What do the following activities, organizations, and companies have in common:
The Soybean Innovation Lab in Illinois
The delivery of food aid in Ukraine
The provision of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV in South Africa
Neonatal care in Ghana
John Deere tractors, and
Land grant universities like Michigan State University?
All of them have benefitted from partnerships with, and/or funding from, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Most of them have been significantly affected by stop-work orders affecting USAID that were issued after President Donald Trump took office.
The gutting of USAID within the first 100 days of the Trump administration has upended the aid sector around the world.
This post provides a brief overview of USAID: What does the agency do? What has happened, and what are the consequences?
So What Is USAID?
USAID was created by Congress in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy to administer humanitarian aid and programs on behalf of the US government. In recent years it has distributed some $40 billion annually in aid to 120 countries, providing support to address illness and hunger, neonatal care, clean water, electricity, and disaster relief. Among its many tasks, it promotes democracy all over Africa, conservation efforts in the Amazon, and awareness campaigns about clean air across Southeast Asia. Its spending, procurement, and project implementation procedures are subject to rigorous oversight and compliance regulations administered by the USAID Office of the Inspector General.
USAID does not give aid directly to governments. Instead, it often provides “tied aid,” meaning that the aid is conditional on recipients spending aid funding on American goods and services. For example, USAID might partner with a for-profit company like John Deere, which makes agricultural equipment, or agricultural seed companies like Corteva Agriscience, to deliver agricultural aid. USAID also provides funding to international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as CARE, World Vision, Doctors Without Borders, or Catholic Relief Services, or domestic NGOs in Benin, Thailand, or Nicaragua that offer assistance in sectors from health care to education in developing countries. Some of these NGOs depend on USAID for a large percentage of their budgets. Finally USAID has partnered with US land grant universities like MSU to engage in research on water, electricity provision, or food security.
And although the much loved Peace Corps is a separate government agency it has worked closely with USAID. The Peace Corps was created in 1961 under the administration of President John F. Kennedy after he proposed it on a campaign stop at the University of Michigan when he was running for President. The Peace Corps has partnered with USAID on projects such as the Small Project Assistance Program to support community-driven projects such as the prevention of malaria or human trafficking, or disaster preparedness. Many Peace Corps volunteers often go on to serve rewarding and productive careers at USAID.
Washington, DC, USA- March 1, 2020: One of the entrance of United States Agency for International Development in Washington, DC, USA, an independent agency of the United States federal government.
What Has Happened?
On returning to office for his second and last term as President, Donald Trump signed an executive order that froze almost all international spending for a 90-day review. Cuts to foreign assistance were spelled out in detail on January 24, 2025, followed by the filing of termination and leave notices to USAID employees. In a lightning speed process, thousands of employees had been terminated by late February. As of last month, an estimated 50,000 US citizens and twice as many foreign service nationals had lost their jobs due to cuts. It has now been reported that many termination letters contained a number of serious errors which has affected severance pay and pension payouts for some USAID employees.
Besides domestic workers, thousands of people were contracted from all over the world to work for USAID. Many had loyally served USAID for decades. Those employees who work for USAID on annual contracts (as many who work abroad do) cannot file for unemployment. Some have been stranded in Egypt, Mozambique, Togo, and Cambodia, without a clear path for planning or paying for a return to the U.S. of themselves, their families, and their belongings.
With regard to USAID funds, approximately 5800 out of 6200 multi-year contracts, to the tune of $54 billion, have been cancelled. Waivers have been provided for life-saving humanitarian aid, but other requests have faced the problem that, with the dismantling of USAID, there are no staff in place to review them. Further directives issued in recent months have put exemptions on hold and another 42 of the remaining 900 contracts have been canceled. A USAID internal report notes that the stop work order was implemented so quickly that food aid was left rotting in ports and warehouses en route to its destination. Vehicles were impounded. Buildings shuttered.
After Elon Musk made a show of remedying an apparent error in DOGE’s massive cuts to foreign aid, the Trump administration quietly doubled down on its decision to stop sending emergency food to millions of children who are starving in Bangladesh, Somalia, and other countries, The Atlantic reported in April.
