scam artists to inflict
enormous harm. People have seen their lives upended by targeted shaming on
social media, when influential users turned the victim’s comments or images,
more often than not taken out of context, into some lesson in righteousness
or embarrassment.
Mental Torture
The abuse of people’s rights online is now manifesting itself as a mental
health crisis among young people. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that between 2007 and 2021, the period in
which social media and smartphones became ubiquitous in our lives, suicides
rose 62% among those ages 10 to 24, whereas the rate had stayed steady
between 2001 and 2007. A different CDC survey of high school students
revealed that 22% had “seriously considered suicide” in 2021, up from 16% in
2011, with 18% saying they’d made a suicide plan and 10% saying they’d
attempted suicide at least once, compared with 13% and 8%, respectively, ten
years earlier. The numbers are even more alarming for high school girls, of
whom 30% said they’d seriously considered taking their lives. More than half
of the girls surveyed (57%) said they experience persistent sadness or
hopelessness, up from 36% in 2011.
A statistical shift of this magnitude cannot be an anomaly. So, what is the
common factor? Well, we think the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy,
almost got it when his office noted in a 2023 advisory that a “growing body
of research” showed that social media, used by 95% of all adolescents on a
daily basis, has “potential harms.” The surgeon general urged that we
“increase our collective understanding of the risks associated with social
media use, and urgently take action to create safe and healthy digital
environments that minimize harm and safeguard children’s and adolescents’
mental health and well-being during critical stages of development.”
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist whose books have done much to
crystallize understanding of how social media has shaped our thoughts and
actions, was disappointed with the sur- geon general’s statement. The time
has passed, he argued, for equivocating on “potential harms.” Haidt offered
one explanation for why, despite the very clear correlations in aggregate
mental health data, some experts suggest the jury is still out on all this:
It’s that empirical findings tend to focus on the direct, causal
“dose-response effect” on an individual person from exposure to social
media, whereas the phenomenon should be understood in terms of the wider,
societal “network effect.” Rather than studying social media as if it were,
say, sugar or cocaine, examining in iso- lation the impact on a single
brain, Haidt urged, we should think about how this plays out for teenagers
whose entire social experience is largely lived online. In a February 22,
2023 blog post reflecting on the CDC’s 2011–2021 study, Haidt offered the
hypothetical examples of a 12-year-old girl in 2011 whose parents give her
an iPhone 4 when most of her friends aren’t yet online and a 12-year-old
girl in 2015, by which time smartphone and social media use have become
widespread.
Imagine, Haidt wrote, that in 2011, “the girl spending 5 hours a day on
Instagram finds her mental health declining, but her friends’ mental health
is unchanged. We find a clear dose- response effect. If she were to quit
Instagram, would her mental health improve? Yes.” But fast-forward to 2015,
“when most girls are on Instagram and all teens are spending far less time
with their friends in person . . . [and then, at that time] a 12-year-old
girl decided to quit all social media platforms. Would her mental health
improve? Not necessarily.” By then, if all her friends continue to spend
five hours a day on the various platforms, “she’d find it difficult to stay
in touch with them,” Haidt wrote. “She’d be out of the loop and socially
isolated. If the isolation effect is larger than the dose-response effect,
then her mental health might even get worse. When we look across thousands
of girls, we might find no strong or clear correlation between time on
social media and level of mental disorder. We might even find that the
nonusers are more depressed and anxious than the moderate users.”
In a powerful statement of why we all must act together to fix the mental
health crisis caused by our dependence on these data-controlling social
media platforms, Haidt then summarized the problem: “What we see in this
second case is that social media creates a cohort effect: something that
happened to a whole cohort of young people, including those who don’t use
social media. It also creates a trap—a collective action problem—for girls
and for parents. Each girl might be worse off quitting Instagram even though
all girls would be better off if everyone quit.”
Poor analysis of social media’s harms plays into the platforms’ legal
defense. “We can’t be policed for what bad people say on our platforms,”
they say, often citing the controversial Section 230 of Title 47 of the
United States Code, enacted as part of the Com- munications Decency Act of
1996, which with the intent of enabling free speech exempted internet
platforms from the kind of liability that, say, news publishers face for
defamation and other legal challenges. “We didn’t make Walker Farriel
Montgomery kill himself. A scammer did,” they would say. They’ll also
contend that they pay vast sums of money to monitor, moderate, and re- move
content whenever it’s found to breach their internal policies prohibiting
hate speech and socially harmful disinformation. (What they avoid saying is
that they outsource this moderating task to sweatshop-like places in Africa
and Asia, where low-paid staff must pore through the worst of what humanity
has to offer and, as a result, often suffer from mental trauma themselves.)
But, if we extrapolate from Haidt’s useful framing, social media companies’
responsibility for the mental health crisis lies not solely in specific
content that induces people to harm them- selves or others but also in how
their algorithms create an addictive dependence on a toxic social media
environment. It’s impossible to separate Walker’s and other victims’ drastic
deci- sions to end their lives from the wider social media context, with all
the cyberbullying and other forms of peer pressure that it en- courages.
Recognizing it from a holistic perspective—that the pain we’re all
witnessing is part of an ugly overarching system—is the starting point for
understanding how we’ve been stripped of our rights and how to restore them.
The pernicious way in which online platforms allow their curation
algorithms to encourage antisocial behavior that erodes people’s self-esteem
is, we believe, a form of mental torture. And, as with various forms of
physical torture banned by the Geneva convention, it amounts to a breach of
human rights. These systems are violating the sanctity of the person.
Asserting this requires a demonstration that some event in the digital
realm directly led to a flesh-and-blood person’s suffering in the offline
world. If you accept our and Haidt’s analysis in the preceding paragraphs,
you’ll recognize that evidence of a causal link is often incontrovertible.
