Two Cheers for Two Parties

"Political scientist Yascha Mounk tells explains to Amanpour why some of Europe's oldest democracies might be on shaky ground."

"Democrats and Republicans belong to increasingly homogeneous parties. Can we survive the loss of local politics?"

"Voters are more open to progressive economic policy now than in the recent past. But they are not opposed to capitalism."

"A new study shows Americans have little understanding of their political adversaries—and education doesn’t help."

"The coalitions that sustained the traditional left parties in the West have collapsed. New ones can be built—but it won’t be easy."

"Parties are losing control over their candidates. Two scholars argue that ordinary Americans are the ones paying the price."

Yascha Mounk argues, “Nationalism is like a half-wild beast. As long as it remains under our control, it can be of tremendous use. But if we abandon it, others are sure to step in, prodding and baiting the beast to bring out its most ferocious side.”

“As liberal democracies have become worse at improving their citizens’ living standards, populist movements that disavow liberalism are emerging from Brussels to Brasília and from Warsaw to Washington.”

In his new book, Yascha Mounk writes: “Some of the most important economic decisions facing countries around the world are now taken by technocrats.”

Yascha Mounk argues, “Donald Trump won two-thirds of American counties but only a little more than one-third of America's GDP. He did much better in parts of the country where there has been less recent economic investment, where there are fewer highly qualified people, even where the share of jobs that might be automated away in the coming decades is higher.”

“Finding the right response to automation is both an economic and a political necessity. At stake is not only the broad-based prosperity to which society has long grown accustomed, but also the continued viability of the democratic system itself.”

At this point, why would we expect anything else?

On Wednesday [March 15, 2017]  at AEI, experts on European politics discussed the results of the Dutch general election.

The world has just experienced a watershed year for populist politics, with antiestablishment challengers winning elections and illiberal regimes modeling an alternative, says expert Yascha Mounk.

Dark days this summer showed how government by the people—beset by illiberal populists on one side and undemocratic elites on the other—is poised for extinction.

Four reasons not to be cheered by Emmanuel Macron’s election to the French presidency.

What the rise of populist movements means for democracy.

With Angela Merkel’s re-election almost certain, Germany’s election has been startlingly dull. But more is going on than meets the eye.

Yascha Mounk discusses the global turn against illiberal democracy and the rise of populism across the world on CNN's Global Public Square with Fareed Zakaria.

At this point, why would we expect anything else?

Take it from a new American.

America is on its way to a full-blown constitutional crisis.

It might not be Trump, but our system is more vulnerable to a demagogue than you'd think.

We have been surprised by the scale and intensity of attention our work has garnered around the world since the New York Times profiled it last week. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been. Our research, after all, helped contextualize the seismic shifts we’ve seen in some of the world’s long-standing democracies over the past year — and comes to some rather startling findings.

WASHINGTON — Yascha Mounk is used to being the most pessimistic person in the room. Mr. Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: that once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way.

The citizens of wealthy, established democracies are less satisfied with their governments than they have been at any time since opinion polling began. Most scholars have interpreted this as a sign of dissatisfaction with particular governments rather than with the political system as a whole. Drawing on recent public opinion data, we suggest that this optimistic interpretation is no longer plausible. Across a wide sample of countries in North America and Western Europe, citizens of mature democracies have become markedly less satisfied with their form of government and surprisingly open to nondemocratic alternatives. A serious democratic disconnect has emerged. If it widens even further, it may begin to challenge the stability of seemingly consolidated democracies.

In recent years, parties and candidates challenging key democratic norms have won unprecedented popular support in liberal democracies across the globe. Drawing on public opinion data from the World Values Survey and various national polls, we show that the success of anti-establishment parties and candidates is not a temporal or geographic aberration, but rather a reflection of growing popular disaffection with liberal-democratic norms and institutions, and of increasing support for authoritarian interpretations of democracy. The record number of anti-system politicians in office raises uncertainty about the strength of supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies and highlights the need for further analysis of the signs of democratic deconsolidation.

"Mann and Ornstein posit that democracy in America is being endangered by extreme politics."

"Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must reclaim its purpose."

"The House of Representatives resolves inconclusive presidential elections—and while Democrats may hold most of the seats, Republicans control more state delegations."

"We’ve all heard the laments — we’ve made some of them ourselves — that Washington is broken, that our political system can’t grapple with the nation’s big, long-term problems. So what can be done about it?"