The Trump administration announced plans in March that USAID would come fully under that State Department and reduce its staff to about 15 positions. An email to USAID employees titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission” detailed the plan despite lawmakers’ objections that the efforts to downsize the agency were unconstitutional. USAID employees were also ordered in March to shred and burn personnel documents.
What Are the Consequences?
Most affected by cuts to USAID include patients receiving drugs for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and children in developing countries who get vaccines. In addition, they include women in Ghana receiving neonatal care, and approximately one million Rohingya from Myanmar whose rations in a refugee camp in Bangladesh will likely be cut in half if more funds are not raised soon. They include almost half of the population of Sudan who face acute hunger. Within weeks of the cuts to USAID, 80% of community kitchens across Sudan closed, leaving millions at risk of dying from starvation or preventable illness. Finally, they include Ukrainians receiving corn from American farmers.
Children around the world are already dying as a result of the cuts, and experts are projecting hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of anticipated deaths in coming months and years from hunger, AIDS, and tuberculosis. Until recently, around 27 million children benefitted from nutrition programs that USAID funded; 4 million received antiretrovirals and 13 million others received treatment from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a health program started under President George Bush, which has now been halted.
Now, around 1,400 infants are being infected by HIV every day, an infection rate that might have been prevented had the new US administration not cut funding to USAID and HIV/AIDS organizations. About 3 million more children and adults will die from HIV-related causes before 2030 because of global aid cuts, according to projections published in HIV Lancet.
With respect to conflict prevention, Andrew Natsios, the former head of USAID under President George Bush, who identifies as a “conservative internationalist” has argued that there is a connection between rising food prices and conflict. He worries that without the food aid provided by USAID, we could witness an alarming rise in conflicts in developing countries that are vulnerable to spikes in food prices due to shortages or climate change. This could have demonstrable effects on our own national security and stability.
Several scholars have observed that these cuts also affect US national security by undercutting our reliance on soft power. Soft power relies on humanitarian relief, food aid, and democracy promotion that strengthens our alliances with other countries. An unintended aspect of soft power is that many of the foreign service nationals who work for USAID abroad often end up as members of parliament, heads of NGOs, or ministers in their own countries. This means the United States already has linkages and allies that serve national governments in other countries which has potential benefits for the US. Such connections will be weakened with the demise of USAID.
Finally, as we saw last month with the earthquake in Myanmar, the US retreat means our replacement by China and Russia, which ultimately undercuts our national interest and our moral standing in the world.
This post is based on a presentation by Anne Pitcher given at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Anne Pitcher is Associate Chair of Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and Director of Graduate Studies, and is the Joel Samoff Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies. CPS faculty have offered ongoing expert analysis on political events of 2025. Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies contributed updates to this report.
January 19, 2025 was the last day of the American Century.
More precisely and less melodramatically, the liberal international order created by the United States in the aftermath of World War II is gone.
Some would say, “Good riddance.” But my comments will focus on what has been lost with the demise of an order that sought to advance a world of democratic polities united in an open global economy.
I am focusing on the open global economy and specifically trade because I think the change there is clear and dramatic. (Questions about the security side of the liberal international order in practice are also worth asking, but the changes there are not yet as clear.)
The ascent of the liberal international order
The goal of an open global economy formed, in part, as a response to the Great Depression where the collapse of trade between 1929 and 1933, driven in large part by tariff walls and competitive devaluations, helped make the Great Depression a worldwide event. It was achieved through the lowering of tariffs, the creation of a stable exchange rate regime, and eventually the creation of the World Trade Organization to limit non-tariff barriers to trade.
Since World War II, the global economy has grown larger and faster than any other period in history. And trade has grown faster than the world economy, making it a larger proportion of the world economy. This growth has lifted billions of people around the world out of dire poverty.
Two things to understand about international order: First, it is not a set of ironclad rules. Practical politics in some cases requires compromises with the rules, institutions, and values embedded in an international order. Second, an international order, like any political order, prioritizes some interests and values over others, so it is not neutral or equally beneficial for all.
An international order is driven by the major powers to suit their interests, but it is more sustainable when others gain from it. They have less reason to challenge that order and are more likely to operate within it.
The liberal international order advanced the interests and values of the United States for decades. But it also offered the opportunity for other countries to benefit from the open global economy through trade and investment.
