How healthy is democracy in America?
US must quickly fix its problems at home to continue its leadership role in promoting and assisting democracies worldwide
The US continues to be the leader of the free world. Only the US has the power, legitimacy, and credentials to play that role. While populism is on a rise in several countries and the global power dynamic is drifting towards becoming bipolar, societies with democratic ideals desperately need the US to act as an anchor for them.
The guiding role of the US has become further critical as democracies around the world feel headwinds. Unfortunately, the health of democracy in the US is not the same as it used to be. As per the Washington DC-based Freedom House’s score in freedom, the US is on par with Panama and Romania.
Democracy did not start to decline in the US with Trump becoming president, nor did it stop after Trump departed from the White House. In the last two decades, the US elected presidents three times though they didn’t win the popular vote. Legislative dysfunction is another major contributor to Americans losing faith in their political leaders. The far-right and far-left factions have made it almost impossible for the two parties to cooperate. The humiliating experience of the Republican Party in facing the longest contest in 160 years of history for the House Speaker’s election shows the power of the extremes.
The historic turning point in the backsliding of American democracy occurred in 2020-21, when Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. The peaceful transfer of power, a critical component of a democracy, was no longer a given in the world’s most celebrated democracy. One of the central foreign policy goals of the US has been to spread democracy and assist democratically elected leaders. In December 2021, US President Joe Biden held a virtual Summit for Democracy to highlight his administration’s commitment to defend democracy worldwide.
Deep political divisions
Biden is seriously concerned about America’s democracy. In November 2022, he warned his compatriots that democracy was in peril in the US and appealed to voters to vote against lies and political violence. Still, 31 per cent of Americans continue to believe that the last presidential election was stolen, and Trump was the winner.
Almost a similar number believes that it is unnecessary to persecute the people involved in the January 6 insurrection. Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die, rightly points out: “In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rule of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long.”
When there is such a huge question mark over the health of American democracy, how can it aspire to keep promoting and assisting democracy as one of the central components of its foreign policy? It is essential that the US political elites work together to fix their country’s democracy. For the US to continue to play the global leadership role and to promote and assist democracies worldwide, it must quickly fix the problems at home first.