How Parties and Ambitious Politicians Undermined American Democracy—and the Reforms that Might Save It

Abstract Asserting that American checks and balances have broken down, Lawrence Jacobs asserts that parties must filter out dangerous candidates such as Donald Trump. To do so requires a number of reforms to undo several wrong turns in the evolution of the party system. Ambitious political elites including Jefferson, Jackson, LaFollette, and McGovern introduced changes in the name of greater equality that served their own interests but also had a number of harmful consequences. Reforms are needed to expand and reinvigorate citizen political participation along many dimensions and curb elite influence. In his book Democracy Under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History, Lawrence Jacobs offers a robust vision of democracy and argues democracy is incompatible with entrenching minority control of electoral outcomes or political decision-making. Yet some of the failures and changes that gave rise to current threats to democracy, including authoritarian candidates, have affected other nations and have causes that go beyond remedies considered here. Some of the modest reforms proposed by Jacobs seem unlikely to achieve the purposes he envisions. However, reforms that do not require constitutional amendments and broader citizen political engagement that extends beyond election season are welcome proposals.