But if you still harbor any doubt that our real-world existence can be
harmed by our online experiences, we now ask you to go one step further, to
recognize, as we mentioned previously, that software companies are quite
literally digitizing our flesh-and-blood identity. Your biological DNA (in
the form of codified genetic information) and your social DNA (as
represented by records of your online behavior) are both captured in digital
form and stored in centralized data serv- ers. This data is obtained by
companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry, which exploit the connections that
are easily made between these two versions of you. They find all sorts of
ways to profit from them that you’re not privy to. Your data is also exposed
to the attendant risks that come with putting sensitive information online:
In October 2023, 23andMe informed customers that hackers had breached its
“DNA Relatives” feature, which allows participants to compare their
information with that of other participants worldwide. Who knows who now has
access to those customers’ vital, highly personal information?
To be sure, the digitization of human biological information brings
powerful potential benefits to society. If we start with an idea with which
I’m pretty certain we all agree—that we own our biological DNA—and add to
that our contention that we should own the digital version too, we can
foresee a world where it can be put to positive use. Imagine the important
medical breakthroughs that will be possible if we can willingly share such
information in a manner that we control. Sadly, the biological data grab by
Silicon Valley titans is only secondarily motivated by positive outcomes for
society. It is primarily a move to shore up a dominant position in their
capacity to manipulate how we communicate with one another.
One manifestation of the drive to shape our social behavior is found in
what we might call the Instagram aesthetic. Scroll through TikTok or
randomly explore a selection of Instagram “influencers”—a role that 57% of
Americans ages 13 to 26 said they aspire to, according to a 2023 Morning
Consult poll—and you’ll notice how the images tend toward conformity, even
if each person posting is supposedly seeking to stand out from the crowd.
It’s the same bikini-clad pose on vacation, the same Kardashian-inspired
pout, the same buff body in the infinity pool framed by the sunset, the same
dude who’s “crushing it” with his chin-ups. And now, with Magic Editor on
Google’s Android phones, everyone can modify their smiles and backgrounds to
come up with a similarly idealized look. The internet idea many of us bought
into during the early 1990s was that of a network that gave every
person—each with their unique voice, appearance, and expression—an input
into the great pool of ideas, and that out of that rich soup of ingenuity
would spring the most amazing inventions and creations. But instead we are
systematically stripping people of their individuality, of their capacity
for self-actualization, of their authenticity. This doesn’t feel very
aligned with the American Dream to us.
By the way, if you’re over 55, we seriously hope the preceding paragraphs
didn’t elicit a smugness about the younger generation’s image obsessions.
Maybe you’ve never posed for an Instagram selfie on a Greek island or posted
some shallow aphorism about your personal goals, but there’s an almost 100%
chance, regardless, that the algorithms have got you.
Human Rights Crisis: Abortion in the United States After Dobbs;
The consequences of the Dobbs decision are wide ranging. Restrictions on
access to healthcare places women’s lives and health at risk, leading to
increased maternal mortality and morbidity, a climate of fear among
healthcare providers, and reduced access to all forms of care. Dobbs also
enables penalization and criminalization of healthcare, with providers,
patients, and third parties at risk of prosecution or civil suit for their
involvement in private healthcare decisions. Relatedly, the decision opens
the door to widespread infringement of privacy rights as digital
surveillance is expanded to detect violations of new regulations. New bans
also infringe on freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief,
restricting the ability of physicians to counsel patients and clergy to
provide pastoral care to their congregants. Finally, the harms of Dobbsviolate principles of equality and non-discrimination; they fall
disproportionately on marginalized populations including Black, indigenous,
and people of color; people with disabilities; immigrants; and those living
in poverty.
A Year After... Trends in State
Abortion Laws Have Emerged;
On June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S.
Supreme Court overturned 50 years of precedent, overruling Roe v. Wade. In the
year following that decision, the pace of new legislation on abortion has been
swift.
Indeed, by the 100th day after the Dobbs decision, nearly 22 million women1 of
reproductive age—almost 1 in 3 women—found themselves living in states where
abortion was unavailable or severely restricted. According to the Guttmacher
Institute, which tracks state-level abortion legislation, in 2022 alone, state
legislators introduced 563 provisions to restrict access to abortion, and 50
of those restrictions were signed into law the same year.
Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, state abortion bans and the exceptions they contain – or lack – have garnered significant attention. Conversations about these exceptions, however, often obscure the reality that many of these exceptions can be unworkable in practice. There are reports of people being unable to obtain abortions, despite the fact that their pregnancies fall into these broad exception categories. While there is no accurate estimate of the number of people seeking abortion care in circumstances that qualify for an exception in states than ban abortion, the number of people who have received abortion care post –Dobbs in states that have banned abortion is very low. Many of the exceptions included in these bans use definitions that are vague, narrow, and non-clinical, and effectively remove the ability of health care providers to best manage the care of pregnant people, instead leaving that decision to the state or the clinician’s home institution. Further complicating matters, several states have multiple bans in effect, often with contradicting definitions, requirements, exceptions, and standards, creating ambiguity for clinicians and their patients. This brief analyzes the exceptions to abortion bans and discusses how their purported aims to provide life-saving care may not be achieved in practice.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the
federal constitutional standard that had protected the right to abortion.
Without any federal standard regarding abortion access, states will set
their own policies to ban or protect abortion. The Abortion in the United
States Dashboard is an ongoing research project tracking state abortion
policies and litigation following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Be sure to
click on the buttons or scroll down to see all the content. It will be
updated as new information is available.
KEY FACTS - LEGAL - MEDICATION ABORTION - COVERAGE - RELATED
HEALTH - STATE DATA - POLLING
Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point: Levitsky, Steven, Ziblatt, Daniel
A call to reform our antiquated political institutions before it’s too
late—from the New York Times bestselling authors of How Democracies
Die
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and
starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever
done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that
threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy
under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what
can we do to save it?
With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies
Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel
Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times.
They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day
Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy.
They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks
from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan
minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities.
Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New
Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers,
indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags
dangerously behind.
In this revelatory book, Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to
reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country
before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And
now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial
democracy or cease to be a democracy at all.
