After November 5th: The Challenges to U.S. Democracy in the Era of Trumpism
Après la présidentielle, la démocratie américaine à l’ombre du trumpisme
Published on Thursday, September 05, 2024
Abstract
This international conference held in Chicago University in Paris, will gather political scientists, historians, legal scholars, students of international relations, sociologists and American Studies scholars to question the challenges to the state of U.S. democracy in the Era of Trumpism.
Announcement
January 23 & 24, 2025
Argument
Far from being a mere riot, the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack marked a turning point in the history of the American Republic. For the first time, the peaceful transition of power between two presidential administrations was contested by the outgoing President, thus encapsulating the idea of “democratic backsliding” popularized in 2018 by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel
Ziblatt in their book, How Democracies Die. The January 2025 transition may very well turn out to be peaceful, but as of now, the main trends of the U.S. election point towards a disputed outcome with a potential for all-too-real violent outbursts, whoever wins.
While crises may open up new political opportunities, they also contribute to developing new analytical frameworks. This forthcoming international conference – held at The University of Chicago in Paris on January 23-24, 2025 and co-organized with several French universities – seeks to explore the different facets of the ongoing American political crisis as well as the reasons for American democratic resilience against the backdrop of Trumpism. Since its founding, American democracy has survived no less than a civil war, many major international conflicts and countless social, economic and financial crises that elsewhere toppled stable governments and, more often than not, led to the demise of political regimes. “Resilience” – a concept originally used in the field of physics to mean a material’s capacity to withstand pressure until breaking point – has now taken on another meaning in social sciences, where it tends to refer to the ability to reinvent or rebuild itself, something the United States has largely demonstrated.
The current situation highlights idiosyncratic features of U.S. politics: the denial of the 2020 election results that culminated in the assault on the Capitol, the confluence of judicial and electoral dynamics, and the deregulation of the media and financial sectors. But it also shares some broad features with Western democracies: verbal and physical violence, the impact of social networks on the spread of disinformation and “conspiracy theories,” the construction of “the people” as the main political frame of reference (raising the question of “populism” as a category of analysis), the rise of the far right and of a left that stands against social democracy, the construction of immigration as a major public problem, and inflation. As a result, any consideration of the challenges facing democracies cannot ignore the case of the United States, which during this current election is a paradigmatic example with global consequences.
Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, U.S. democracy has sent out mixed signals. While observers repeatedly point to the many distressing examples of democratic backsliding (the abuse of presidential power, congressional gridlock, a right-wing Supreme Court, the high cost of political campaigns, public distrust and even cynicism, partisan polarization, the division of the public into increasingly separate media “silos,” etc.), Americans seem to be more involved in the public sphere than ever before. Presidential election turnout has risen significantly since 2008. The emergence of Trump has led to a new wave of mobilization, both on the right with his electoral base and on the left with a protean “Resistance” that is national in scope. Social and cultural issues (abortion, healthcare) as well as environmental issues (climate change) are powerful factors in the politicization of the left, while the Trump movement seems engaged in a veritable crusade to protect an America that it fears will disappear.
This conference will take place over two days and will explore the following four subjects:
The “rules of the game” in democracy.
The “constitutional hardball” diagnosed by jurist Mark Tushnet in 2004 has reached a milestone since Trump burst onto the national political scene: institutions, just like their underlying norms, were pushed to their limits, like a gigantic politicaljudicial “stress test.” If Biden positioned himself as the “restorer” of traditional balances and a peaceful public debate, it is clear that the results are not there: the configuration of the current election, with the collision of electoral and judicial temporalities, is only the latest and most striking illustration. Papers that focus on institutional, partisan, electoral and judicial ruptures, their origin and impact, or even electoral financing and ideological mutations will naturally be at the heart of this conference.
Democracy in action.
Democracy is never limited to its operating rules. It is, to use the traditional Tocquevillian formulation, a “social state” which is based on citizen activism. It is with this in mind that the conference will seek to analyze all citizen mobilizations (at the local, state and national levels), whether on the right (fsuch as the Make America Great Again movement) or on the left (for example Black Lives Matter), as well as different politicization processes from “infra-politics” to more traditional political debates. The media, which embodies a fragmented and polarized public space, as well as their technological, legal and economic evolutions, will be discussed. Social, cultural and environmental issues, but also the definition and application of such public policies, fall into this category.
Democracy as an emotional experience.