Doing so required curbing the ability of the United States to use its economic dominance to advance its particular interests at the expense of an open global economy. Multilateralism in trade, a novel feature of this order, was key.
When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in the late 1940s, 23 countries came together and offered reductions in their own tariffs and committed to non-discrimination among themselves. Negotiating in a multilateral setting reduced the ability of the U.S. to use its dominant economy as bargaining leverage.
Since then, the rounds of GATT leading to the establishment of the World Trade Organization used multilateralism and the rules and procedures of the WTO to limit the ability of large economies to flex their economic muscle to gain advantageous terms of trade.
The Cost of Tariffs
President Trump’s use of tariffs, in his first term and now, undermines both multilateralism and a rule-based order. It shifts trade negotiations back to a bilateral basis, between the U.S. and specific trading partners, and openly flouts WTO rules, instead of using those rules to justify them.
Although it is not clear yet whether Trump will erect permanent tariff walls around the U.S. economy or merely seeks to use tariffs as a negotiating ploy, either use threatens the open global economy.
In its place, they give him the power to use the leverage of access to the U.S. market to secure bilateral trade deals that favor the U.S. at the expense of its trading partners.
But the use of that leverage comes at the cost of alienating long-term trading partners.
One of the great advantages that the U.S. had during the Cold War was that most industrialized countries were aligned with it and not the Soviet Union. They did so in part because they benefited from the open global economy of the liberal international order. If that order is gone, they have less reason to align with the U.S.
Canada gives us a clear example of this shift. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he would step down because his Liberal party was headed into an election this year 20 points behind the Conservatives. By the time the Liberal party selected Mark Carney as their new leader and candidate to be Prime Minister, the Liberals had eliminated the 20 point gap. They are in a close race with the Conservatives. This happened because both candidates to replace Trudeau in the party adopted anti-Trump and anti-American positions, which are now popular with Canadians who feel they are being bullied by the Trump tariffs.
It is a sign of the cost of the demise of the liberal international order.
This expert opinion piece by James D. Morrow is based on his presentation at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The independent, non-partisan event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Dr. Morrow’s research addresses theories of international politics, and his published work covers bargaining, the causes of war, military alliances, arms races, power transition theory, links between international trade and conflict, the role of international institutions, and domestic politics and foreign policy. Dr. Morrow is the A.F.K. Organski Collegiate Professor of World Politics at the University of Michigan and is an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies contributed to the development of this post.
Conspiracy theories are not a new feature of American Society. Throughout history, many conspiracy theories have become a standpoint of pop culture—even when debunked by scientific evidence.
Research shows that half of Americans consistently endorse at least one conspiracy theory. This pattern continues today. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 25% of U.S. adults believe there is at least some truth to the claim that powerful elites planned the coronavirus outbreak. The persistence of debunked claims underscores the broader role that conspiratorial thinking plays in shaping mass opinion.
In the past, conspiracy theories were confined to marginal outlets and fringe networks. Today, they are pervasive in mainstream media. The presence of political figures who openly endorse and promote conspiratorial thinking reflects the growing appeal of these narratives among the public. This has reached new levels of salience with the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has publicly claimed that Wi-Fi causes cancer and a “leaky brain.” His appointment indicates that conspiracy beliefs may play an increasing role in steering governance and public policy.
Government Suspicion
The mainstream assumption is that believing in conspiracy theories results from a deeper sense of paranoia or from falling for misinformation. However, conspiracy thinking is closely linked to government suspicion.
When people believe that powerful forces secretly control major events, they are more likely to question the motives and transparency of public institutions. Many people who are suspicious of the government have good reasons to be. Communities that have lived through government failures are often the most distrustful of public institutions.
This creates a tricky situation. How do we rebuild trust in government while recognizing the real harm it has done in the past?
Previous research has established a link between government suspicion, race, and education. However, my research (co-authored with Mara Cecilia Ostfeld) shows a more complicated story. It highlights a new factor driving this relationship: individuals’ proximity to and familiarity with government-inflicted harms.
For many communities, conspiracy thinking or suspicion toward government institutions is deeply rooted in lived experiences. Events like the Flint Water Crisis and the U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study conducted at Tuskegeeare not distant historical moments; they are lasting traumas that continue to shape public perceptions of government accountability.