‘Tyranny of the Minority’ Warns Constitution is Dangerously Outdated
The U.S. Constitution desperately needs updating, say Harvard government
professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
“We have a very, very old constitution; in fact, the oldest written
constitution in the world,” notes Ziblatt, the Eaton Professor of the
Science of Government. “It was written in a pre-democratic era. It hasn’t
been amended much compared to other democracies. As a result, we have these
institutions in place that most other democracies got rid of over the course
of the 20th century.”
In their new book “Tyranny of the Minority,” the comparative political
scientists argue that these antiquated institutions, including the Electoral
College, have protected and enabled an increasingly extremist GOP, which
keeps moving farther to the right despite losing the popular vote in all but
one of the last eight presidential elections. The scholars also survey
governments worldwide for examples of democratizing reforms. And they draw
from history in underscoring the dangers of our constitutional stasis.
A New Book Lays Out the Markers of Democratic Backsliding–and Takes Aim at
the U.S. Constitution.
Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that “[s]carcely any political question
arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a
judicial question.” Had he toured America today, Tocqueville might similarly
conclude that scarcely any critique of our politics fails to devolve sooner
or later into a critique of our constitutional law.
...Levitsky and Ziblatt pinpoint three “basic things” that politicians in a
functioning democracy must do: first, respect the outcomes of free and fair
elections; second, repudiate violence as a means of achieving political
goals; and third, distance themselves from antidemocratic
forces—particularly those on their own flank. Democratic nations run into
real trouble when autocratic forces—often small yet committed minorities—are
buoyed by “semi-loyal democrats” on their own side of the partisan divide.
“Democracies get into trouble when mainstream parties tolerate, condone, or
protect authoritarian extremists—when they become authoritarian enablers.”
These semi-loyal democrat enablers are the sorts of politicians who
prioritize their own short-term electoral goals and career advancement
within the party over upholding basic democratic principles.
Consider Levitsky and Ziblatt’s account of a mob attack on the French
parliament in 1934, that “badly weakened” French democracy. The assault’s
damage ran deeper than the rummaged parliament. The real damage occurred in
the aftermath of the riot as the conservative party, the Republican
Federation, failed to condemn the violence. Some conservative party members
“dismissed the importance of the attack,” while others openly celebrated it.
Indeed, some had even been directly involved, and had then helped thwart
parliament’s investigation into the attack. Not coincidentally, argue
Levitsky and Ziblatt, democracy died in France within a few years with the
Vichy government.
Having established this framework, Levitsky and Ziblatt turn their focus to
today’s Republican Party.
They argue that in the wake of January 6th the vast bulk of Republican
officials have violated those three core prerequisites for maintaining a
functioning democracy. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, the GOP has
devolved into a minority party, but one that can still hold onto power
thanks to our system’s various anti-majoritarian political structures like
the Electoral College, the malapportioned Senate, and its filibuster. The
authors contend that the system creates perverse incentives: even as
Republicans consistently lose popular elections, they still have a shot at
holding onto sizeable amounts of political power since the political playing
field is supposedly tilted in their favor.
In making this argument, the authors acknowledge that democracy requires
anti-democratic checks to persist—and to protect the rights of minorities.
But they distinguish such necessary and proper checks from undue constraints
on majoritarian rule. That distinction is as crucial as it is difficult to
draw, but the basic points are intuitive enough. First, certain topics, like
basic civil liberties, must lie beyond the reach of majorities. Second,
those who win elections should be able to govern. The problem is that this
second point is no longer holding true in the United States. As a result,
our once pioneering democracy is now “a democratic laggard.” The United
States is “now more vulnerable to minority rule than any other established
democracy.”
Levitsky and Ziblatt’s analysis is largely compelling up to this point. But
their willingness to blame the U.S. Constitution in particular for our
democratic failings—for the emergence of “fettered majorities”—seems
misguided from the standpoints of both practicality and prudence.
Levitsky and Ziblatt explain that other countries have outpaced America’s
democracy because their constitutions are easier to change. For example, the
United States isn’t the first country to undergo a process of urbanization
that leaves an upper legislative chamber disproportionately slanted in favor
of rural, conservative interests. But other nations who’ve run into this
problem have amended their constitutions to correct the imbalance.
What Levitsky and Ziblatt don’t recognize is that, in the aggregate, the
comparative difficulty of constitutional change in the United States might
be more of a feature than a bug: our Constitution actually constituted a
nation. It’s the Constitution that made the United States the United
States—it’s a big part of what makes us, us. Because that’s not true for
most other countries, fundamentally altering their respective constitutions
is not as big a deal; it doesn’t necessarily touch their national soul.
Germany would still be Germany absent its Basic Law; France would still be
France absent the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (indeed, this even
helps to explain why the French are on republic number five). For most
nations, the ties that bind run deeper than those of politics and
constitutions: shared language, culture, history, and race do most of the
cohesive work. Not so for the United States—and happily so: that
deep-seated, thicker unity comes at a cost. Those countries are deprived of
the diversity of worldviews, religions, and ideas that helps to make the
United States so dynamic, so interesting, and so worth preserving.
Altering the United States Constitution is accordingly a more momentous
event—it changes who we are in a more fundamental way than if we were a
pre-existing, more organic nation-state. This is particularly true for
changes that center on our political process, as opposed to expanding
the substantive scope of legal protections to previously excluded groups.
It’s not a coincidence that many of the post-founding constitutional
amendments have centered on expanding civil rights as opposed to
fundamentally restructuring our governing institutions. More often than not,
we’ve extended the sphere of the political community to recognize more
Americans as equal participants in our institutions rather than altering the
underlying character of those institutions and the processes that govern
them. We’ve bettered ourselves while still being ourselves; a more perfect
Union, but the same Union.
