Ethnic Parties and Democratic Backsliding: The Case of the United States

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies II: Political and Civil Society

Abstract

Accounts of democratic fragility and resilience in the United States have focused heavily on partisan polarization, the rise of partisan extremism, populism, and conflict over the boundaries of membership in the polity. Many of these threads have come together in the contemporary Republican Party, which we suggest is increasingly behaving like an “ethnic party,” with risky consequences for American democracy. While some recent literature considers ethnic parties in divided societies to be a stabilizing force in democratic politics, an alternative approach suggests that ethnic parties can exploit and widen societal cleavages to gain power, and we argue that the Republican Party has followed the latter model. Ethnic parties are generally understood to represent minorities in fragmented societies. The Republican Party, by contrast, increasingly represents an ethnically defined group that a) remains a majority in the United States, but b) fears that its dominant status in American politics is threatened. Under these conditions, we find that the “ethnicization” of the Republican Party has substantially contributed to the decay of American democracy. We consider both the history of the Republican Party in recent decades and contemporary data about both voting patterns and patterns of party nominations and leadership to chart the growing prominence of white racial identity as a key pillar of Republican politics. Considering the Republican Party as an ethnic party in comparative perspective, we suggest, can both help account for the distinctive patterns of democratic fragility in the United States and refine our understanding of the role of ethnic and racial politics in democratic backsliding and resilience.

Authors

• Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University

• Daniel Schlozman, Johns Hopkins University