Democracy is also a feeling. It relies on a sense of belonging, the feeling of the governed that they are being listened to, and a sense of accountability on the part of those in power. However, there is a widespread perception in the U.S. that democracy has been confiscated by an unaccountable and even corrupt elite. This, in turn, fuels apathy, conspiracy theories, cynicism, and anger. Trump’s Big Lie argument has been so popular that it has become a founding myth for contemporary Republicans and is shared by countless of his voters, who experience a feeling of dispossession. We will consequently value papers dealing with the urban/rural fault line and with “forgotten America” (its political weight, its diverse social characteristics and its changing faces).
Democracy and international relations.
When dealing with foreign policy questions, the stress will be on the international echoes of the domestic political sphere, especially how international issues are “nationalized” either through the regular institutional back and forth of the world’s preeminent superpower (particularly in the Senate) or through other channels, such as online activities (social media, fake news, AI), electoral activism, social movements, or the influence of transnational networks (may they be political, racial, or economic).
The nature of this conference will be transdisciplinary in order to allow a dialogue between different approaches. We are expecting papers from a variety of fields including political science, history, law, sociology, economics, international relations and American studies.
Submission guidelines
Paper proposals (which should include the title of the paper, author(s), and a 10-line abstract) must be submitted to the following address: USdemocracyjan25@gmail.com
before October 2, 2024.
Acceptance will be notified by October 21, 2024.
References
Bartels, Larry. 2016. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2nd ed.
Bartels, Larry, Achen, Christopher. 2016. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections do not Produce Responsive Government, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Cebul, Brent, Lily Geismer, et Mason B. Williams. 2019. Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Chelle, Elisa, dir. 2024., « Une démocratie ébranlée », Politique américaine, n ° 42.
Fiorina, Morris P. 2017. Unstable Majorities. Polarization, Party Sorting & Political Stalemate, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.
Giry, Julien. 2017. « Étudier les théories du complot en sciences sociales : enjeux et usages », Quaderni, 94, p. 5-11.
Grossman, Matt, Hopkins, David A. 2016. Asymmetric Politics. Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hacker, Jacob S., Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Pierson, Paul, Thelen, Kathleen, dir. 2022. The American Political Economy. Politics, Markets and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hasen, Richard L. 2022. Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hasen, Richard L. 2016. Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jacob, Nicholas F., Milkis, Sidney M. 2022. What Happened to the Vital Center? Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kandel, Maya. 2023. « Quel avenir pour le trumpisme ? », Politique étrangère, n° 1, p. 27-38.
Klein, Ezra. 2020. Why We’re Polarized. New York: Avid Reader Press.
La Raja, Ray. 2015. Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Lee, Frances E., McCarty, Nolan, dir. 2019. Can America Govern Itself?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levitsky, Steven, Ziblatt, Daniel. 2023. Tyranny of the Minority. New York: Crown.
Levitsky, Steven, Ziblatt, Daniel. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.
Liberman, Robert C., Mettler, Suzanne, Roberts, Kenneth M, dir. 2022. Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mettler, Suzanne, Lieberman, Robert C. 2020. Four Threats: The Recurring Crisis of American Democracy. New York: Saint Martin’s Griffin.
Meyer, David S., Tarrow, Sidney. 2018. The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pranchère, Jean-Yves. 2020. « Quel concept de populisme ? », Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 58-2, p. 19-37.
Rosanvallon, Pierre, Le siècle du populisme. Histoire, théorie, critique, Paris, Seuil, 2020.
Rudalevige, Andrew. 2021. Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Rudalevige, Andrew. 2005. The New Imperial Presidency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Skocpol, Theda, Tervo, Caroline. 2020. Upending American Politics. Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sides, John, Chris Tausanovitch, et Lynn Vavreck. 2022. The Bitter End: the 2020 Presidential Campaign and the challenge to American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tama, Jordan. 2023. Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tarragoni, Federico. 2020. « Propositions pour une sociologie historique du populisme », Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 58, 2, p. 55-75.
Tharoor, Ishaan. 2023. « The Fear of a Looming Trump Dictatorship », The Washington Post, 4 décembre 2023.
Tushnet, Mark. 2021. « Constitutional Hardball », The John Marshall Law Review, vol. 37, p. 523-553.
Subjects
- America (Main category)
Places
- 6 rue Thomas Mann
Paris, France (75013)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Attached files
Keywords
- états-Unis, vie politique contemporaine, science politique, histoire politique, droit, sociologie
Contact(s)
- François Vergniolle de Chantal
courriel : francois [dot] de-chantal [at] u-paris [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- François Vergniolle de Chantal
courriel : francois [dot] de-chantal [at] u-paris [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« After November 5th: The Challenges to U.S. Democracy in the Era of Trumpism », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, September 05, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/128zy