Thus, Levitsky and Ziblatt are right as a general matter that we must
“double down on democracy” if we’re to be a successful multiracial
democracy. But we should do so at the sub-constitutional level. Their
proposed constitutional reforms to the Senate, the Electoral College, and
the like lack merit. Given the constancy of the structure of the
U.S. Constitution and its centrality to our national identity, it seems
prudent to draw a distinction between the anti-democratic pitfalls that
Levitsky and Ziblatt identify: constitutional ones versus sub-constitutional
ones. Altering the constitutional ones would not only require clearing the
nearly insuperable requirements of Article V, but would also alter the core
of our national political identity. Pragmatism and prudence counsel against
such reforms.
That’s not the case when it comes to reforming our current system’s
sub-constitutional pitfalls. Institutions like first past the post voting in
single member districts, winner-take-all voting arrangements in the
Electoral College, and the Senate filibuster are not constitutional
requirements. They weren’t part of the set of compromises that the framers
reached as they constituted a new nation. They aren’t core to who we are as
a polity.
In fact, it’s not a coincidence that these sub-constitutional strictures
are the proximate causes for so many of the democratic failings documented
by Levitsky and Ziblatt. Absent the filibuster, for example, Levitsky and
Ziblatt themselves lay out how many pieces of proposed legislation would
have been signed into law. The Constitution’s less than democratic features
are certainly an underlying cause for the frustrating and now even
destabilizing inability of majorities to govern. But what we’ve overlaid
atop that constitutional structure might be more to blame. The Senate alone
might not be a problem; the Senate with a de facto supermajority voting
requirement might be.
After all, the Constitution’s framers like James Madison were not against
majority rule. They understood that the majority would ultimately govern,
but they designed our constitutional structure to help slow the
pace at which the majority governed, in part to ensure that it would rule
reasonably and justly. When we warp the institutions that comprise that
structure—like through supermajority voting requirements within the
legislature—the majority’s will is thwarted rather than tempered.
Before we fundamentally alter the Constitution’s mechanisms for shaping and
constraining majorities, we might do well to first reform the
sub-constitutional strictures that are currently fettering those majorities.
In other words, Levitsky and Ziblatt have laid out a real problem worthy of
our attention, but their advocacy for constitutional change seems misguided.
We are indeed at a decision point: “either America will be a multiracial
democracy or it will not be a democracy at all.” But getting to the right
result might not require something so great as constitutional change.
Tinkering with institutions like the filibuster, the primary system,
and single-member districts might be a more effective, and more realistic,
path forward.
Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
“Without major changes to institutions such as the Electoral College and
Supreme Court, the real majority rule will be out of reach.”
...No democracies that are long established and have middle class incomes
have perished. So why has the United States reached a breaking point? Some
vulnerabilities were baked into the system, but our present crises are
triggered by a party that deliberately sabotages majority rule and approves
violence to get its way—what can be seen as a war on America.
History shows that many of the country’s founding fathers did not want a
democracy, which they saw as a form of mob rule like that overtaking France.
To get smaller states like Delaware and the South’s slave-holding states to
join the federation, the founders gave all states equal representation in
the Senate and protected the institution of slavery—even allowing slaves to
be included as three-fifths of a human being in the numbers by which seats
were allotted in the House of Representatives, These compromises were seen
as necessary to get the system up and running, but their pernicious
consequences have endured for more than two centuries.
Today’s Republican war on democracy took off with the “southern strategy”
of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, embroidered and enhanced by Ronald
Reagan, the two George Bushes, and brought to a crescendo by Donald Trump
with his vassals and imitators. The all-pervasive goal of their effort has
been to preserve the hegemony of an elite dominated by white males
professing to be faithful Christians.
This system has been reinforced by a Supreme Court that gutted the equal
rights voting act and a Senate led by Mitch McConnell that refused to allow
debate on how to save the voting act. Underlying all this has been the
takeover of many state governments by GOP extremists who remap voting
districts and seek to control what electors go to Washington to select the
president. At all levels the GOP labors to keep blacks from voting and keep
out immigrants likely to support Democrats. All these tactics are reinforced
by cable news and social media that fill voters’ minds and emotions with
half-truths and outright lies,
Why are so many Americans susceptible to brain washing? Whites no longer
make up a majority in California, and, in a few decades, will become a
minority across the country. The two consecutive elections of a Black
president catalyzed a major backlash. Many whites fear they are losing their
privileged status. Many oppose inroads by cultures and practices quite
different from Evangelical and traditional Catholic values, Uncertainties
are amplified by climate catastrophes, epidemics, hard-to-beat inflation,
and the many challenges, known and unknown, inherent in new
technologies.
Still, the authors argue, surveys show that a majority of Americans embrace
the principles of liberal and multiracial democracy. So it is not unfettered
majorities that threaten America, as many observers have feared, but
fettered majorities. Republicans are strong in sparsely populated regions.
The constitution’s small-state bias became a rural tilt in the 20th century
and a partisan bias today. As in much of Europe, conservative values are
supported by small town and rural voters. The biases of the U.S. system have
permitted Republicans to win the White House and other high posts without a
majority of the popular vote. The conditions that gave rise to the Trump
presidency—a radicalized party empowered by a pre-democratic
constitution—remain in place.
What can be done to bolster U.S, democracy? The authors point to the
“containment” and “militant” strategies that brought positive results to
parts of Europe after 1945. Without major changes to institutions such as
the Electoral College and Supreme Court, the real majority rule will be out
of reach. The authors remind us that Americans managed to ameliorate several
democratic deficits in the past. Charismatic leaders such as Woodrow Wilson,
Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson made a difference. But no such leader
is visible just now and the foes of majority rule are deeply entrenched.
This book shows the depths of our problems and points to the kinds of
reforms that could address them.
If a reactionary movement is popular or aggressive enough, it’s not clear
that any kind of institution can stop it from threatening democracy. Hence
why other advanced democracies with distinct institutional arrangements,
like Israel, are currently going through democratic crises with root causes
strikingly similar to America’s. It’s true that America’s institutions have
paved a swift road for the Trumpist right’s attack on democracy. But they
may not be quite as central to the story of its rise as Tyranny of the
Minority suggests.