My research examines how familiarity with these injustices and identification with the communities affected contribute to government suspicion, particularly in Michigan.
Michigan Survey Findings
Through the Michigan Metro Area Communities Study (MIMACS), we surveyed Flint, Grand Rapids, and Ypsilanti residents to assess government suspicion levels and explore how past harm influences present-day trust.
The findings reveal widespread skepticism. Key findings:
More than half of surveyed residents believe the public is routinely kept in the dark about major events.
Black residents are the most likely to express government suspicion, with 64% holding this view, compared to 51% of Latino and 45% of White respondents.
Education also plays a role—people without a bachelor’s degree report higher levels of suspicion 58% than those with more formal education 37%.
The impact of government suspicion extends beyond attitudes—it influences behaviors essential for democratic participation. Individuals who are more skeptical of the government are less likely to vote or trust public health guidance. Among respondents with low levels of suspicion, 87% reported that they planned to vote in the 2024 election, compared to just 71% of those with high levels of suspicion.
A similar pattern emerges with vaccine attitudes: while nearly all 98% of those with low government suspicion believe in vaccine effectiveness, support drops to 80% among those with high government suspicion.
Flint serves as a particularly striking example of how government failures contribute to long-term suspicion.
The city’s 2014 water crisis exposed thousands of residents to lead-contaminated water, leaving deep scars on public confidence in government institutions. Sixty percent of Flint residents surveyed expressed high levels of government suspicion– significantly more than in Grand Rapids or Ypsilanti. Familiarity with the crisis further amplifies suspicion—63% of Flint residents who are highly familiar with the water crisis report high levels of government suspicion, compared to just 37% of those with moderate knowledge of the event.
A similar pattern emerges when we examine the long-term effects of the U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study, in which Black men were intentionally denied treatment for syphilis between 1932 and 1972. The study has had a lasting impact on Black communities’ trust in medical institutions, and our data reflects this reality. Among Black respondents familiar with the study, 74% expressed high levels of government suspicion. While awareness of the study had a weaker effect on non-Black respondents, the historical weight of such an injustice continues to shape public trust in government and healthcare.
My findings demonstrate that government suspicion is not simply a product of misinformation—it is often a rational response to systemic failures and historical violence.
Government suspicion does not develop overnight; it is built over years of broken promises, neglect, and systemic harm. Understanding its origins is the first step toward repairing relationships between the government and the communities it serves.
Franshelly Martinez Ortiz is a doctoral candidate in political science and public policy at the University of Michigan and a fellow at the U-M Center for Racial Justice. She is also a Converse Miller Fellow at the Center for Political Studies and a Next Generation Scholar at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
Mara Cecilia Ostfeld is a faculty lead of the Detroit Metro Area Communities Study, a faculty associate at the U-M Center for Political Studies, and an associate research professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at U-M. She is an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
This research was supported by the Knight Foundation, the Ballmer Group, the Kresge Foundation, Poverty Solutions, and the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan. For more details, visitMichigan CEAL.
Americans have a system of government that is specifically designed so that one guy can’t screw the whole thing up. It hasn’t worked out that way.
Over the last hundred-plus years, we’ve centralized more and more power in the hands of the president, and the success of our system depends more and more on the judgment and character of one man. If the judgment and character of that person is lacking, they can make a big mess very quickly.
If you’re a Republican, you were probably keenly aware of that a couple of years ago, and if you’re a Democrat, you’re probably keenly aware right now.
Who should we blame for runaway presidential power? Well, if you take our founding documents seriously, you shouldn’t blame the presidents. Chief executives are natural predators. Grasping for more power is simply in their nature. If you want to keep them from getting stronger and stronger, then someone has to go out and stop them.
Congress: ‘Your Primary Suspect’
The Constitution sets up several such someones to stop the president, but the big one is Congress, and if you’re going to blame someone for screwing up, Congress has to be your primary suspect, because it has a lot of the best tools for constraining the president.
The president needs the Senate’s consent to appoint most of the major officers in the executive branch. Congress can investigate what the executive is doing and potentially embarrass the president with what it finds. Congress can kick the president out of office if half of the House and two-thirds of the Senate are on board. And, most importantly of all, Congress has the right to make laws that tell the president what he must do, what he can do, and what he can’t do.
