How much and how is US democracy likely to change during the second Trump presidency? What is new compared to 2016?

We asked Nadia Urbinati, visiting scholar at the Ciampi Institute and professor of political science at Columbia University, whom we met after a discussion at the same institute in which historian and Americanist Mario Del Pero (Science Po), social movement scholar and Cosmos Lab director Donatella Della Porta (SNS) and political scientist Philip Schmitter (EUI) also took part.

We started by looking at some of the characteristics of this Republican victory, which Urbinati said was partially different from the one in 2016.

“Before I start it is important to stress that I am basing my answer on small observations and not on a precise analysis of data that will have to be analyzed with more care. There are segments of the electorate, even small ones and not necessarily in swing states, where the work of the campaigns to get everyone to the polls is much more intense, who did not choose the Democrats or who felt it was unimportant to go to the polls: women, minority males, white voters living in big cities or in predominantly Democratic states such as New York and New Jersey that indicate that there is a form of transversality in the support for Trump that we had not seen four or eight years ago. At least since the Democrats had built what came to be called the ‘Obama coalition’ the composition of the vote showed us a more radical polarization. We are not beyond that polarization, but social groups are not necessarily and forever more loyal to one party than to the other: as has happened with many waves of immigration, some second- or third-generation Hispanics are distancing themselves, politically separating their destinies from the newcomers by voting for the president who promises to send this latter home. And women are not necessarily voting women. Whatever the reasons, this vote gives us back a deeply divided America, certainly, but one where polarization into two completely separate Americas seems to be experiencing tears.

In this regard, we can perhaps speak of a Trump campaign capable of uniting in the face of a Democrat party that needs to talk to different groups. The Democrats have combined the issue of the expansion of rights (of women, homosexuals, minorities) in an identity sense, and this has sectorialised the political discourse. The American story is that of a country integrating successive waves, with a short history and a narrative of the possibility of success (the American dream). This narrative forms the identity of the American citizen, provides meaning, but this is lost if each has its own claim. There is thus a problem with the stability of national identity. National unity and possibility walk together and these new generation rights are perceived by many as a rupture in this common identity that evidently engenders deep resentment in those who have grown up with a different narrative, partly real and partly fictitious, of a single, united country.”

The election results and the composition of the Supreme Court hands Trump an unprecedented power.

“This is not the first time there has been an alignment of powers, but this time this is happening while the majority party has turned into a personal party. These are not the days of Nixon. We don’t know exactly what the Republican party will become, but we are certainly no longer in 2016 when the Grand Old Party’s old guard formed a kind of cordon sanitaire to prevent excessive deviations from the norm. Today, the party is firmly in the hands of Trump, determined to punish all those who stand (or have stood) in his way. With this Republican party, which Trump says will take no prisoners, the concentration of power can be worrying. Over time the president role has become more central, presidents have more authority than the other powers, while Congress’s prestige is badly reduced because of a polarization that makes it ineffective. For its part, the Supreme Court, after a phase of great prestige in which it managed to find solutions between incompatible positions as in the case of abortion in ‘73, has also lost credibility as a neutral actor.

So there remains in fact (not in the constitution) an increased presidential weight and this should worry us because it feeds that plebiscitary Caesarism that is a feature of the Trumpian profile. Why is this different from past moments in which a single party controlled executive and legislative power and had a Supreme Court that has been a sort of political ally? Because there is a new element in the construction of opinion: there used to be parties and other organizations, newspapers, TV, radio whereas today we have a landscape dominated by digital media, social media and soon AI that are under the direct control of a few private companies and that have enormous weight in electoral campaigns and public discourse. This Fourth Estate, which used to act as a limit and stimulus to power, is now in danger of taking on a role of celebration. This too is an aspect of a presidential apical position with fewer limits”.

Decision-making in liberal democracies versus the need for a decision-making government: US citizens seem to have responded by ‘endorsing’ the idea of a president without countervailing powers and an idea of democracy for which rules only apply if and when I win…

“The idea of an “Executive unbound” has been circulating for a while, several American constitutionalists in the Schmittian tradition presenting these as times  that need a strong executive because the world is too complex to afford too many limits on its activity. Trump undermines the very idea of collegiality in decision-making. The constitution leaves ample room for this idea and the impression one gets from Trump’s posture, announcements and early choices is that of a conception of an executive above the other powers that should not be limited. This is a new fact: the US constitution was born with tyranophobia and today a Caesar is being looked to as the solution to problems that the Republic cannot solve. There is thus a questioning of democratic procedures, which are to be used to crown (the vote), to celebrate (the Fourth Estate) but no longer to cooperate and limit. It is a potential form of authoritarian caesarism sanctioned by popular plebiscite. It is a regime of two horns, that of individual leadership and that of popular support. Fluid support, and fortunately in America we vote every two years, but that is how it is at the moment”. 

The identification of external and internal enemies is a hallmark of US political history, an enemy that threatens to make the US special and better. With Trump there is an international problem (China and Iran) but also an internal enemy theme that threatens to become an assault on institutions.

“There have been years of participation, movements, push from below for social and civil rights. This period seems to be over, because movements are either co-opted or risk being heavily repressed in this new phase. Then there is a repetition of an American phenomenon from the beginning, that of shaping one’s own national unity in opposition to some adversary, be it the British empire or the internal communist enemy of McCarthyism. Today, the enemies are China on the outside and what Trump calls the ‘deep state’ and minorities, ‘viruses’ to be eliminated in order to preserve and relaunch America. It is a form of friend/foe that is not entirely new except in its magnitude. There is an impatient America that dreams of a return to a more homogeneous and united country, where sectional claims to rights (women, minorities, LGBTQ) disappear”.