The American right’s turn against democracy
Ziblatt and Levitsky are two of America’s very best comparative political
scientists, with expertise that makes them uniquely well-equipped for the
subject they’re examining.
Ziblatt is the author of an important study of European conservative
parties, concluding that their strategic choices played a unique role in
determining the health of continental democracy in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Conservative parties, by their nature, represent those forces in
society — including the wealthy and powerful elite — opposed to radical
social change. For this reason, Ziblatt found, they are especially important
in determining whether defenders of the status quo attempt to stymie social
change from within the democratic system or whether they reject elections
and political equality altogether.
Levitsky is a Latin America specialist who, along with co-author Lucan Way,
wrote a prescient analysis of a new style of autocracy back in 2002 — a
system they termed “competitive authoritarianism” that subsequently emerged
as the premier institutional means for turning a seemingly stable democracy
into an autocracy (see: Hungary). Competitive authoritarian governments
masquerade as democracies, even holding elections with real stakes. But
these contests are profoundly unfair: The incumbent party ensures that the
rules surrounding elections, like who gets to vote and what the media gets
to say, are heavily tilted in their favor. The result is that the opposition
has little chance to win elections, let alone pass their preferred
policies.
Tyranny of the Minority analyzes the United States in light of these two
broad themes, the importance of conservative parties and the ever-evolving
institutional nature of authoritarianism. The first half of the book
analyzes how and why the Republican Party went down an anti-democratic path.
The second focuses on how the peculiar design of American institutions has
created opportunities for the GOP to undermine democracy from within.
Around the world, they find two conditions that make political parties more
likely to accept electoral defeats: “when they believe they stand a
reasonable chance of winning again in the future” and when they believe
“that losing power will not bring catastrophe — that a change of government
will not threaten the lives, livelihoods, or most cherished
principles.”
In the 21st century, these conditions no longer held among the GOP’s
conservative white base. Democrats were no longer a mere political rival,
but avatars of a new and scary social order.
“Not only was America no longer overwhelmingly white, but once entrenched
racial hierarchies were weakening. Challenges to white Americans’
long-standing social dominance left many of them with feelings of
alienation, displacement, and deprivation,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write.
“Many of the party’s voters feared losing ... their country — or more
accurately, their place in it.”
This, they say, is what made the party vulnerable to conquest by someone
like Trump. Rather than fight the base in democracy’s name, traditional
Republican elites like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) acted as “semi-loyal
democrats”: leaders who say the right things about supporting democracy and
the rule of law, but value partisan victory over everything else — including
basic, non-partisan democratic principles. This enabled the entire party to
become a vehicle for an anti-democratic agenda.
“Openly authoritarian figures — like coup conspirators or armed
insurrectionists — are visible for all to see. By themselves, they often
lack the public support or legitimacy to destroy a democracy. But when
semi-loyalists — tucked away in the hallways of power — lend a hand, openly
authoritarian forces become much more dangerous,” they explain. “Throughout
history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectable
semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown.”
How America’s system makes life easy for would-be autocrats
In the US, Levitsky and Ziblatt see a democracy made vulnerable by its own
Constitution.
The Constitution’s framers were the first to take Enlightenment ideas about
freedom and translate them to an actual political system. The only
historical democratic experiences they looked at were from antiquity, in
places like Athens and Rome. Classical sources repeatedly chronicled threats
to democracy, even outright collapse, emanating from mob rule.
Though the founders knew that democracy was at heart about majority rule,
they took the Greco-Roman experience seriously and designed a system where
majorities were severely constrained. The tripartite separation of powers,
bicameral legislature, indirect election of the president and senators,
lifetime Supreme Court tenure, the laborious process for amending the
Constitution: all of these were built, in whole or in part, as limitations
on the ability of majorities to impose their will on minorities.
Some American counter-majoritarian institutions emerged not from
well-intentioned design but political necessity. Leading founders like James
Madison bitterly resented the basic structure of the Senate, where each
state gets two seats regardless of size; Alexander Hamilton called it
“preposterous” during a constitutional convention debate. It was included
purely to mollify small states like Delaware and Rhode Island, who were
refusing to join the Union absent sufficient protections for their
interests.
Over time, the US shed some of these minoritarian trappings — senators are
now directly elected, thanks to the 17th Amendment — but deepened others. In
1803’s Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court gave itself expansive power to
strike down legislation that was not explicitly granted in the Constitution.
More recently, the filibuster emerged as a de facto 60-vote requirement for
passing legislation in the Senate — a practice similar to the supermajority
vote that the founders explicitly rejected early on.
Levitsky and Ziblatt show that almost every other peer democracy went in
the opposite direction.
The United States is “the only presidential democracy in the world in which
the president is elected via an Electoral College,” “one of the few
remaining democracies that retains a bicameral legislature with a powerful
upper chamber,” and “the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure
for Supreme Court justices.” Moreover, they note, “the U.S. Constitution is
the hardest in the world to change” — making it extremely difficult for
reformers to do anything about America’s minority-empowering
institutions.
These institutions allow the Republican Party to rule despite being a
distinctly minority faction — one that holds extreme positions on issues
like taxes and abortion, and has lost the popular vote in seven out of the
last eight presidential elections.
So long as the party retains appeal among a hard core of racially resentful
supporters, efficiently distributed around the country to take advantage of
the Senate and Electoral College’s biases, it can remain nationally
competitive. The right’s control over the Supreme Court will likely last
decades, thanks to lifetime tenure, allowing it to remake American policy
and institutions with impunity. The GOP’s disproportionate national power
enables its cadres at the state and local level to pursue explicitly
undemocratic policies for holding power, like felon disenfranchisement and
extreme gerrymandering, without fear of federal intervention.
Hence the titular “tyranny of the minority”: The Republican Party, having
broken with its core commitment to democracy, has now embraced a peculiarly
American strategy for taking and wielding power undemocratically.
