THEORETICAL ACCOUNT AND ARGUMENT

Structural and race-based inequality, as well as attitudinal shifts in the American citizenry, arguably are tied to the increasing levels of social and political polarization observed in the United States (Lamont, Park, and Ayala-Hurtado Reference Lamont, Park and Ayala-Hurtado2017). Mettler and Lieberman (Reference Mettler and Lieberman2020) argue that high inequality, racism, and polarization are independently associated with previous crises of American democracy. For the first time, these factors converged in a multilayered crisis of the political system, epitomized by the Trump presidency.

Even before Trump, an American Political Science Association task force (2004) expressed concern about the political effects of increasing inequality in the United States. Since then, further studies have shown that economic inequality in the country translates into political inequality, skewing legislation toward the preferences of the well-off (Kelly Reference Kelly2020; Page and Gilens Reference Page and Gilens2020). Mounk (Reference Mounk2018) noted that this bias already is a sign of democratic deterioration if we consider democracy to be a regime in which political decisions follow the preferences of average citizens. Moreover, a series of recent analyses of the politics of race in the United States show that inequality is associated with significant restrictions on Black and Latino access to crucial civil and political rights (Bateman Reference Bateman2018; Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub Reference Baumgartner, Epp and Shoub2018; Fraga Reference Fraga2018; Hajnal Reference Hajnal2020; Jardina Reference Jardina2019; Michener Reference Michener2018; Phoenix Reference Phoenix2019). In addition, a series of political attitudes—traditionally envisioned as “pillars of democracy”—shifted significantly in the American electorate (Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2019; Przeworski Reference Przeworski2019). One important shift is the process of polarization, leading to “cultural wars” in the contemporary United States (Carothers Reference Carothers, Carothers and O’Donohue2019).

Eventually, Trump’s presidency encouraged researchers to compare the American experience with other cases of populist rule. In an attempt to isolate their common traits, Levitsky and Ziblatt (Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018) famously compared cases in which democracy did break after the emergence of populist leaders. They concluded that democracy eroded when elites underestimated the threat of populist outsiders and overestimated existing institutional capacity to contain them. Democracies, they argued, are secure only when systems of mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance prevent aspiring autocrats from reaching office. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt (Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018), because Trump was able to overcome those safeguards, the risk of democratic erosion in the United States should not be dismissed.

In contrast, Weyland (Reference Weyland2020) compares both cases in which populist leaders have “suffocated” democracy and others in which they have not. He theorizes that democratic survival is contingent on six factors: (1) the levels of political instability; (2) a leader’s capacity to operate outside of institutional norms by pursuing paralegal change; (3) the strength of checks and balances in the political system, which prevent rapid change; (4) the incidence of an economic crisis; (5) the incidence of an internal-security crisis; and (6) a country’s dependence on natural resources.

Despite its different aims and theoretical emphases, Weyland’s (Reference Weyland2020) theory replicates one of the main limitations of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s (Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018) framework—namely, a relative disregard for structural variables that shape both institutional dynamics and democratic survival. In particular, we emphasize the importance of two overlooked predictors of democratic reversal: inequality and attitudinal change in society. Whereas political institutions have remained formally the same in the United States, the depth and nature of social inequality and citizens’ attitudinal predispositions toward politics have changed significantly (Piketty, Saez, and Zucman Reference Piketty, Saez and Zucman2018; Przeworski Reference Przeworski2019).

Disregarding the effects that these (and other) structural factors have on institutional dynamics fosters endogeneity: democracy in the United States is portrayed as stable and safe given institutional stability, whereas institutional stability is seen as the main consequence of democratic stability. Moreover, because one of the claimed advantages of a set-theoretical perspective is the possibility of accounting for several potential causal variables when comparing few cases, the neglect of structural factors potentially driving the causal dynamics of democratic backsliding is unwarranted.

Scholars already have identified income inequality as a potential driver of democratic erosion in the United States (Lieberman et al. Reference Lieberman, Mettler, Pepinsky, Roberts and Valelly2019; Mounk Reference Mounk2018; Przeworski Reference Przeworski2019). Income distribution also has been shown to correlate with the emergence of populism elsewhere (Pastor and Veronesi Reference Pastor and Veronesi2018) and democratic breakdown (Acemoglu and Robinson Reference Acemoglu and Robinson2006). As shown in figure 1, the United States is at its historical peak regarding inequality and ethnic diversity. The country also shows higher levels on both indicators than comparable advanced capitalist societies.

Figure 1 Evolution of Inequality and Ethnic Fractionalization in the United States

Source: Lenka Drazanova, Reference Drazanova2019, “Historical Index of Ethnic Fractionalization Dataset.” Harvard Dataverse.

Economic inequality makes it easier for elites to dominate legislative bodies (Gilens Reference Gilens2012; Page and Gilens Reference Page and Gilens2020) and policy (Bartels Reference Bartels2016; Kelly Reference Kelly2020). To the extent that inequality undermines citizenship rights, it may make repression more effective against minorities and the poor (Cole Reference Cole2018; López Reference López2020). These dynamics slowly erode the legitimacy of democratic institutions while predisposing increasingly large electoral constituencies against “the establishment.” Also, these dynamics often precede the polarization that we observe at the institutional level when incumbent politicians and populist leaders seek to advance their career in a socially polarized scenario.

Omitting the effects of inequality is particularly striking for the analysis of democracy in the United States, where race and ethnicity are complexly associated with privilege (predominantly for whites) and with unequal civil, political, and social entitlements for people of color and poor white citizens. In a few decades, the United States crystallized as a highly unequal and ethnically divided polity among advanced capitalist societies. Some scholars point to inequality and broader changes in the country’s social stratification (Putnam Reference Putnam2016) as driving consequential attitudinal shifts in the American public (Jardina Reference Jardina2019).

