Institutions, Polarization and Threats to Democracy This is excerpted from the introduction to the edited anthology: Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization? (Cambridge Press, 2022). The introduction provides a helpful introduction to the broad themes of threats to democracy and democratic resilience without the deep dive into the weeds of the individual chapters. I will provide definitions and introductory remarks as needed to help understandings for those new to political science. The introduction is titled How Democracies Endure: The Challenges of Polarization and Sources of Resilience. It is by Robert C. Lieberman (Johns Hopkins University), Suzanne Mettler (Cornell University) and Kenneth M. Roberts (Cornell University). This section is fairly straightforward and the authors carefully define their terms. If you have any questions or have any trouble understanding a part of it please reach out. I am here to help.

Introductory remarks and terms to know

In this section the authors show how the concerns of comparative political scientists about weakening democracies globally have influenced American politics scholars to reassess the longtime view that the American system was immune to threats to democracy. While our fragmented system was designed to avoid any particular approach from dominating the system, polarization is now overwhelming our institutions and weakening democracy. Will congress continue to be an effective check on the powers of the presidency?

Terms to Define

Mass and Elite Actors: Mass refers to the public/citizens. Elites refer to those in power inside and outside of government. Actors means anyone engaged in political action from citizens (public) to elites, including private sector and elected leaders. Actors' perspectives are shaped by political beliefs, culture, education, history, geography and social position.

Bridging Institutional, Behavioral, and Historical Analysis

The central questions of this volume are whether contemporary polarization presents a serious threat to US democracy itself, and whether the nation has the institutional and political capacity to resist or recuperate from the harm it may experience. It is well known that polarization has transformed numerous aspects of government and politics, for example, by altering standard operating procedures in Congress, deterring policy enactment, and prompting voters to align their policy preferences with one party or the other. Might it also endanger the United States’ character as a democratic regime? Both polarization and democratic resilience, as we have seen, engage multiple dimensions of American politics. Polarization presents a challenge to American politics at the system level, as mass and elite actors affect one another, and numerous institutions and political processes come into play and interact. Resilience, too, involves both mass and elite actors and the institutions and political practices that connect them and foster (or undermine) democratic accountability. Understanding polarization’s impact on democracy and evaluating democratic resilience, therefore, require a system-level response that brings together diverse analytical threads. Yet scholars of American politics typically study the political system through what Paul Pierson calls a “pizza-pie approach,” concentrating on a particular part of the political system and specializing deeply in it.42 This has led to the accumulation of sophisticated literatures on each part of the system, and yet it leaves us ill-prepared to analyze developments that transcend particular components; in fact, we may even fail to recognize their emergence, much less understand them. As we have argued elsewhere, both history and comparison are essential to meeting the system-level challenge of understanding the dynamics of democracy and democratic resilience in the United States.43 Throughout its history, American democracy has weathered numerous shocks that have threatened the integrity of democracy – from the nearly ruinous polarization of the 1790s and the conflict over slavery to the violent rollback of voting rights for African Americans after Reconstruction and the presidential excesses of the twentieth century such as the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the misadventures of Watergate. In each case, certain features of the democratic regime have proven resilient, while others have sustained serious damage. Frequently, these two dynamics have co. might compare to that of other countries where democracy has been under threat. The resulting analyses take us far in understanding the dangers to US democracy posed by polarization and the capacity of the

political system to prove resilient. The next two chapters – the first by Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler and the second by Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer – address the question of polarization’s consequences for resilience from this broad historical and comparative perspective. American political institutions, including the structures of separation of powers and federalism, have long been regarded as fragmenting political power by facilitating widespread access to the political system and at the same time impeding efforts by one side or the other to stage a takeover. Nevertheless, the escalation of polarization threatens to overwhelm these institutions. Polarization is not static; rather, it can take on a life of its own and eventually generate different effects than earlier on, as it intensifies and metastasizes. Pierson and Schickler demonstrate this in their developmental analysisincided; the resolution of democratic crises in American history has often entailed a compromise of democratic values that reaffirmed or perpetuated racial hierarchy and exclusion.44 Historical inquiry can be useful as a way to examine these patterns of resilience and backsliding in American democracy and probe their causes. A historical approach can help identify the processes of change that drive resilience and might (or might not) be at work in the contemporary crisis of American democracy.45 Polarization in particular, as Pierson and Schickler have argued, has been an ever-changing and dynamic force in American politics that has become increasingly self-reinforcing in recent decades, heightening the challenge of resilience.46 The problem of democratic resilience is also a global one, and comparison can also illuminate it. Events around the world suggest that the challenges to democracy in the United States are not unique. Previously democratic regimes are under threat or have turned in an authoritarian direction around the world in countries such as Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and the Philippines. Viewing the United States in a comparative context provides more data with which to develop and test theories of democratic resilience. Although the prospect of democratic backsliding or breakdown has long seemed outside the realm of reasonable speculation in the United States, comparative scholars have made substantial progress toward understanding and explaining why democracies emerge, how they fail, and under what conditions they might survive.47 Comparative studies have shown that several conditions pose especially grave threats to democracy: conflict over the boundaries of membership in the political community, particularly on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or other “formative rifts” that predate democratization; high and