“America’s countermajoritarian institutions can manufacture authoritarian
minorities into governing majorities,” they write. “Far from checking
authoritarian power, our institutions have begun to augment it.”
Can good institutions save a rotted society?
Levitsky and Ziblatt are, in my mind, clearly correct about both of their
two major points: that the GOP has become an anti-democratic faction, and
that America’s minoritarian institutions have given them a straightforward
pathway to wielding power undemocratically. The evidence for both
propositions is overwhelming, and the book’s style — engaging historical
case studies accompanied by a precise deployment of data — hammers them home
persuasively. Tyranny of the Minority is an exceptional book, one of the
very best in its genre.
But there are some tensions inside of it: in this case, a subtle conflict
between the two halves of the argument.
The United States, Ziblatt and Levitsky note, is hardly the only wealthy
democracy to have experienced the rise of far-right parties hostile to
social change — citing the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and “all of
Scandinavia” as prominent examples. Yet those democracies, in their view,
“remain relatively healthy.”
The key difference, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, lies in the institutions.
Because those countries are considerably more majoritarian, it is far harder
for an authoritarian minority to corrode democracy at a national level.
Therefore, they conclude, the best way to safeguard America’s institutions
is to make them more like our peers abroad: abolish the Electoral College,
eliminate lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices, end the filibuster,
switch to proportional representation in Congress, ban partisan
gerrymandering, and make the Constitution easier to amend.
The obvious objection to these proposals is that they are impractical, that
the very nature of the problem — Republican control over minoritarian
institutions — makes reforming them infeasible. But there’s a deeper, and
more interesting, question raised by Levitsky and Ziblatt’s diagnosis: Is it
really the case that our institutions are what make America unique?
America’s minoritarian institutions certainly create a particular pathway
for our domestic revanchist faction to gain power and wield it against
democracy. But there are plenty of other ways for a democracy to eat
itself.
Israel, for example, has an extraordinarily majoritarian political system.
It is a parliamentary democracy, meaning limited separation of executive and
legislative power, whose legislature is elected on a purely proportional
basis. There is a simple majority requirement for passing legislation and
even amending the Basic Law (its constitution-lite). The judiciary is, for
all intents and purposes, the only check on unfettered majority rule.
Yet Israel is, at the moment, in the midst of a democratic crisis every bit
as serious as America’s, perhaps even more so, in which an anti-democratic
governing majority seeks to remove the court as a barrier to its radical
agenda. The root cause of the crisis is very similar: a far-right faction of
the population that wishes to protect existing social hierarchies from the
threat of change. But the extremist strategy for cementing their power is
the polar opposite: exploiting majoritarian institutions, not minoritarian
ones. It’s the founders’ fear come to life, the Scylla to America’s
Charybdis.
The point here is not that there are only two options for institutional
design, America’s vetocracy or Israel’s blunt majoritarianism. Most advanced
democracies fall somewhere in the middle, adopting a mix of majoritarian and
counter-majoritarian institutions designed to generally permit majority rule
while also preventing abuses of power.
Rather, the United States and Israel put together illustrate that
institutions are an at-best-imperfect check on far-right authoritarian
movements. The American far right has built a strategy tailored to American
institutions; the Israeli far right has adopted a strategic approach
tailored to the Israeli context. In both cases, the root of the problem is
that there’s a sufficient social foundation for far-right authoritarian
politics: one that provides the raw political muscle for bad actors to
attack democracy using its own institutions.
Other democracies are not immune to far-right surges, including some that
Levitsky and Ziblatt cite as relatively healthy.
The AfD, Germany’s far-right party, is surging in popularity, topping
recent polls in four German states. A survey in May found that Marine Le
Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, would defeat President
Emmanuel Macron in their second rematch by a 55-45 margin. The UK approved
Brexit by a majority referendum. Even in Canada, one of the most
democratically stable Western democracies, extremist-linked legislator
Pierre Poilievre is leading the traditionally center-right Conservative
Party, which is currently ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals
in the 2025 polls.
Not every far-right victory is a threat to democracy, of course, but it’s
hard to be sure until they have power. Some Western far-right parties, like
the AfD, are already showing troubling signs.
And in the US, where the far right is clearly undemocratic, surveys show a
real chance that Trump wins the 2024 US election with an outright majority —
not just in the Electoral College, but in the popular vote.
At root, Levitsky and Ziblatt appear a little too confident in their
argument that the GOP’s extremism dooms the party to minority status.
It’s true that their agenda is out of step with the majority of Americans.
But many voters, especially swing voters, don’t always vote on policy or
ideology. They make ballot box decisions based on things like gas prices,
inflation, and whether the party in power has been there for too long —
factors that are often out of the president’s hands. Even if they do not
agree with Trump that Mexicans are rapists or that the 2020 election was
stolen, they’re willing to vote for him if they’re sufficiently frustrated
with either the status quo or the other party’s option.
The same is true in other countries. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s right-wing government was briefly dethroned in the 2021 election
— only to return to power in 2022 after voters experienced life under a
fractious coalition that spanned the right-left continuum. Marine Le Pen’s
recent rise seems to be less about a majority of voters agreeing with her on
immigration than a sense that she’s the only real alternative to an
unpopular Macron.
Far-right parties, even potentially anti-democratic ones, can be
politically viable under nearly any set of institutions. The key is to
establish sufficient support among a large segment of the population that
agrees with them, enough for there to be a large ideologically driven
backlash. Once that happens, the party can establish itself as a viable
alternative to the mainstream. And once that happens, they gain the
potential to win over less ideological swing voters who simply have
frustrations with the political status quo and look to any port in a
storm.
This is not to let America’s institutions off the hook. Levitsky and
Ziblatt are absolutely right that its outdated constitution makes it easier
for the GOP to travel down an authoritarian path.
But “easier” doesn’t mean “necessary.” While Levitsky and Ziblatt
ultimately take an institutions-first approach, seeing their reform as our
way out of America’s crisis, I take a more society-first view: that
America’s problems are primarily the result of deep social fissures
exacerbated by outdated and poorly designed institutions. Even if the United
States had a more authentically democratic institution, we’d still be riven
by divides over race and identity that have unerringly produced the worst
political conflicts in the country’s history.
