American Politics: the State of American Democracy
American democracy has long been considered a role model, and its constitution served as inspiration and example for other state-builders. In recent years, however, there has been a decline in international democracy ratings, and democracy in the US is now deemed “flawed” and “substantially declining on the Liberal Democracy index” by the Economic Intelligence Unit and the V-Dem Institute.
Faith in the integrity of the presidential election is down following former President Donald Trump’s claims that the results were stolen, and trust is low in democratic institutions, such as the police, the criminal justice system and Congress.
What is the state of American democracy at this time? Does every vote count? Has former President Donald Trump had any lasting impact on American democracy, and what international implications can be discerned?
Speakers:
Daniel Ziblatt, Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of the Transformations of Democracy unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Author of “How Democracies Die” (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky
Åsa Wikforss, Professor of theoretical philosophy at Stockholm University, and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Academy. Author of the forthcoming book “Därför demokrati” (Fri tanke, 2021)
Jan Hallenberg, Research Leader at UI, and Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the Swedish National Defense University. He is an expert on US foreign and security policy
The webinar was moderated by Ylva Pettersson, Programme Manager at UI.