The problem is that Congress’s trump card of passing laws is not as not effective as it looks on paper. When Congress passes a law to rein in the president, the president can veto it. And to override that veto, you need 2/3 of the Senate and 2/3 of the House. Remember, impeaching the president requires only 2/3 of the Senate and half of the House. So, mechanically, it’s actually easier to kick the president out of office than to pass a law that reins in his power.
For practical purposes, this means that if the president makes a power grab, Congress can’t stop him unless there is a broad, bipartisan consensus. Members of the president’s own party need to be willing to tangle with him, and the problem with that is that it’s political suicide.
Also Responsible: Voters who Tune Out Congress
The president is the face of the party. Most voters have only a dim idea of who their member of Congress is and what they’re doing. Pop quiz: Do you know the name of the person who represents you in the House of Representatives? Can you name or describe any bill that that person introduced or cosponsored? Probably the biggest vote in the 2023-2024 cycle was the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the bill that made spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Do you know how your representative voted on that bill?
Congressional elections are rarely decided based on how voters feel about that member of Congress, because they usually don’t know enough to have strong feelings.
The only politician that they really know is the president, so insofar as their decision about whether to vote and who to vote for is at all predicated on what’s happening in Washington, it’s usually predicated on how they feel about the president.
If the president is popular and successful, members of Congress from their party will do well too. And if the president is going down, a lot of the party’s congresspeople are going down with him.
If you want a great illustration, just look at the last time a party took on their president in a sustained and serious way. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, congressional Republicans joined with Democrats to force Richard Nixon to resign and pass landmark legislation that seriously curbed presidential power. Then, in the 1974 elections, voter outrage over Watergate produced one of the biggest Democratic landslides in history. Ironically, but maybe not surprisingly given how little voters know about what their members are doing, this landslide swept away quite a few Republicans who had played important roles in getting rid of Nixon.
So you can’t really take a swing at a president from your party without hurting yourself and your whole party. And I think that’s why you see a lot of people who clearly don’t like what the president is doing keep quiet and don’t do anything to stop him.
Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, John Thune, and a lot of other senior, powerful congressional Republicans pretty obviously never cared for Trump. But I think they calculated that an open conflict between Trump and congressional Republicans would sink the whole party and hand the country over to the Democrats, and they weren’t willing to do that. If you want to know why congressional Democrats continued to insist that Biden was fit to lead even when it was obvious that he wasn’t, same deal.
I understand the appeal of blaming American political dysfunction on Congress. But I don’t think that gets at the root causes. They’re responding to the political incentives that we the voters create.
The Founding Fathers assumed that the people would feel more connected with their member of Congress than with the president. We don’t. We’re not interested. Our fixation on the president has put Congress in a tough spot.
If you want to understand how we’ve moved to this system where we depend so much on the judgment and character of one man and how we can get out of it, I think you have to consider that the problem is us.
This expert opinion piece by Christian Fong is based on his presentation at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Dr. Fong specializes in the study of the United States Congress. Before coming to Michigan, he was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, where he served as an economic policy advisor to Senator Mike Lee. Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies contributed to the development of this post. Read more on the recent teach-ins from the CPS Blog.
Democracy in the United States is in decline. This backsliding is part of a global trend that political scientists refer to as a “reverse wave”: For the first time in 50 years, there are more countries moving toward autocracy than democracy. Historically, this reverse wave has distinctive features: It’s distinguished by democratically elected leaders seeking to expand and centralize their power, following a shared playbook that undermines both institutional checks and balances and pathways for societal resistance. So what’s happening in the United States is not unique. But it’s also not inevitable, and global examples can provide some guidance on how to fight effectively for democracy.
Democratic Decline
Let’s start with some evidence.
A democracy is a political regime in which rulers are selected via free, fair, and competitive elections and exercise power via limits set by guarantees of human and civil rights, and by institutional checks and balances.
To measure and compare the health of democracies across nations over time, political scientists use a robust set of indices that track core features of democracy– indicators like political participation, electoral processes, and civil liberties.