It follows from this that institutional reforms are not enough: In addition
to policies for political reform, we also need to think about ways to reduce
the social demand for extreme politics. More bluntly: If widespread
hostility to social change enables the GOP’s far-right authoritarian lurch,
we need to figure out ways to shift Americans’ beliefs in a more egalitarian
direction.
But such a proposal should be considered in addition to Levitsky and
Ziblatt’s proposals, not in replacement of them — much as my critique of
their book more broadly is less a fundamental concern than a difference in
emphasis.
Tyranny of the Minority is one of the best guides out there to the crisis
of American democracy. It just puts a touch too much focus on institutions
at the expense of the deeper social forces rotting their foundations.
Writers say Constitution Not Strong Enough to Protect Democracy
We’re in the midst of seismic shifts, technological revolutions,
demographic changes, and a widening class divide. But the problem isn’t
confined to institutions or parties or politicians. It also lies with the
people. Our nation has been conditioned for more than a century to distrust
institutions, a sentiment that has only intensified over the years — from
the turn of the last century’s era of industrialization and racial conflict
through the Cold War, the Kennedy assassination, and more recently to the
COVID pandemic. While Donald Trump may have been the catalyst, the real fuel
comes from the voters willing to discard democratic norms to protect their
vision of a “real America.”
Certainly, we’ve faced challenges before and risen to meet them, but the
pressing question now is: Can we rise to meet this one? In his new book,
Tyranny of the Minority, Ziblatt argues that our Constitution inadvertently
encourages counter-majoritarian rule. We’ve fallen behind the rest of the
world by failing to modernize our political operating system, thereby
allowing partisan minorities to wield disproportionate power.
Jeff: One of the things that plays into this, and that we see inherent in
our politics today, is this division between policy issues on the one hand
and culture-war/emotional issues on the other hand. Talk a little bit about
that and the way that is really feeding into this danger.
Daniel: We talked about race already, but there are a whole range of other
hot-button cultural issues. And these are issues upon which it’s easy to
mobilize voters. And so if you have policy positions, which are not
particularly popular and can’t garner majority support, it’s very common for
politicians to try to change the topic of conversation to issues that can
generate enthusiasm. And so we have this outrage industry both in the media
as well as among politicians.
If you’re pushing for complex policy proposals that aren’t very popular,
and that are not going to mobilize voters, you’re not going to win
elections. And so it’s much easier to talk about really hot-button,
simplified issues. I was actually just recently looking at the 1912
Progressive Party platform — which was Theodore Roosevelt, after being
president, ran for president a second time, and he lost the Republican
nomination and ran as a Progressive Party candidate.
And this long document with detailed policy proposals, including things
such as giving women the right to vote, an income tax, these complex policy
proposals. What’s so striking today is the Republican Party in the 2020
election didn’t even have a party platform. Didn’t even have a platform
because the party wasn’t really running on ideas.
And so I think what very often happens if a party doesn’t have ideas, what
you do instead run on is resentments. The thing about running on resentments
is it’s like a short-term fix for a party because you can maybe win an
election in the short run, but over the long run you’re inflaming your
population and it’s a very reckless form of politics.
Jeff: Since the constitutional solutions don’t seem to be effective, as
we’ve been talking about, are there extra-constitutional answers to maybe
begin to turn this ship around? Even things as controversial as they are,
like third and fourth parties that may come along, that change the dynamic,
change the landscape in a way that shakes it up enough that something
positive could happen.
Daniel: -
In our book, in our last chapter, we have 15 proposals for
reform.
And so I encourage your listeners to go look at that. Some of these are
really stretches and others are more realistic. And it’s not a random list.
There was a real logic to the list. The list is of reforms that other
democracies have introduced, number one, so things that have been proven to
work well. And in some of them in fact there’s a path to reform.
Some of these things that I think that don’t require constitutional change
and are within reach include some institutional reforms, such as getting rid
of or weakening the filibuster. The filibuster has been changed often
throughout its history; as late as the 1970s, the threshold for getting a
bill through was lowered. It could be lowered again. And all this requires
is a vote in the Senate.
There’s carve-outs for the filibuster. You could add a carve-out for, let’s
say, the protecting of voting rights. So this is one that only needs the
Senate to approve, does not require a president to sign. It does not require
the House of Representatives to support it, let alone other states. So
that’s one thing — the filibuster reform. Something else on our list is to
have states pass laws that have automatic voter registration. Pennsylvania
just recently did this. A lot of states are doing this to make it easier to
vote.
And in most democracies around the world, governments make it easier for
voters to vote. Not more difficult. And this is something that can be done
at the state level, does not require constitutional change. If you have
automatic voter registration, it makes it easier to vote and you will allow
majorities to speak more clearly.
And I think this ultimately would have a positive effect. Similarly, voting
rights protections at the national level. There was a bill that almost
passed two years ago that got held up by the filibuster. So if we eliminated
the filibuster, or weakened the filibuster, you could then pass voting
rights reform at the national level.
Now, to come to your particular suggestion of multiple parties, I agree
entirely with you. I think our democracy would be enriched with multiple
parties. Most democracies do in fact have multiple parties. But here’s the
catch. In our current system, the rules are set up. We have an electoral
system where each congressional district sends one member of Congress. That
is a system that really political scientists have demonstrated, lends itself
to a two-party system. It’s very hard for a third party to win.
And so, given the rules of the game that we have, I think it’s a mistake to
try to support third-party candidates because they will in fact not make it
into office. And you may think, well, you’re sending a message to
politicians, and I can understand that, but often it backfires because, in
fact, you split the vote in a way that’s counterproductive and the guy that
you don’t like might end up in office. If you want a multi-party system, one
of the proposals we make in our last chapter is to introduce a form of
proportional representation, which requires changing the voting rules.