rising economic inequality; the decay of democratic norms and institutional restraints; and high levels of political polarization.48 Guided by this analytical framework, we have gathered first-rate scholars of American politics, both students of institutions and of political behavior. Our aim has been to bring them into dialogue with one another, by asking them to think about how each other’s research findings might have a bearing on their own area of study. We have also encouraged them to think about how time matters in their analysis, as circumstances unfold and change dynamically. The authors in this volume probe the historical currents and developmental processes that have helped produce current conditions, asking how the American experience. might compare to that of other countries where democracy has been under threat. The resulting analyses take us far in understanding the dangers to US democracy posed by polarization and the capacity of the political system to prove resilient. The next two chapters – the first by Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler and the second by Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer – address the question of polarization’s consequences for resilience from this broad historical and comparative perspective. American political institutions, including the structures of separation of powers and federalism, have long been regarded as fragmenting political power by facilitating widespread access to the political system and at the same time impeding efforts by one side or the other to stage a takeover. Nevertheless, the escalation of polarization threatens to overwhelm these institutions. Polarization is not static; rather, it can take on a life of its own and eventually generate different effects than earlier on, as it intensifies and metastasizes. Pierson and Schickler demonstrate this in their developmental analysis of polarization, in which they show that the United States’ “meso-institutions” – including interest groups, state parties, and news media – have ceased to operate as countervailing mechanisms that constrain polarization, and have either weakened or turned into engines of polarization. As a result, partisan public officials increasingly run roughshod over checks and balances, seek to delegitimize and incapacitate the political opposition, and aim to rig the system to cement their dominance. Growing social polarization that emanates from ordinary Americans, moreover, may also increasingly affect how these institutions operate. It may undermine national unity and constrain political elites from working across the aisle, effectively exacerbating harmful consequences. Put differently, mass and elite polarization may feed each other, leading to a spiraling of both. McCoy and Somer view the United States today as subject

to “pernicious polarization,” a process that transforms the incentives of political actors in ways that can lead to the demise of democratic resilience. Surveying polarization in countries around the world, they observe that it can be most corrosive to democracy when it revolves around unresolved “formative rifts,” debates over who is considered a citizen that may date back to the nation’s origins, as is the case in the United States. Such developments raise the question of whether the political system can withstand these mounting challenges and permit democracy to survive. National Institutions To investigate whether the dispersion and fragmentation of power underlying the US constitutional system remain sufficient to weather the onslaught of threats the nation is confronting presently, we then shift to a focus on institutions themselves. In three chapters, specialists examine the extent to which polarization hinders or obstructs the capacity of national institutions, along with the arrangements of separation of powers, to protect democracy. Rising polarization in Congress and its impact on the policy process has received considerable attention from scholars, but notwithstanding these problems, Congress may still remain the most resilient of the national institutions to democratic erosion. Frances Lee observes that the political parties in Congress, reflecting their membership across the nation, have grown more socially sorted, more differentiated along lines of race, gender, and religion. Yet while she agrees with Pierson and Schickler that cross-cutting cleavages no longer play the role in ensuring democratic stability that they did in the past, Lee argues that US institutions themselves retain consensus-promoting abilities, enabling them to thwart and restrain such social divides. The separation of powers, strong bicameralism, and federalism still promote power-sharing between the parties and therefore safeguard democratic stability. Some chapters (such as Pierson and Schickler’s and McCoy and Somer’s) point out that growing dysfunction in Congress impedes the policymaking process, but while acknowledging these concerns, Lee maintains that the institution continues to force bipartisan compromise and negotiation. Some scholars suspect that ascendant polarization and its accompanying legislative gridlock and failure of responsiveness are leading to the greater assertion of unilateral power by presidents, as they seek alternate means of delivering to the public. Certainly the rise of presidential power is nothing new; presidents of both parties, at least since Franklin D. Roosevelt (and with precedents dating back to George Washington) have exerted it in efforts to respond to the public’s demands. Examining trends