These indices vary somewhat in their metrics and weighting strategies, but they show a consistent pattern. The three figures compiled by the Brookings Institution below show some of the main indices used in comparative politics to evaluate US democracy, and their contours each show a downward trajectory. They indicate that democracy in the United States has declined since roughly 2010, with a sharper decline since 2017. The Economist has ranked the US as a “flawed democracy” since 2016. Experts agree: Freedom and democracy in the US are in decline.
While this may seem academic, we can observe democratic decline in our daily lives when we see elections becoming less free, fair, and competitive; checks and balances being eroded, and human or civil rights being trampled upon.
The Reverse Wave
This democratic decline is part of a trend that is global and pervasive.
More than a third of the world population now lives under authoritarian rule. And over the past 50 years, the number of autocratizing countries has dramatically increased while the number of democratizing countries has dwindled. At the end of 2023, democratization was occurring in 18 countries, representing 5 percent of the world’s population; autocratization was occurring in 42 countries, representing 35% of the world’s population. We’ve seen surges away from democracy before– “reverse waves” occurred between World War I and World War II, and again between 1962 and 1973. But the reverse wave that the United States is now a part of is different from those we have seen before for three main reasons:
Today’s democratic reversals are happening in mature, consolidated democracies that are expected to be secure, including the US, India, Brazil and Greece, as well as newer democracies that were once considered stable like Hungary and Poland.
Some 70 to 90% of these global shifts have been driven not by military coups but by executive aggrandizement – leaders actively undermining checks and balances on their power and the capacity of opponents– with tactics such as packing courts; impeaching and intimidating judges; sowing disinformation; attacking the media; labelling civil society organizations as a threat, and finding ways to prevent people from mobilizing peacefully.
Democratically elected, autocratic leaders are using a shared playbook to expand their authority, and sharing tactics to serve common goals. Not by accident, the plans laid out in Project 2025 mirror those implemented by Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
Hope for democracy
So will this trend continue? Is there any hope? If the tools that we would use are being deliberately eroded or undermined, what tools do we have to guard against democratic backsliding?
Countries like Brazil, Poland, Bolivia and Moldova provide some cues on what has worked to halt or reverse backsliding.
Autocratization can be fought when five key factors work against it in conjunction.
Democratic preservation relies on institutional and societal pushback. The institutional mechanisms come from other branches of government standing up to the erosion of democracy. We see the judiciary in the United States trying very hard, even if lately ignored, to enforce due process and push back against illegal and unconstitutional actions.
Coalitions have been critical for unifying opposition to autocratic rulers. We have recently seen for the first time broad coalitions of political parties and trade unions across the political spectrum demonstrating against the populist Orbán regime in Hungary, with tens of thousands gathering to protest this month in Budapest. Large-scale popular mobilization is also a necessary but not sufficient means of defending democracy.
Elections– opportunities to vote incumbents who abuse their power out of office– can be critical events. But what happens when the incumbent loses the election but refuses to step down? In this case it can be critical to have international support. In the case of Brazil, the US and other countries honored the outcome of the legitimately won democratic election. The question is, if that happened in the United States, would there be foreign power to back up the opposition against a defiant incumbent? This could prove crucial and necessary for the future of our democracy.
This post is based on a presentation by Pauline Jones given at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Pauline Jones is a Professor of Political Science, a Research Professor at the Center for Political Studies, and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is an expert on politics in the former Soviet Union (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) and on assessing the impact of mass protest in authoritarian regimes. She regularly teaches PoliSci140: Introduction to Comparative Politics. This post was developed by Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies with contributions from Pauline Jones.
Faculty from the University of Michigan offered their expertise on these issues at a February “teach-in” panel at Angell Hall to help students understand how recent policy changes have been made and why they matter for democracy.
So how did we get to this point? And where do electoral politics go from here?
At the February teach-in, political scientist Robert Mickey highlighted the role of America’s history of white supremacy and focused on the story of party elites, and the evolution of the Republican Party “from the mainstream, conservative party committed to democracy, into something very different.”
Republican Radicalization
Robert Mickey’s account began with the observation that US democracy is young, given its slow, historical turn to secure voting rights for all adults and the civil rights and liberties needed to make elections free and fair. Following the Civil War, efforts to build a biracial democracy were eventually turned back, with Jim Crow segregation in much of the country underwritten by state-sponsored violence. As Mickey describes in his book, Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944-1972, the 11 states of the Confederacy remained enclaves of authoritarian rule, sustained by the federal democracy and the national Democratic Party, with Democrats “maintaining a stranglehold on nearly every elected office in the region for seven decades.” America’s history of racist and xenophobic appeals to white voters should make the current wave of party-led democratic backsliding less surprising, said Mickey.
