**An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that
undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them.
**
While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most
assume that our system of government and democracy itself are
invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the
United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the
earliest days of the republic to the present.
In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five
moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the
1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate.
These episodes risked profound--even fatal--damage to the American
democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics
of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism,
economic inequality, and excessive executive power--alone or in
combination--have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has
survived--so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment
in American politics is that all four conditions exist.
This convergence marks the contemporary era as a grave moment for
democracy. But history provides a valuable repository from which we can
draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened--or
weakened--in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of
Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution,
we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to today and chart
a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.