since the mid-1970s, however, Douglas Kriner finds only slim evidence that contemporary polarization has exacerbated presidential power grabs in the form of executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations. He then investigates the Trump presidency and finds it to be neither imperial nor exceptional in these respects, largely because Republican leaders in Congress themselves have pushed back on several of Trump’s key policy initiatives. Yet when it comes to oversight a critical factor for democratic resilience – Kriner explains that the Trump administration has engaged in almost total obstruction of Congress, in ways that might have the “most dangerous and long-lasting consequences for the balance of power between the branches.” Such developments, if they pass judicial muster, threaten to decimate the capacity of Congress to check the power of presidents and the administrative state, especially when executive malfeasance and obstruction are aided by the president’s own party in Congress. Taken together, these assessments offer a fair amount of confidence in Congress’s ability to restrain presidential unilateralism in policymaking, but Kriner raises grave concerns about the effectiveness of legislative checks on executive misconduct in a context of acute partisan polarization. Such polarization threatens to neutralize congressional oversight or render it strictly partisan in character, posing a risk to democratic resilience. By contrast, Thomas Keck’s chapter on the courts indicates that democratic erosion is already long underway in that domain. It is often assumed that courts can act as guardrails of democracy by restraining the partisan excesses of the “political” branches of government. In the face of worries about the Supreme Court’s “countermajoritarian” tendencies in the postwar era, for example, Robert Dahl famously argued that the Court tends to be constrained by the political system and, given the political method of judicial selection, eventually catches up with political majorities.49 But as Keck explains, courts can also be effective agents of democratic erosion. The long history of court-packing in the American past offers instances of efforts at facilitating both outcomes. In the contemporary era, since the 1970s, Republicans in particular have taken action to stack the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, and conservatives now stand to dominate it for years to come, regardless of the outcome of elections. This dominance threatens democracy given that the courts in recent years have often proven willing to block efforts at democratic renewal and to permit unfair procedures to persist.

Presidential Power and Its Limits As you can see, presidents have power (or can abuse power) and are also limited. Here are some common themes mentioned by presidential scholars. Note that presidents have both formal power (granted by the Constitution) and informal power (based on precedent, popularity, and talent for persuasion). Some highlights are below:

• The president's role as party leader can be both a source of power and a limitation. It is a source of power when the president's party is relatively unified and can back a president's legislative agenda. However party control has been in decline for several decades and both presidents and legislators can be independent of the party or some cases exert control over what party officials are chosen. Members of congress are often wanting to be seen as more independent by voters.

• Mass media. Mass media enables the president to use "the bully pulpit" to persuade citizens to support initiatives in ways that did not exist prior to the 1930s (FDR's fireside chats on radio helped to sell his New Deal to the nation). In the age of the internet and television the potential for influence is even more so. But, and there is big but, for all the reasons we looked at with the media and the Time news magazine covers, popularity can also sink quickly. The system favors those who are photogenic and able to perform well. Those attributes may exclude qualified candidates.

• Overly high expectations. Public expectations of what presidents can accomplish are unrealistically high. Presidents often get both more praise and more blame than they really deserve. For instance, a president may share blame with congress or the bureaucracy may play a significant role in a poor policy choice. Issues are complex and not easily fixed by any branch of government, let alone a single individual, even if that individual is the symbolic face of the nation.

• Popularity. High poll numbers showing support for a president means more people want to ride the presidential coattails and support presidential policy choices. Witness President Bush's popularity in the post 9/11 2002 midterm elections. And compare 2002 with the last years of the Bush presidency. Republican members of congress

charted their own reelection course and even voted against the president to claim some independence in the hope of being reelected.

• Interest groups. The power of interest groups limits presidential power. Presidents are often forced to bargain with various interests to achieve goals. Depending on their particular talents some are more effective at this than others (for example President Johnson moving Civil Rights legislation through congress). Some presidents are very good at twisting arms in Congress and putting on pressure.