Accounting for these attitudinal traits and their relationship to structural trends in society therefore is relevant (Inglehart and Welzel Reference Inglehart and Welzel2005; Ruck et al. Reference Ruck, Matthews, Kyritsis, Atkinson and Bentley2020). Foa and Mounk (Reference Foa and Mounk2016) showed how younger generations in established democracies are more receptive to nondemocratic alternatives, whereas Kwak et al. (Reference Kwak, Tomescu-Dubrow, Slomczynski and Dubrow2020) argued that those attitudes, when prevalent among new-citizen cohorts, are associated with subsequent reductions in the levels of democracy. Moreover, research recently portrayed the emergence of authoritarian leaders as being facilitated by prevalent resentment among segments of the electorate (Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2019). Xenophobia and racism are pivotal attitudes today and they appear disproportionately prevalent among the younger and older cohorts in Western societies, including the United States (Inglehart and Norris Reference Norris and Inglehart2019). Attitudinal change and citizens’ predispositions usually are tied to increasing anger, resentment, and animosity against institutions and also are posited as a possible source of observed political polarization in the United States (Miller-Idriss Reference Miller-Idriss2020; Przeworski Reference Przeworski2019).

In summary, we think social structures (i.e., high levels of inequality and society’s racial stratification) and their attitudinal counterparts are fundamental drivers of institutional dynamics. Without accounting for such possible drivers, institutional strength is “explained” endogenously by preexisting institutional strength. We acknowledge US democratic exceptionalism. Yet, we also claim that from a comparative perspective, the United States is better understood as an unlikely democracy, a historical outlier among a more egalitarian and secular set of Western nations (see Mettler and Lieberman Reference Mettler and Lieberman2020). In turn, institutions are at least partially endogenous to social structure and therefore can unravel rapidly in the context of structural change.

METHODOLOGICAL SHORTCOMINGS

The adoption of QCA to estimate the likelihood of democratic decay in the United States also is analytically problematic. Recent work strongly discourages the use of QCA for causal analysis (Baumgartner and Thiem Reference Baumgartner and Thiem2020; Bowers Reference Bowers2014; Lucas and Szatrowski Reference Lucas and Szatrowski2014; and see Ragin Reference Ragin2014b for a defense). Even if effective for other analytical purposes, set-theoretical approaches are deterministic and thus inadequate for assessing the likelihood of a future event. Yet, we still think it is useful to replicate the original analysis using QCA while adjusting for debatable coding decisions and omitted variables. We demonstrate that coding corrections—and the inclusion of three relevant omitted variables discussed previously—lead to very different Boolean reductions. Bracketing the inadequacy of QCA for this purpose, the results we obtained are ambiguous regarding the immunity of the United States to democratic recession.

Set-theoretical approaches can be interpreted as being deterministic in nature (Mahoney Reference Mahoney2000). Therefore, the method is not appropriate for estimating the probability of an unobserved outcome (i.e., the likelihood of democratic breakdown in the United States). Second, according to the previous theoretical discussion, the exclusion of important structural causes of democratic breakdown should be reconsidered. Third, assuming that the research goal is to estimate the determinants of democratic breakdown and continuity, instead of the probability of “suffocation,” other methodological fallouts deserve attention.

REPLICATION AND RECONSIDERATION

We now focus on an alternative version of the data (López Reference López2021) (the full dataset, all results, and R codes are in the online appendix), which recalibrates the outcome set, excludes the United States from the sample, removes endogenous measures, recodes the cases of Ecuador and Bulgaria, and adds case memberships for three sets: unequal countries,Footnote ¹ ethnically divided countries,Footnote ² and countries with attitudinal complexes in the public that are considered more compatible with authoritarianism.Footnote ³ Table 1 displays the number of predicted paths toward both democratic breakdown and NOT-Breakdown. We assess each added variable separately and in combination.

Table 1 Results with Recalibrations and Changes

As long as we do not consider the possibility of economic and security crises occurring in the United States, Weyland’s (Reference Weyland2020) argument resists each adjustment separately because NOT-Membership in “High Instability,” “Easy Change,” and “Hydrocarbon Windfall” continue to predict “NOT-Democratic Suffocation.” However, inconsistencies do emerge. For instance, the recalibration of the outcome portrays membership in the “High Instability” and “Paralegal Change” sets as associated with NOT-Suffocation (see the online appendix for all reductions). When considering the emergence of economic and security crises, removing endogenous measures is sufficient for the US membership to match one path toward Democratic Suffocation and no path toward NOT-Suffocation.

Figure 2 displays all of the paths toward democratic breakdown when considering all changes and recalibrations at the same time.

Figure 2 Boolean Reductions

The results display further inconsistent configurations leading to either democratic breakdown or survival. For instance, membership in the “Economic Crisis” set is not only a necessary condition for breakdown but also part of one path toward survival. Moreover, the latter fits the other US set memberships, suggesting that American democracy would benefit from a major economic crisis. Some scholars might claim that the United States is already a member of the economic and security crises sets due to the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the insurrection by Trump loyalists. In that case, the only full match for the United States is consistent with a Democratic Suffocation outcome. We do not take these results at face value but rather as evidence that QCA reductions failed to clearly differentiate case configurations leading to either democratic breakdown or survival—even when specified in ways that we consider more theoretically and methodologically adequate.