The rooster icon and banner, “White Supremacy for the Right,” served as the emblem of the Alabama Democratic Party from 1904 to 1966.
The current threat to American democracy has links to the authoritarianism of the preceding century but with novel features. Focusing on the last one-half century of stable democratic rule, Mickey argued that three trends have combined in recent decades to lead us to today’s challenging moment.
The first is elite polarization. The move of culturally conservative Southern whites to the Republican Party in the 1970s widened partisan disagreement, and that party’s members of Congress have become much more extreme over time. Following their elites, growing numbers of voters have viewed the opposing party with increasing social antipathy, hatred, and distrust. And with Congress passing fewer bills every year, voters have become more tolerant of antidemocratic behavior by their own party’s politicians, Mickey said.
Second, increasing economic inequality over recent decades has motivated the rich to defend their wealth, principally through massive campaign contributions. This “wealth defense” has transformed the Republican party; its mega-donors have demanded radical cuts to the regulation of business, the decimation of popular government programs, and the nomination of judges who support these goals.
Neither of these trends alone necessarily threaten democracy, said Mickey, but they have dangerously combined with “a growing panic about the country’s ‘ownership’ among millions of white Americans.” That panic is worsened by the country’s approaching “majority minority” milestone and the “reaction of many whites to the mere fact of Obama’s presidency.”
The result: Republicans, constrained by their donors from changing their economic appeals to white voters, have opted to invoke cultural issues. The precursor to MAGA is the Tea Party revolt of grassroots conservatives more than a decade ago who “talked a good game about being upset about budget deficits and debt” but were actually much more united on and energized by the issue of immigration, said Mickey.
“These trends have combined to radicalize the Republican Party into an organization that’s no longer committed to democracy,” said Mickey. “Right now, it’s an uneasy combination of white nationalism and libertarianism.”
We now see evidence that the party is backing away from democracy in several ways: Since 2000, state-level Republicans have worked to make it harder to vote, Mickey said. Second, a large majority of House Republicans refused to certify Biden’s election, even after the invasion of the Capitol. Third, Republicans now in Congress have refused to conduct oversight of the executive when their own party leader occupies the White House.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Looking ahead, Mickey closed on the point that an organizationally “hollow” Democratic party – in his view, a “feckless gerontocracy” that failed to strengthen even modestly the Voting Rights Act in 2022 – can’t save U.S. democracy. Even more important, in a two-party system, both parties have to be committed to democratic rule. As political scientist Adam Przeworski tells us, democracy is “a system in which parties lose elections.” For Przeworski, democracies remain stable only when its major parties accept the results of elections, content to pursue office another day.
“Republican [candidates] who lose their races are increasingly likely not to concede,” said Mickey. “Thus, the Republican party has to remake itself for American democracy to be safe.”
“That will probably require multiple defeats to reset their incentives,” said Mickey. A party committed to democracy must be strong enough internally “to push out their extremists: The Nazis, the Kanyes, the Jewish-space-laser believers, and they need to take their oversight responsibility seriously…. Democracy-loving conservatives don’t have the party home that they deserve, and they need to rebuild one immediately.”
Robert Mickey is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Vincent Hutchings is the Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor in Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies. Both are affiliated with the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
This post is part of a series that focuses on the 2025 teach-in held at Angell Hall that also marked the 60th anniversary of the first teach-in convened in the United States, held at the University of Michigan during the Vietnam War protests of 1965. Recordings of the talks are available on YouTube.
This post was written by Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies, with contributions from Robert Mickey. The second of two complimentary posts on this topic, Vincent Hutchings shared the key insight in Pt. 1 that U.S. election outcomes often hinge on attitudes toward salient social groups, and, especially, Black Americans.
This expert opinion piece by 
This expert opinion piece by Christian Fong is based on his presentation at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. 
This post is based on a presentation by Pauline Jones given at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Pauline Jones is a Professor of Political Science, a Research Professor at the Center for Political Studies, and the 