• In a certain sense, where the Constitution is vague, presidents can assert a prerogative to a previously unclaimed power as the Chief Executive. Unless the courts or congress push back, presidential power is expanded. This is often tied to times of crisis.

• The president oversees a massive Executive Branch bureaucracy. Bureaucrats, even those in the executive branch, can resist or slow their implementation for presidential directives they don't favor .

• In the presidential role of Commander in Chief, presidents have initiated military action without the approval of Congress though the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to declare war while the president is Commander in Chief. (Here is a Wikipedia overview of the War Powers Act passed in 1973 during controversary over the Vietnam conflict: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution Links to an external site.The act requires presidents to inform congress within 48 hours of committing US troops and requires a congressional authorization for commitments of more than 90 days. In general, presidents give lip service to the act and change the language slightly so as to mostly comply with the spirit but not the letter of the act because they regard it as unconstitutional. Congress meanwhile tolerates some presidential neglect of the act believing that they have more power with it than without. Neither side has mounted a legal challenge on its constitutionality because they don't want to risk losing power. Learn about the controversy over the War Powers Act and President Obama's Libya strategy click here: http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/whatever-happened-to- the-war-powers-act Links to an external site. ) Presidents also have wide latitude in determining foreign policy. Still presidents can face constraints in negotiating international agreements. For instance negotiating a global warming agreement would be, as one scholar put it, "playing a two-tier chess game" in trying to reach a compromise,

but also having to keep in mind what would be accepted by interest groups back home.

• Presidents appoint judges, ambassadors, cabinet officials etc. Many appointments are subject to Senate confirmation.

• Presidents can veto legislation. The line item veto (i.e. to veto parts of bills rather than whole bills) to attack pork spending has been sought by presidents of both parties, but each party is reluctant to give a leader of the other party that degree of power.

Section Introduction: Governing Institutions The Governing Institutions Make Policy Choices: Here the Presidency, Congress, and the Courts come in. Ideally, all parts of the American political system from citizens up have some say in what government chooses to do or not via being informed by the media and political parties, joining interest groups, voting, or engaging in protest. In the following weeks we will explore each branch of the federal government in more depth beginning with the presidency which is made up not just with the president, a cabinet and advisors, but also a vast network of federal agencies. One example would be the Environmental Protection Agency charged with enforcing the nation's laws on the environment and protecting citizens from toxic emissions and waste.

Those 3 journal entries are a minimum of 250 words for each idea reflection per idea reflection. You can go longer on text or video if needed. If you are doing text it would run about 2000 words for the three weeks of reflections and about 2750 words in the final journal which will cover four weeks.

The format is your choice depending on your comfort level with technology and what you feel best fits your topic and creative inspiration. It could be a written Word doc. It could be a video. You could include your own creative work such as photographs, memes, graphics, artwork, poems, songs, graphs, diagrams, and tables. You can also use PowerPoint (link from Google Drive in your assignment post), Prezi, or an audio file. Include links to what is being discussed in your reflections when its from something other than our course. If you are using video and it is a file smaller than 500 mb you can upload it directly to Canvas.

This can be a painless and enjoyable learning process if you do it regularly. If an idea grabs you as you are reading the Canvas site or the Our Own Worst Enemy book, do a short write-up. If you wait until a day before it’s due, or worse, the day of, it will be unpleasant.

Credible sources are a must

As you analyze the different ideas, your evaluation of the pluses and minuses of each idea is up to you. You will not be graded or judged on your beliefs and values. This course is about reflecting on critical political questions and issues and learning how to think, not what to think. You are required to include citations and supporting evidence for all your views. See the next page for definitions of credible sources. Use it as a checklist. If it meets all the criteria use the source. If it doesn't meet all criteria don't use it. You are responsible for vetting your sources before using them in this course!

How to Get a Better Grade on an Assignment To improve your grade on assignments use the following list of things to do and things to avoid. Use it as a checklist as you edit your assignment. The more checks the better your grade will be.

Above all remember as you analyze different perspectives, your evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of any political position is up to you. You will not be graded or judged on your beliefs and values. This course is about teaching you HOW to think, not WHAT to think. I do not care if you are Republican, Democrat, Right or Left or none of the above. What is important is to make the best possible argument you can for your position. The tips on this page will help you do just that. It begins with the six most common mistakes that I've seen in assignments.