So you have to get the sequence right. If you change the voting rules, and
this is something that’s left up to the states, a key term here for people
to look up is ranked order voting. It’s up to the states to determine their
own voting rules. If you introduce ranked order voting, various forms of
proportional representation, then it would be easier for more parties to
emerge, and I think ultimately would all work to the benefit of our
democracy.
15 Proposals for Reform
- (from the last chapter of the book)
Voting in America should be as straightforward as it is in democracies in
Europe and elsewhere. This means we should do the following:
Pass a constitutional amendment establishing a right to vote for all
citizens, which would provide a solid basis to litigate voting
restrictions.
Establish automatic registration in which all citizens are registered to
vote when they turn eighteen. This could be accompanied by the automatic
distribution of national voting ID cards to all citizens. The burdens of
the registration process should not deter anyone from voting.
Expand early voting and easy mail-in voting options for citizens of all
states. It should be easy for all Americans to cast ballots.
Make Election Day a Sunday or a national holiday, so that work
responsibilities do not discourage Americans from voting.
Restore voting rights (without additional fines or fees) to all ex-felons
who have served their time.
Restore national-level voting rights protections. In the spirit of the
1965 Voting Rights Act, parts of which the Supreme Court struck down in
2013, we should reinstate federal oversight of election rules and
administration. This could apply only in states and localities with a
history of voting rights violations, following the VRA model, or to all
jurisdictions equally, following the model of the 1890 Lodge bill.
Replace the current system of partisan electoral administration with one
in which state and local electoral administration is in the hands of
professional, nonpartisan officials. This will help ensure fairness in the
updating of voter rolls, access to polling places, and the voting and
vote-counting processes. Nearly every other established democracy, from
France and Germany to Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, and South Africa, has
nonpartisan referees to oversee elections.
ENSURE THAT ELECTION OUTCOMES REFLECT MAJORITY PREFERENCES. Those who win
the most votes should win elections. Nothing in democratic theory
justifies allowing losers to win elections. The political philosopher John
Stuart Mill wrote that democracy should “giv[e] the powers of government
in all cases to the numerical majority.” Unfortunately in U.S.
presidential, Senate, and some state legislative elections, this
frequently does not occur. Several steps can be taken to ensure that those
who win electoral majorities actually govern:
Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular
vote. No other presidential democracy permits the loser of the popular
vote to win the presidency. Such a constitutional amendment very nearly
passed as recently as 1970.
Reform the Senate so that the number of senators elected per state is
more proportional to the population of each state (as in Germany).
California and Texas should elect more senators than Vermont and Wyoming.
Because Article V of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that “no state,
without its Consent, may be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate”
(a form of liberum veto), we understand the barriers to such a reform are
enormous. But because the structure of the Senate so subverts basic
democratic principles, and with such great consequence, any list of
important democratizing reforms must include it.
Replace “first-past-the-post” electoral rules and single-member districts
for the House of Representatives and state legislatures with a form of
proportional representation in which voters elect multiple representatives
from larger electoral districts and parties win seats in proportion to the
share of the vote they win. This would require repeal of the 1967 Uniform
Congressional District Act, which mandates single-member districts for
House elections. By ensuring that the distribution of seats in Congress
more accurately reflects the way Americans vote, a proportional
representation system would prevent the problem of “manufactured
majorities,” in which parties that win fewer votes in an election capture
a majority of seats in the legislature. As the political scientist Lee
Drutman writes, a proportional representation system “treats all voters
equally, regardless of where they live. And it treats all parties the
same, regardless of where their voters live.”
Eliminate partisan gerrymandering via the creation of independent
redistricting commissions such as those used in California, Colorado, and
Michigan.
Update the Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of
Representatives at 435, and return to the original design of a House that
expands in line with population growth. At present, the ratio of voters to
representatives in the House is nearly five times higher than that of any
European democracy. Expanding the size of Congress would bring
representatives closer to the people, and, if the Electoral College and
the current Senate structure remain in place, mitigate the small-state
bias of the Electoral College.
EMPOWER GOVERNING MAJORITIES. Finally, Americans must take steps to
empower legislative majorities by weakening counter-majoritarian
legislative and judicial institutions:
Abolish the Senate filibuster (a reform that requires neither statutory
nor constitutional change), thereby eliminating the ability of partisan
minorities to repeatedly and permanently thwart legislative majorities. In
no other established democracy is such a minority veto routinely
employed.
Establish term limits (perhaps twelve or eighteen years) for Supreme
Court justices to regularize the Supreme Court appointment process so that
every president has the same number of appointments per term. Such a
reform would place the United States in the mainstream of all other major
democracies in the world. This would also limit the court’s
intergenerational counter-majoritarianism.
Make it easier to amend the Constitution by eliminating the requirement
that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify any proposed amendment.
Requiring two-thirds supermajorities in both the House of Representatives
and the Senate for a constitutional amendment would bring America in line
with most other established democracies, including federal democracies
like Germany and India, as well as many U.S. states.
These reforms would have a simple yet powerful effect: they would allow
majorities to win power and govern. Not only would our proposed reforms help
stave off minority rule, but they would also eliminate constitutional
protectionism, unleashing the competitive dynamics of democracy.
Importantly, the reforms would compel the Republicans to build broader
coalitions in order to win. In America today, these coalitions would
necessarily be more diverse, which would dilute the influence of the most
extremist elements in the Republican Party. A more diverse Republican Party
capable of winning national majorities fair and square might be bad news in
electoral terms for the Democratic Party, but it would be very good news for
American democracy.
The reforms we propose might appear radical, but they are already in place
in the vast majority of established democracies, including highly successful
ones like Denmark, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. Making
it simpler to vote, ending gerrymandering, replacing the Electoral College
with a direct popular vote, eliminating the Senate filibuster, making Senate
representation more proportional, ending lifetime tenure on the Supreme
Court, and making it a little easier to reform the Constitution—all of these
changes would simply catch us up to the rest of the world.