A) The Big Six:

1: Thoroughly read through the assignment prompt and make sure you have done all required parts of the assignment. Don't throw away grade points unnecessarily. If you have any questions, or if something is unclear to you, reach out. I am here to help.

2: Define your terms. For example, writing "President Biden is making the US a socialist and maybe even a Communist country." (I heard this from a friend on Facebook so it is a real life example). Possible responses: How are defining you "socialism?" It's thrown around like a political football as a loaded word. But what defines it? What does it look like? How do you know when you see it? Thomas Dye, a conservative political scientist, defines socialism simply as central government control of the market. He goes on to say many of his fellow conservatives define any governmental economic regulation as socialism, but that is inaccurate as a capitalist system with some government regulation isn't socialism. Is a government run utility company or garbage service socialism? What is the difference between state central socialism, democratic socialism and social democracies? Know terms before throwing them around.

3: Examples help clarify meaning and definitions. Continuing our example above socialism above. For one example, Bernie Sanders

identifies as a socialist, but isn't a socialist. He is social democrat. Why? For example, he would leave free market capitalism in place, but have more social programs. Social welfare programs with a capitalist economy aren't socialism. Social assistance programs historically were created to counter the appeal of socialism to workers. We'll have more on this later in the course.

4: Avoid generalizations. To use a simple example: All dogs have curly hair. Generalizations are the easiest statements to disprove. Find one exception and poof, it melts. By the way, did you know all the superheroes in the Marvel cinematic universe are ethical and serve only to help people?

5: Cite evidence. We all have opinions. Its fine to swap opinions over a cup of coffee. A school assignment is different because it requires evidence. Evidence raises an opinion to the level of reasoned argument. In the socialism discussion above above I don't just assert Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist, and let it go as an obvious truth. I give reasons, examples and evidence. My sources are on the page linked. Which leads us to the next point.

6: Use credible sources. You are responsible for vetting your sources before turning in your assignment. My PSCI department colleague Sasha Breger Bush has excellent and concise advice on determining what a credible source is in her book Global Politics: A Toolkit for Learners (pp 80-81) co-written with Kay M. O'Dell. Hint, a Q-drop is unlikely to be credible. Her checklist is as follows:

-Identify the author. If author is not identifiable, do not use the source/information (author can be a credible organization, government, or other source, such as the WTO as an author);

-Identify the author’s credentials and ensure they are experts in the subject. Credentials need not be academic but could also include relevant life or work experience, or time spent researching the subject matter. Don’t use source/information without good reason to trust the author’s credentials;

-Identify source information. Does the author reveal where they get their information, such that their findings could be replicated? If not, don’t use the source or the information provided;

-Identify possible interests or affiliations. Is the source affiliated with a company, interest group, political party, or political persona? If so, factor

https://ucdenver.instructure.co

Our website has a team of professional writers who can help you write any of your homework. They will write your papers from scratch. We also have a team of editors just to make sure all papers are of HIGH QUALITY & PLAGIARISM FREE. To make an Order you only need to click Ask A Question and we will direct you to our Order Page at WriteDemy. Then fill Our Order Form with all your assignment instructions. Select your deadline and pay for your paper. You will get it few hours before your set deadline.

Fill in all the assignment paper details that are required in the order form with the standard information being the page count, deadline, academic level and type of paper. It is advisable to have this information at hand so that you can quickly fill in the necessary information needed in the form for the essay writer to be immediately assigned to your writing project. Make payment for the custom essay order to enable us to assign a suitable writer to your order. Payments are made through Paypal on a secured billing page. Finally, sit back and relax.

Do you need an answer to this or any other questions?

Order Plagiarism Free Answer Here

About Wridemy

We are a professional paper writing website. If you have searched a question and bumped into our website just know you are in the right place to get help in your coursework. We offer HIGH QUALITY & PLAGIARISM FREE Papers.

How It Works

To make an Order you only need to click on “Order Now” and we will direct you to our Order Page. Fill Our Order Form with all your assignment instructions. Select your deadline and pay for your paper. You will get it few hours before your set deadline.

Are there Discounts?

All new clients are eligible for 20% off in their first Order. Our payment method is safe and secure.

Hire a tutor today CLICK HERE to make your first order

Related Tags

Academic APA Writing College Course Discussion Management English Finance General Graduate History Information Justify Literature MLA